SWEDISH
Former language minorities
taken from wikipedia

Map of the Estonian islands which formerly housed "Coastal Swede" populations
From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia, particularly on the islands (e.g., Hiiumaa, Vormsi, Ruhnu in Swedish: Dagö, Ormsö, Runö, respectively) along the coast of the Baltic, which today have all but disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament, and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine, where they founded a village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak Swedish and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although the dialect is most likely facing extinction.[7]
From 1918–1930, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as the administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II prior to the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of older speakers remain today.[8]

Geographic distribution
Swedish is the national language of Sweden and the first language for the overwhelming majority of roughly eight million Swedish born inhabitants and acquired by one million immigrants. In the latter half of the 2000s, around 5.5% of the population of Finland are Swedish speakers,[9] though the percentage has declined steadily over the last 400 years.[10] The Finland Swedish minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish is the dominating language. In 19 municipalities, 16 of which are located in Åland, Swedish is the only official language.[11] In several more, it is the majority language and it is an official minority language in even more. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries, but due to the similarity between the languages and cultures (with the exception of Finnish), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as a group. According to the 2000 US census some 67,000 people over age five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on actual language proficiency.[12] Outside Sweden, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses.[13]

Official status

A Finnish/Swedish street sign
Swedish in Sweden is considered the "main language" and is used as the primary language used in local and state government, but not legally recognised as an official language. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by the narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure.[14]
Swedish is the only official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland) where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland, Swedish is the second national language alongside Finnish on the state level, and an official language in some rural and coastal municipalities. Three municipalities (Korsnäs, Närpes, Larsmo) in continental Finland have Swedish as their sole official language. In the Estonian village Noarootsi, Swedish is the official language together with Estonian.[15] Swedish is also one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs.[16][17]

Regulatory bodies
The Swedish Language Council (Språkrådet) is the official regulator of Swedish, but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does. However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up the Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the dictionaries Svenska Akademiens Ordlista (SAOL, currently in its 13th edition) and Svenska Akademiens Ordbok, in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Even though the dictionaries are sometimes used as official decrees of the language, their main purpose is to describe current usage.
In Finland a special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok, a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and in Sweden from their point of view.