The du-Reform and Address (du vs ni)

If you take one cultural fact away from learning Swedish, make it this: you say du to everyone. Your friend, a stranger on the street, your boss, an elderly woman, a government minister — all of them are du. There is no separate respectful "you" you must switch to, and reaching for one to be polite is one of the most common — and most counterproductive — mistakes a learner makes. This is the opposite of what speakers of French, German, Spanish, Italian, or Russian instinctively expect, and it traces back to a deliberate social change: the du-reform (du-reformen).

du for everyone

Swedish has two second-person-singular pronouns historically, du (familiar) and ni (formal/plural). But in practice, the familiar du has taken over almost completely for addressing one person:

The plural "you" — addressing more than one person — is still ni, and that use is completely alive and uncontroversial:

The du-reform: how Sweden abolished formal address

For most of the twentieth century, Swedish address was a genuine social minefield. You could not simply say du to someone of higher status — that was too familiar — but ni to a single person could also feel insulting in some contexts. The polite solution was to avoid a pronoun altogether and use the person's title in the third person:

This was clumsy, status-laden, and stressful. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s — the change is usually associated with around 1970 — Sweden swept it away. In a shift often symbolised by a 1967 decision by Bror Rexed, head of the National Board of Health and Welfare, to address all his staff as du, the country rapidly converged on universal du. Within a remarkably short span, titles and formal ni fell out of everyday use, and du became the unmarked way to address anyone. This is the du-reformen, and it is one of the clearest examples anywhere of a society consciously flattening its own register system.

Why ni can sound cold (the trap for European learners)

Here is the counterintuitive part. Because ni was replaced rather than promoted, using ni to a single person today does not read as extra-polite. To many ears, especially older speakers who lived through the reform, formal ni sounds distancing, stiff, or even condescending — as if you are pointedly not treating the person as an equal. The very instinct that serves you well in French or German backfires here.

So the rule that overturns your European training: do not use ni to be respectful to one person. If you want to be polite in Swedish, you do it through tone, the modal particles, and softening verbs — not by upgrading the pronoun. Politeness is carried by how you ask, not by which "you" you choose.

The controversial "new ni"

There is a twist. Since roughly the 1980s–1990s, some younger service workers — in shops, cafés, call centres — have started using ni to single customers again, apparently as a learned "customer-service politeness," sometimes under influence from English or from a sense that it sounds professional. Linguists call this the "new ni" (det nya ni-et).

It is genuinely controversial. Some customers, particularly older ones, find it jarring or even offensive — precisely because for them ni to one person carries the old condescending overtone (it was historically used down the social ladder). Younger speakers who use it usually intend the opposite — extra courtesy. The upshot for a learner: you will hear the new ni occasionally, especially in service settings, but it is safest not to adopt it. Sticking with du is never wrong; the new ni can misfire.

The one real exception: royalty

The single place where Swedish still uses elaborate formal address is the royal family. Members of the royal house are not addressed as du in formal settings; they are referred to and addressed by title in the third person — Kungen ("the King"), Drottningen ("the Queen"), Kronprinsessan ("the Crown Princess"). This mirrors the old title-based dodge, frozen in place for royalty.

For everyone who is not royalty — including the prime minister, your professor, and a 90-year-old stranger — it is plain du.

Orthography and capitalisation

Both pronouns are written lowercase in modern Swedish: du, ni. (In older letters you may see capitalised Du, Ni, Er, Eder as a politeness convention, now archaic and gone from current usage.) The forms of du and ni:

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Modern Swedish addresses everyone as du — friend, stranger, boss, the elderly. This follows the du-reform of around 1970, a deliberate flattening of the old title-and-ni system.
• Formal singular ni largely died, and using it to be respectful to one person often sounds cold or condescending — the exact reverse of French vous / German Sie.
• ni is still normal as the plural "you" (addressing several people). Keep that use separate from the loaded formal-singular use.
• The "new ni" that some service staff use is controversial; as a learner, stick with du.
• The one surviving formal-address island is royalty, addressed by title in the third person.
• Both pronouns are lowercase today; capitalised Du/Ni/Er is archaic.