Words & Images

Arctic Terns. Get it? (Thanks Wikipedia)

Every now and then I hear or read an expression and wonder: is that an English expression taken up in Swedish, or was it originally Swedish (or German, or whatever... ) that has come into English? With so much English influence in the world it is hard to know where things originally came from, and whether phrases like "to have several irons in the fire", or "earmarked" are just literal translations from the English. There are some variations of standards too: in Swedish when the cat is away, the mice dance on the table (which almost rhymes in Swedish). And some have absolutely no equivalent: "there is no danger on the roof", or "he has tomtens in his attic", (which could be like having bats in the belfry).

Some other tidbits I have found interesting:

- trubadur ("troubadour"). Brings to mind 14-17th century men in tights with lyres, mandolins, and codpieces. "Brave Sir Robin ran away, ran away, ran away..." But here refers to your typical singer songwriter types, a man or two with a guitar playing away in a corner of a pub somewhere.

-sqvatt: ("nothing, a trifle, as in "He don't know squatt"). Yep, if you're imagining southern rednecks with tobacco in their mouth using the word 'squatt', you're on the right track.

- trähuggare ("treehugger") - pretty much the exact opposite of what you are thinking of. Treehuggers in Sweden carry axes, chainsaws, and earn their living ensuring trees go to the pulp mills...

- jublar - the verb form of jubilation. We've obviously lost the verb form of that in english, so what would it be: "to jubilify"?

- hör ni ("listen here"). Initially to me sounded like "honey", which when I first heard it in the Spex (uni musical). It was used mostly by guys to get other guys' attention... and I started to wonder just how close we would become after our "team building" weekend...

- Smutsig ("dirty"), the general word for dirty, but maybe the Swedes developed their reputation for blue movies early, so we associate "smut" with the swedes in much more narrow sense.

- o ("un"). My favourite just now, a strange use of "o". If you remember back to a previous post there are some cool words made by negating nouns with "o": a storm is un-weather, a weed is un-grass, etc. Apparently in Piteå just south of here they retain a very old rural dialect, and take things one step further
and add 'o' to verbs. Together with some funny business with the word som, rather than say, say "Jag har inte varit där", (lit. 'I have not been there'), they say "där har jag som ovarit" ='there (as a place) have I un-been'. Kul, va?

- kurva ("curve"). This is also the hungarian word for "whore". The first Ikea in Stockholm was built at Kungens Kurva (The Kings...), where apparently an earlier King had a car accident. Was he rubbernecking at the time..., or just "asking the nice lady for directions"...

- kanske ("maybe"). This is the commonest weird pronounciation thing that pops up and which I always find weird. Soft combinations of sk, stj etc have these gutteral almost throat-clearing sounds. Up in the north it is pronounced basically like "kan-she", but elsewhere can be "kan-hwe" or drawn out to "kan-shwear". Emily, now in Iceland, reassures me that there it is phonetic, and is pronounced as looks, almost like a Kransky sausage.

-kanon ("fantastic"). Can be used for example as the answer to "how is it". Obviously the invention of the canon was considered to be the best thing since sliced bread. Even after the placement of far too many of them on the Vasa caused the pride and joy of the swedish fleet to sink a couple of hundred meters out of the harbour on its first voyage.

Rutmönster (root-monster!). Actually a "grid pattern", as used in the LTU logotype on all advertising (with the main image of course being the pretty girl in the parka).



The uni created a logotype all based on blue, white, and snow to position its brand clearly, which when applied to everything does actually look good. (Check it out at www.ltu.se). But there is also a bit of a cringe factor. The branding seemed to have worked for the last couple of years with a lot of growth in student numbers, but this year, the first with a new Rektor, has seen some disappointing enrolments.

In the background of the image is Teknikens Hus, a science museum oriented for kids, which has won awards for being "the best small science museum in Europe".