Swedish letters
Like most written languages, modern Swedish uses the latin script. In addition to the 26 letters used in English, the Swedish alphabet ends on the three letters Å, Ä, and Ö. This is usually confusing to learners, because they see them as variants of A and O. This is not the case here. They are individual letters with their own distinct sounds.
When using a physical dictionary, you’ll find any words beginning with an Å, Ä, or Ö at the end of the book and not, like in German for instance, under A and O. Check out our first pronunciation lesson to learn more details about the alphabet.
Swedish number
Let’s take a look at the Swedish numbers. If you speak any Germanic language or even an Indo-European language, the numbers will look somewhat familiar to you. You can definitely recognize the heritage.
| 1. en/ett | 11. elva |
| 2. två | 12. tolv |
| 3. tre | 13. tretton |
| 4. fyra | 14. fjorton |
| 5. fem | 15. femton |
| 6. sex | 16. sexton |
| 7. sju | 17. sjutton |
| 8. åtta | 18. arton |
| 9. nio | 19. nitton |
| 10. tio | 20. tjugo |
To create bigger numbers, we stack them – just like in English. Taking the word tjugo and adding, for instance, fem, we thus get tjugofem.
| 30. trettio | 100. (ett) hundra |
| 40. fyrtio | 1000. (ett) tusen |
| 50. femtio | 1 000 000. (en) miljon |
| 60. sextio | 1 000 000 000. (en) miljard |
| 70. sjuttio | 1 000 000 000 000. (en) biljon |
| 80. åttio | 1 000 000 000 000 000. (en) biljard |
| 90. nittio |
As described above, we just continue stacking until we get the number we want. As an example, stacking the following words gets us 51432: fem (five) + tusen (thousand) + fyra (four) + hundra (hundred) + trettio (thirty) + två (two).