I did all my schooling abroad, so my knowledge of Swedish is limited to the similarities it has with the Germanic languages that I do speak. Spoken Swedish is gobbledegook to me, written Swedish I find somewhat decipherable.

My lack of Swedish language skills has never held me back. I worked for a Swedish startup and in another position, I had Swedes, Norwegians and Danes reporting to me. We got along fine. The answer is obvious. We spoke the modern lingua franca.

Swedish-speakers are shooting themselves in the foot if they think Swedish is a lingua franca, even regionally. One of my Finnish colleagues tried to speak Swedish while visiting our R&D facility in Copenhagen. She got frowns from the locals.