What Is Meant By New Swedish?

New Sweden is a Swedish colony on the Delaware River in North America. The colony was founded 1638 by the New Sweden Co. and was led by Peter Minuit. Minuit founded the Christina fort on a land he bought form the Native Americans. Today, Wilmington, Delaware stands in place of the fort. It included Delaware, New Jersey and parts of present day Pennsylvania. The colony was taken over by the Dutch under Peter Stuyvesant in 1655. It is recognized to be the only Swedish colony in North America and extends from Trenton, New Jersey, U.S to the mouth of the Delaware River. Although the Dutch took over the colony, the colonists continued their customs and kept their land. Tinicum Island, which is at Philadelphia, is the capital of the colony.

Many countries in Europe have developed a standard national language only after many years of difficulty. Even today there are many dialects in use which are only partly understood by people from outside the local area where they are used.

Scandinavia had particular problems. The inhabitants of the three countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway all originally spoke one or other variant of Old Norse, but as time went on these grew further and further apart  from each other. It was also important that the three countries gained political power over each other before finally becoming the three countries we recognise today. At various times Swedes regularly spoke Danish and Norwegians regularly spoke Swedish and most importantly not being able to speak in the ruling culture's language marked you out as being provincial and uneducated. In the drive to become independent countries the need to express themselves in their own language became very important.

Sweden had a variety of dialects which existed in competition with each other right up until the sixteenth century. As in many other countries it was the first generally available translations of the Bible  (c 1530) which made common rules of vocabulary and grammar important enough for a national language to emerge. This language is known as New Swedish (nysvenska). The language didn't come into being all in one step but progress was steady and never looked back. Over time spellings became more regular and Danish forms in the language were dropped. Modern Swedish is a direct descendant of New Swedish.