Swedish word of the day: rikssvenska

Rikssvenska is a compound word made up of riks, from rike, and svenska.

Let's start with the first part of the word, riks, or rike in its standard form.

Rike is the Swedish word for a territory which is ruled by a monarch, sovereign or other head of state. It can be translated to "kingdom" in English and is closely related to the German word Reich.

Though distinctive from the adjective rik, meaning rich or wealthy, the two words share some similarities, having connections to power and control.

There are several situations in which the word rike can refer to a territory, and its use is not limited to kingdoms. Osmanska riket is the Ottoman Empire and Romerska riket is the Roman Empire.

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You'll also see it in the official names of some countries, like Konungariket Sverige (The Kingdom of Sweden), Kongeriget Danmark or Konungariket Danmark in Swedish (the Kingdom of Denmark), and the United Kingdom, Förenade kungariket. The latter is however very rarely used and most Swedes incorrectly call the UK Storbritannien (Great Britain) or England instead. 

The term rike can also be used in a more abstract fashion, such as in Guds rike ("the kingdom of God" or heaven), or de dödas rike, "the realm of the dead".

You'll also see it in the name of the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag.

Svenska is of course the adjective for Swedish in Swedish.

So, what does it mean?

Rikssvenska, literally "the kingdom’s Swedish", is a term used to refer to a standardised form of Swedish without any prominent regional accent, although it's influenced by central Swedish dialects spoken around Stockholm and Mälaren.

The Swedish language is rich in different regional dialects and inflections. Sweden's geographic length and large number of isolated rural communities has contributed to this over the centuries.

• READ ALSO: How to tell where a Swede comes from based on their dialect

For a foreigner learning the language, it can initially be hard to distinguish these different regional accents, although some are certainly easier to understand than others to the untrained ear: the Scanian accent, full of diphthongs (or even triphthongs in some areas) for example, is often harder for beginners to understand than the Stockholm accent you'll hear in film and TV.

This makes it easier to explain the existence of rikssvenska. Examples from other languages include Received Pronunciation in British English, sotaque neutro in Brazil or the General American accent usually adopted by North American radio and TV announcers.

Newsreaders are a good example of people you’ll often hear speaking rikssvenska, but it’s not really a marker of class: many Swedes with regional accents are able to code-switch to a more neutral form of Swedish resembling rikssvenska if they want to.

Example sentences:

Jag kan inte höra var hon kommer ifrån, hon pratar rikssvenska.

I can't hear where she comes from, she speaks standard Swedish.

I Skåne säger man tradig, det betyder tråkig på rikssvenska.

In Skåne they say 'tradig', that means 'tråkig' (boring) in standard Swedish.