Cunning Linguistics

Just thought I'd wrtite a little about some of the strangeness of Swedish. I dont want to try and summarise a whole language or all of the things that can go wrong. In fact, just a list of my misunderstandings could probably slow down the whole internet, and that would be just the ones I've recognised at the time. But there are some words and phrases that catch my attention a bit more than they should do. Partly because of the strange pronounciation, partly because of the unfortunate similarity to English. And you have to remember, I am easily amused.

For most words/phrases I will give the Swedish word, then an approximation of the pronounciation in English, and the meaning.

slut - "sloot", rhymes with "loot" - and often appears in places you don't expect it to: means "end" or "finish"

sex - "sex" - again appears everywhere and is just "6".

skit - "huit" - something you will find on most recent Aussie sketch comedy shows: shit

här i kanal fem - "hairy kanal fem" - here on Ch.5. I love the hairy tv channels.

frivillig - "freevilly" - voluntarily, but the sentence I heard was "I did Free Willy" and got confused

kyss - "kuss" sorta like "puss" - kiss (v.). Another Swedish word for kiss is actually "puss" (n.)

kiss - "kiss" - wee

skägg - "shagg" - beard. And hairy, or bearded, is "shäggig". What's that, Scooby?...

spyr - "spewr" - vomit. The official word, not the slang one.

Wella Balsam Shampoo - "Wella Balsam Hampoo" which leads me to...
...a whole range of sounds in Swedish that are difficult to pronounce and spell and cause lots of confusion. Basically anything in English that pronounced or written with "sh" or "ch" is written in Swedish with sk, sj stj, or tj, or k before certain dotted vowels. The pronounciation varies with dialect (up here in the north, they tend to be more like "sh" and all sound similar) but elswehere there are big differences, enough for me to be misunderstood in Stockholm. There are heap or words that start with basically just the 'h' of 'sh', with barely a hint of the 's' or 'c' before it.

exempel: 'information' as written can be pronounced like "informashorn", "informahorn", and "informaforn". I quite like the idea of an informa-phone.

Also, another difficulty is that when letters like t, k, s, and g become soft, it is really hard to follow the text that people are reading, even when i have it written in front of me, such as in the uni review that I am in. So a sentence like:

Sjutton generade sjätteklassare sjunger Tjeckiska skitsånger (17 embarassed 6th graders sing Czech crap songs) sounds like:

hutton yenerade hätteklassare hoonger hweckiska huitsonger

Or

Skiva skära skinkan skevt (cut the pink ham unevenly) sounds like:
hwiva hwara huinkan hweft

Another beauty of the language is the tendency to make long words. They just keep sticking bits together. I don't have any hugely long examples to hand, but 2-3 english word groups are quite common. Some examples

arbetsmarknadsvecka (Job Fair Week)
förpackningspappersföretag (pagaging paper company)

The Swedish version of 'have a good one' is 'Har det så bra' - literally 'Have it so good'.


And then there is of course, the northern swedish dialect form of saying 'yes' - the suck. Let's work up to it:

- 'Yes' in standard Swedish is 'ja', pronounced 'yah' basically like in German, often with a drawn out 'preciiiiis' after it.

- A little less formally, we have 'jo'.

- next comes 'jo', but rather than using the voical cords, you must inhale so that it is very breathy, kinda like if you've just been surprised by something: "yhoh"

- now just get rid of the word bit all together, and breathe in and make a stronger sucking noise like "fffft", as if you were sucking up a peice of spaghetti. That's it. And it is used a lot like aizuchi in Japanese - you can hear someone on the phone or listening to someone just going ffft, ffft, ffft, ffft, every couple of seconds.

So what do the Swedes do to English...?

Well, it depends on who you talk to. But basically, most people around the uni are almost perfectly fluent in English, without the stereotypical accent that would be expected. The opposite of the pronounciation problems occurs, with words like jacket, and john being pronounced like "yacket", and "yon". 'Constellation' ("constellahorn") gets used alot to mean 'conglomeration', sometimes is the 'rs' sound is like 'rsh' as in Swedish, eg. 'parts' becomes "partsh". A common mistake is not getting the difference between 'much' and 'alot' right - I often hear sentences like "i did it quite much when I was a shild".
(I know it's petty, but I spend so much time getting it wrong in Swedish it is good sometimes to be certain about something occasionally).

If you want to listen to some of the Swedish examples given above, go to:

http://www.slayradio.org/mastering_swedish_lesson_3.php

You can listen to a brave brit trying to pronounce them, and look at the examples at the same time. Unsurprisingly a few expletives are generated in the attempt. The other lessons are good, too.

250, 000 superballs

You know how sometimes a song snippet just gets stuck in your head and it bugs the hell out of you because you can't figure out what it is or where you heard it? Well that happens to me alot, and I've just managed to solve one that was bugging me for months. I don't know if it has screened in Aus, but here when I arrived there was a Sony ad on TV featuring slow motion footage of 250,000 superballs bouncing down the steepest street in San Fransico, backed by a gentle, sparse, song played on acoustic guitar. This turns out to be Jose Gonzales (who is a Swede), and ironically I found out about it from listening to JJJ over the web, and hearing his cover of a Kylie track.

