Editing Languages of the United States (section)

===Swedish===
[[File:Swedish USC2000 PHS.svg|thumb|Swedish language distribution in the United States.]]
There has been a Swedish presence in America since the [[New Sweden]] colony came into existence in March 1638.

Widespread diaspora of Swedish immigration did not occur until the latter half of the 19th century, bringing in a total of a million Swedes. No other country had a higher percentage of its people leave for the United States except Ireland and Norway. At the beginning of the 20th century, [[Minnesota]] had the highest ethnic Swedish population in the world after the city of [[Stockholm]].

3.7% of US residents claim descent from Scandinavian ancestors, amounting to roughly 11–12 million people. According to SIL's Ethnologue, over half a million ethnic Swedes still speak the language, though according to the 2007 American Community Survey only 56,715 speak it at home. [[Cultural assimilation]] has contributed to the gradual and steady decline of the language in the US. After the independence of the US from the [[Kingdom of Great Britain]], the government encouraged colonists to adopt the English language as a common medium of communication, and in some cases, imposed it upon them. Subsequent generations of Swedish Americans received education in English and spoke it as their first language. Lutheran churches scattered across the Midwest started abandoning Swedish in favor of English as their language of worship. Swedish newspapers and publications alike slowly faded away.

There are sizable Swedish communities in Minnesota, Ohio, Maryland, Philadelphia, and Delaware, along with small isolated pockets in Pennsylvania, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, and New York. Chicago once contained a large Swedish enclave called [[Andersonville, Chicago|Andersonville]] on the city's north side.

[[John Morton (American politician)|John Morton]], the person who cast the decisive vote leading to Pennsylvania's support for the [[United States Declaration of Independence]], was of Finnish descent. Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden in the 18th century.