The Swedish alphabet consists of the following 29 letters:
Upper Case
Lower Case
In addition to the commonly occurring letters of the Latin alphabet, A-Z, the Swedish alphabet has the three letters, "Å", "Ä" and "Ö". The letters "Å", "Ä" and "Ö" are considered distinct letters in Swedish and are sorted after Z as shown above (unlike the German umlauts in the German alphabet).
Since the additional letters do not mark grammatical variation, as in tense or mood, or syllable modification (diaeresis), they are not in function instances of diacritical marking. It is therefore not correct to refer to these characters as umlauts, despite the lack of a better term in English. The umlauted "Ü" is recognised, but is only used in names of German origin. It is otherwise treated as a variant of "Y" and is called a "German Y". In Swedish "Y" is a vowel, and is pronounced as a consonant only in certain loanwords.
Until recently the letter "W" was treated as a variant form of "V" at least for sorting purposes, and this practice is still commonly encountered. However, in 2005 the Swedish Academy separated the two letters in conformity with international lexicographic practice. They appear under separate headings in the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens Ordlista, released on 10 April 2006.[1] W has nonetheless been an official letter in the Swedish alphabet, but sorted as if it were a V. The loanword "webb" is a word which has become rather common in Swedish since 1995.
The characters "à" (which is used only in the loanword à, from French) and "é" (used in some integrated loan words like idé and armé) are regarded simply as variants of "a" and "e".
The above text relates to the formal status of the letters. Regarding actual usage, "q" is not used for any words in Swedish, only for rare family names, a few loanwords, like quesadilla, squash and quilting, and foreign geographic names, like Qatar. The letters "w" and "z" are used for names, and also for a few loanwords. The acute-accented "é" is used for well-integrated loan words like idé and armé. Also, "á" is a Swedish (old-fashioned) word, while "à" is used for a few rare non-integrated loanwords. For Swedish native personal names, "ü" and "è" and others are also used. For foreign names, "ç", "ë", "í", "õ", "ñ" and many others might be used, but usually only "e", "i", "o" etc.
Swedish newspapers and magazines have a tendency only to use letters available on the keyboard. "à", "ë", "í", "ñ" etc are available on Swedish keyboards with a little effort, but usually not "æ" and "ø" (used in Danish and Norwegian), so ae or ä and ö are usually used. The news agency TT does so since some newpapers have no technical support for "æ" and "ø"[2], although there is a recommendation to use "æ" and "ø".
The national population register can only use the letters A-Z,Å,Ä,Ö,Ü,É,ç and maybe a few others, so immigrants with other Latin letters in their names will have the diacritic marks stripped.
Due to several phonetic combinations coalescing over recent centuries, the spelling of the the Swedish sje-sound is very eclectic. Some estimates claim that there are over 50 possible different spellings of the sound, though this figure is disputed. Garlén (1988) gives a list of 22 spellings (ch, che, g, ge, gi, ige, j, je, sc, sch, sh, shi, si, sj, sk, skj, ssi, ssj, stg, sti, stj, ti), but many of them are confined to only a few words, often loan words, and most of them (ch, che, g, ge, gi, ige, j, je, sc, sh, shi, si, sk, stg, sti, ti) can correspond to other sounds or sound sequences as well. Some spellings of the sje-sound are as follows: