After 140 years of work, reference is finally being made to the Swedish language: the official dictionary was completed and the final volume was sent to the printers last week, the publisher announced on Wednesday.
Designed by the Swedish Academy, which awards the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature, the Dictionary of the Swedish Academy (SAOB) consists of 33,111 pages spread over 39 volumes.
This long-term work began in 1883, explains AFP Christian Mattson, who leads the team responsible for creating the dictionary.
“Now we’re done. Over the years, 137 people have been employed full-time working on it,” he says.
Completing the dictionary is an important step for the team, but there is still a lot to do: the volumes containing words beginning with A to R are now so old that they need to be checked.
The word “allergy,” for example, entered the Swedish language in the 1920s, but does not appear in the volume with the letter “A” because it was published in 1893, Mr. Mattson notes.
Other terms such as “Barbie doll,” “app” and “computer” are among 10,000 new phrases that will be added to the dictionary over the next seven years.
The SAOB has been a reference work for the Swedish language since 1521. It is accessible online and was printed in just 200 copies, which were used primarily by researchers and linguists.
The academy also publishes a dictionary of current language.
1786 by King Gustav III. Founded on the model of the French Academy, its aim is to promote the Swedish language and literature and to champion the “purity, power and majesty” of this language.