Language Council

The Language Council (Språkrådet, formerly known as Svenska språknämnden) is the primary institution for language cultivation in Sweden. It is a departement of the official language authority The Institute of Language and Folklore (Institutet för språk och folkminnen).

The Council's mission is to monitor the development of spoken and written Swedish and also to monitor the use and status of all other languages spoken in Sweden. Primarily, that means promoting the use of Swedish sign language and our five official minority languages, Finnish, Meänkieli, Sami, Romani and Yiddish. Yet another task is to strengthen Nordic language unity. The Council has about 20 employees. Similar language councils exist in the other Nordic countries.

The Council publishes books and handbooks and two journals, "Klarspråksbulletinen" and "Kieliviesti". We register new words and deal with fields such as terminology and language technology. We offer lectures as well as free consultation in linguistic matters. In the last two years, we have published several handbooks, e.g. a handbook on correct language use and a dictionary of phraseology and collocations.

A lot of our work is done in cooperation with other organisations, e.g. in The Nordic language council, The joint group for Swedish computer terminology, The group for media language, and The Council for Swedish place-names. The Swedish language cultivation organisations have no legal powers but fulfil their task through recommendations.