Svenska, as the Swedes call their language, is spoken by the approximately 8 million inhabitants of Sweden, as well as another 300,000 people in Finland. It belongs to the North Germanic sub- group of the Indo-European language family (English is in the West Germanic sub-group), which includes Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It is extremely similar to Danish and Norwegian,
especially in written form. Its grammar and syntax are very similar to English, more so than German or French. Many Swedish words are easily recognizable by English speakers, and even more so by German speakers.(Please note that Finnish is also widely spoken in Sweden)