Swedish is a member of the Eastern Scandinavian group of languages which is a sub-group of the Germanic Indo-European family. Swedish is a close relative of both Danish and Norwegian and is mutually intelligible with both languages as all three languages have roots in Old Norse. Swedish, spoken by about 8 million,
is the national language of Sweden and the mother tongue of its Sweden-born population. It is also normally acquired by nearly all immigrants (who themselves number above one million). In neighboring Finland, both Swedish and Finnish have official status. For some 700 years, Swedish had been the language of the Finnish state until 1892 when Finnish was finally given equal status before the law. Swedish is noted for having several high-status variations, which is unusual for such a small language. People speaking the status-rich varieties typical to Gothenburg, Lund, Stockholm, and Helsinki do not normally regard other variations of Swedish to be more prestigious than their own.