Anyhow, the ad is really cool and can be seen at:
http://www.bravia-advert.com/
and more pics at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sepiatone/32301137/

The making of featurette isn't so interesting, except for at the end when you see how fast it all actually happened.

Snowboarding at Kåbdalis

The Swedes never really praised their skifields here, so I was a bit concerned that they would be really short and flat, as they said they were. But their yardstick is the European Alps, which aren't hard for them to get to, so it is easy for them to be disappointed at home. Fortunately from my limited experience I was impressed and challenged enough to have a great day at Kåbdalis, about 1.5 hours from Lulea. It's not huge, not a resort, but a little village with a mountain for skiing down. 3 t-bars, maybe 8 or so runs, about the same length as the green runs at Thredbo, but more difficult. On one of the medium (red) runs, I went down a steep section longer and steeper than anything I'd been on bbeofre. So there are pleny of challenges for me here.

Caravans at the bottom of the hill - nice and close.

Peter and Charlotte

Falling into a surprisingly deep and soft patch of snow. Getting out wasn't easy. And the red on my head is my hat.

Strange skiing on a mountain with no mountain view... just plains

Mangal On Ice

This is Mangal, the Indian postdoc, and his first time on skis. Peter is... helping? him, in the carpark on a very flat section of the road.

Real town, real sign

Norway, 30kms east of Trondheim

Thanks to:
http://humor.derenback.se/extra/?file=welcome_to_hell.jpg

Is Hockey

Went to my first ice hockey match the other day. It was great - a good match, and good atmosphere. It is a very quick game - every time I got distracted with just how good the skating was (I'm an average rollerblader full of envy) or how much behind the play biffo was occurring (and there was a lot), the puck would be down the other end of the ground.

There were lots of different chants by the crowd, some to well known tunes like the Hallelujah Chorus, Frere Jaques, and When the saints go marching in. My favourite chant was "hora på isen", sung to the tune of Guantanamera. It means "whore on the ice", and was directed to an opposition player who used to play for Luleå. Unfortunately, I was standing right behind a really, really loud but tone deaf person, and next to an only slightly tone deaf person, so it was really hard to know exactly where to pitch my own chanting.

The team is sponsored by the local steelworks SSAB, has a bear as a mascot, and the Luleå players entered from the bear's head to the thumpin' tune of acca dacca's T-N-T, with everyone shouting Lu-le-å. At one point it had fireworks coming out of its nose. Another Aussie touch was the opening handclapping bars of Whispering Jack at one point between periods.



The final score was a Luleå win, 3-2. Timrå were getting pretty desperate in the last stages and the game got pretty scrappy. Luleå is currently 5th on the ladder, and are widely expected to stay there. Interesting Swedish taxation laws mean that for 6 months they can give an 'artistic professional' scholarship to great overseas players without instead of a salary, which would involve overheads overheads like income tax etc that would be at least double the cost of the actual salary. So they save 2/3 of a normal salary, but the player cannot stay beyond 6 months, and the season is long (and there are 3 matches a week), so even if the star No. 25 can get them to the finals, he wont be there to help them win.

Frosty Trees

Recent weather transformed the snow on the trees to ice crystals. Looks cool.

Ice Hotel 1

The Ice Hotel is at Jukkasjärvi, 18km from Kiruna in Swedish Lappland. In case you haven't figured it out the whole thing is made solely of ice and snow. It started as as an ice art gallery, and at one time a few people stayed inside it overnight, and that was the seed that made it one of Sweden's top tourist attractions.






There is a proper church at the hotel (left). There also used to be a Globe Theatre, where they were performing Shakespeare plays in the Sami language. Sitting in the cold, watching shakespeare in an even less easy to understand language... not a money spinner.

There are also warm cabins around the hotel, in which you can stay if you are not brave enough for the ice hotel where it is about -5 inside. The ice hotel is not a cheap experience - the cheapest bed in an undecorated room is ~$250. We paid about $330 each for a 3 person suite.



The frames for making the ice hotel. They line them up, and when it is cold enough (~Nov) to make snow or use natural snow, they pile the snow on top and tamp it all down to make a solid mass. The bottom of these arches have ski-like feet so they can be dropped and slid out from under the arch. This forms the main passageways. Then they knock holes in the walls to connect corridors and make the rooms.



The ice they use for building other parts of the hotel, and for the furniture and sculptures all comes from the local Torne river, which is one of the purest unpolluted rivers in Europe. They cut out huge blocks with chainsaws which they store for the following year. It is amazingly transparent, as you can see from the 'cold reception desk' below. These blocks are about 1m thick.

The dining hall

Rieko has very poor table manners

Artists from a wide range of disciplines (other than 'traditional' ice carving) apply from all around the world to come and decorate the rooms.

