Standard Swedish

Standard Swedish (standardsvenska, rikssvenska) denotes Swedish as a spoken and written standard language. While Swedish as a written language is uniform and standardized, the spoken standard may vary considerably from region to region. Several prestige dialects have developed around the major urban centers of Stockholm, Helsinki, Gothenburg and Malmö-Lund.

Rikssvenska and högsvenska

In Swedish, the terms rikssvenska "Realm Swedish" and högsvenska "High Swedish" are used in Sweden and Finland respectively, particularly by non-linguists, and both terms are ambiguous. The direct translation of standardsvenska "Standard Swedish" is less common and primarily used in scholarly contexts.

In certain (mostly Finland-related) contexts, rikssvenska has come to mean all Swedish as spoken in Sweden as opposed to the Finland Swedish spoken in Finland. For speakers in Sweden, this term however often, perhaps primarily, indicates "non-dialectal" (spoken) Swedish. The term Sweden Swedish (sverigesvenska) is sometimes used instead, as a parallel to the term Finland Swedish. There is, however, no common agreement on how rikssvenska should sound. What appears as rikssvenska to one Swede may appear dialectal to another. (Etymologically, "riks-" is a compound form that is a cognate of the German Reich.) National Swedish TV and radio news broadcasts that are often produced in Stockholm have historically preferred commentators speaking what is seen as rikssvenska, though this has gradually been relaxed.