STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The letter ‘W’ has entered the mainstream of the Swedish language, getting its own section for the first time in the nation’s most respected dictionary.

The few Swedish words that use ‘W’ have generally been borrowed from other languages — such as “watt,” “walkie-talkie” and the “World Wide Web” — and have so far been lumped under the ‘V’ section in dictionaries. In Swedish, ‘V’ and ‘W’ are pronounced the same.

Sweden is called “Sverige” in Swedish, and its language is named “Svenska.”

But the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature and whose members are considered the guardians of the Swedish language, decided it was time for ‘W’ to come out of the shadows.

The letter, called “double-v” in Swedish, “can no longer be sorted in under the single ‘V,’ ” the academy said when it introduced the 13th edition of its dictionary last week.