Some of the room interiors:

Maybe my favourite room. Sorry about the blur.

One of the deluxe suites, with a Sergeant Peppers theme.

Bed details: the ice blocks surround the bed and support a wooden frame. On top of the wooden frame is a foam matress and then reindeer skins. It would much colder and dangerous to actually lie on ice. More sleeping details later.

An undecorated room.

The Ice Bar -the decorations weren't finished in time for the opening, due to global warming. The building and opening of the hotel was delayed due to increasingly warm weather. Probably means it will melt earlier too - there is no guarantee of the hotel being open in April.



The Ice Bar uses solid ice glasses. You pay $5 extra on the first drink to buy the glass, and can use it for several drinks. They are slippery to hold onto, and the ice bar had a bit of a lean, so I have a feeling quite a bit of money is made from spills. They have to use the top quality ice, as cracks aren't kind to the containment of liquids.








The Ice Bar is sponsored by Absolut vodka (which is swedish), and all cocktails are based on various flavoured Absolut varieties. Hot drinks are also available, in paper cups

The Valhalla - very good

The table gets replaced at least once a season, due to wear and tear and vandalism. Everyone wants to make their mark, so there are all sorts of carvings and cigarette lighter meltings. I took off my ring and just the residual heat was enough for it to melt and sink halfway into the ice. Although it's 'just ice', the tabletop is costed at $1200.

Ice Hotel 2

Yep, I took my footy to the Ice Hotel, and that's where it will stay. It ended up going over a fence, and I think, getting stuck on the foot-thick snow on a roof. So when it all melts, maybe it will eventually get swept into the river, which if it takes long enough might just hit it in time to become trapped when it freezes over again, entomed in a block of ice and used in a future ice hotel...

What a mark!

What a... nah, I won't say it

Ayako through the ice pillars
A ghoul

The ice, with some of the big cracks that can form in the single crystals

Enhanced contrast

This might give you siezures

A partial shot of the door to our room

Called Horse Trouble, it had walls of carved ice, and a speaker playing sounds of... probably the carving process. Dunno. Couldn't really work it out.


You get given a sleeping bag and liner, and are strongly recommended to just wear thermal underwear. The changeroom, toilet, and lockers (you don't really take luggage into the room) is in a warm building next to the hotel.Following the advice I was quite snug, and at one point had to open the bag a bit as I got hot. Ayako and Rieko didn't do so well though. Ayako wore external clothes, thinking she'd be warmer, but I guess it interfered with the ability of the sleeping bag to do it's job and absorb and retain her bodyheat, so she ended up really cold. Rieko had to leave the hotel at 5:30am, but couldn't sleep - possibly because she was planning on getting up every hour to check for more Northern Lights, and couldn't face leaving the warm lounge to go back to the cold room. So she left us at about 3:30 and waited in the locker room (there are beches and sofa chairs) for 2 hours for her taxi.

Eventually I got to sleep, and was woken at 8 by the staff with a cup of warm lingonberry juice. I must have been in a reasonably deep sleep as for a little while didn't quite know what time it was or what was going on ("Why are you waking us all up, it's just the other one who leaves early, not me...") but this was mumbled in a non-comprende mix of Swedish and English, and possibly Japanese.

Some sculpted ice details

We took an ice sculpting session, and chiseled through blocks of ice. After an overambitious start and a few slips of the chisel, I ended up trying to make a "thing". I call it "Unfinished: Opps & Angst". Couldn't even get the spelling of it right.



Ayako, after desperately trying to think of something non-taiko related to make, eventually chose to make ... a stack of 3 taiko. And quite well, too.


We also went on a two hour husky tour, ("a two hour tour..." sorry I'm chanelling the Gilligans Island theme). The dogs were amazing - bred in the Siberian tundra, they are most comfortable at about -25oC. They are bred to run, and can do ~200-250kms a day. They go absolutely nuts when you put the harness on and don't get moving. When we stopped for a break, the dogs took a short rest, rolled around in the snow, and then started howling to get going again.

The ride was great, but cold. Unfortunately it wasn't clear so we couldn't see any Northern Lights or stars as we ran, but it was great going across the snowy landscape, with nothing but the sounds of the dogs panting and the sled creaking as the musher in back transferred his wieght around to steer it.

But Mats the musher never said "mush". He was an interesting guy - a former army officer who used to spend months outside living between -30 and -50, and still participating in land mine clearing activities. He had just got back from +40 deg Africa a couple of days beforehand.




Fortunately for Rieko who was leaving that night, and the rest of us, we did get to see some Northern Lights, playing in the sky for about an hour. They weren't huge, but they were the traditional green curtains of light, and some streaky stuff as well. It was pretty amazing how quickly they moved and changed. Definitely worth looking out for - when you come to this part of the world, walk around at night, and look up every now and then.

Attempts to get a photo were not good. For some reason even with a tripod, this is blurry.