Language Classification
Swedish belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic sub-family of the Indo-European languages. As such, it is mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish.
A very large category of loanwords, and words based on loanwords, came via the French language and culture, just as in English (although for totally different historical reasons). Together with shared grammar simplifications of the common germanic heritage and other similarities, this gives native English speakers an advantage over speakers of other, less related, languages when it comes to learning Swedish.
Swedish (and to some extent English) was heavily influenced, also grammatically, by Middle Low German, closely related to Dutch, during the Hansa period, so this is partly true also for Dutch. However, the similarities between Swedish and English is further emphasized by many basic Scandinavian words brought to England by the Vikings and the Normands during the early middle ages, as well as a quite extensive borrowing from English into Swedish during the 20th century.
Read more about this topic: Swedish As A Foreign Language
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“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)