Swedish in Sweden is considered the "main language" and its use is officially recommended for local and state government, but not actually enforced by law. A recently proposed bill that would make Swedish an official language had a decided majority in the Swedish parliament, but failed to pass by the narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure.[10] It is currently expected that the bill will be successfully passed if it is put up for a second vote. Swedish is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland) where 95% of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland, Swedish is the second national language alongside Finnish, and in the Estonian village Noarootsi, Swedish is the official language together with Estonian. [11] 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.
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