Posts from March 2009

Swenglish eller svengelska?

Posted by Transparent Language 7 Comments
Mar 14 2009

One of the commenters mentioned my funny English recently and that actually was a very good thing. As any expat who’s been living for a long time in a non-English speaking country can tell you, this is bound to happen. Sooner or later, your English will start deteriorating. And the funniest thing is, you might not even realize when instead of English you begin to switch to Swenglish (or svengelska).

Suddenly, you find yourself talking about “red days.” You begin to “eat pills” and to “follow” people to the movies. And when you hear yourself saying that your husband worked “in the commune under five years” you know it’s been a long time since you visited an English speaking country.

So, let’s take a look at some of the most common direct translation mistakes that both Swedes and long-time expats in Sweden tend to make, OK?

  • Vill du följa med? – literally: Do you want to follow with? Correctly: Do you want to/ would you like to come (along)?

My former chef (who was not a chef) was a super-kind woman, who would always invite me to different activities. First time when I heard her say in English to me: “Do you want to follow us?” it took me a moment to figure out what she meant.

  • chef (def. chefen, plural: chefer, def. plural: cheferna) – correctly in English: boss.

I don’t even remember when it first happened that I started to replace “boss” with “chef” (of course when meaning “boss”) while speaking English. This has to be hands down the most common false-friends mix-up in Swenglish. And it’s an equal opportunity mistake, too – both native Swedes and expats make it.

  • röd dag – literally: red day, correctly: bank/public holiday.

You know you’re listening to two expats talking when you overhear this sort of conversation:

“Are we off tomorrow?”

“Sure, it’s a red day. What are your plans?”

“Dunno, go to the stuga maybe. Do you want to follow?”

  • äta tabletter – literally: eat pills, correctly: take pills.

This always confuses my husband when he goes to the pharmacy. He automatically asks to clarify: “You want me to eat while taking the pills?” Because my husband doesn’t speak Swedish, he and the unlucky pharmacist must communicate in English, and so further confusion ensues. Listening to them can be quite entertaining, actually.

  • under (when talking about time periods) – correctly in English: during

This is also a very common mistake. In December on of my friends who’s been living in Sweden for over 20 years asked me this: “Are you going to be home under Christmas?”

  • den röda tråden – literally: the red thread, correctly: the main thread, common theme

We went to a lecture once where the speaker kept talking (in English) about the red threads in Bergman’s movies. My companion whispered to me quietly: “I didn’t know that Bergman was into the Kabbalah.”

There are of course many more of such words and phrases and this is just a small sample to give you an idea of how easy it is to fall into the svengelska trap.

And now, if you excuse me, I have pills to eat. I got sick under winter break.

Kiruna stadsflytt – Where They Really Move Houses

Posted by Transparent Language 3 Comments
Mar 12 2009

And I mean “move houses” in more ways than one. They are literally planning to move the entire city center to a new location. Historical houses will be taken apart, moved and put back together in their new locations. Some buildings will be demolished, either fully or partially, and then replaced with new, or partly new constructions at the target site.

Along with the buildings, the inhabitants of Kiruna have to move or reconstruct the sewage and water pipes, electricity supply grid, railway station and parts of the European highway E10.

And all this has to be done by 2033. So next time don’t laugh when you hear that someone in Sweden is “moving house”, OK?

Why are Kirunabor doing it? Well, they have no choice, really. Their lovely town sits on a huge iron ore mine – LKAB (incidentally also a very interesting place to visit – they have guided tours, ask at the tourist office), and as the result of the mining work, the ground is cracking and the town is sinking.

It was back in 2003 when the mine informed the city about the problem. Apparently, the cracks in the ground were spreading faster than initially believed. So, during 2004 it was decided that the town needed to be moved. In 2007 the new location was agreed on and soon after that the work began.

Of the buildings that are going to be moved, the most important ones are Kiruna kyrka (church) and stadshuset (city hall).

When I spoke to a representative from the tourist office about the logistics of such a move, she explained that the church is not a problem. It’s a wooden structure (the largest such structure in all of Sweden), so it can be easily taken apart and re-constructed elsewhere.

It’s a lovely church, by the way, the design is inspired by a Sami kåta (Sami tent) and it’s absolutely impossible to imagine Kiruna without it. The cost of moving the church? About 25 million SEK.

Stadshuset is the problem. It’s a large building, you know, your average city hall size.

So how do you move it? Apparently, there is a company in Italy that has the required technology and offered to do the work. The building will be cut into four pieces, each piece will be then transported and somehow put together at the new place. The cost of moving the city hall? Plus minus 50 million SEK.

You can read more about Kiruna stadsomvandling on the official Kiruna city webpage dedicated to the move.


So, moving house? Yep, we do that too. No problem.

Images: Wikipedia under CC agreement

Swedish Writers – Selma Lagerlöf

Posted by Transparent Language 4 Comments
Mar 10 2009

I was driving from Umeå to Stockholm this past Monday. Everything was going just fine and we were happily cruising along when somewhere between Umeå and Örnsköldsvik (also known as Ö-vik) the weather got all funky. It began to snow, or rather, from the looks of the road, it had been snowing for quite some time. I saw the familiar yellow Ybuss heading towards Umeå and realized it was about an hour late. That could only mean one thing – the road conditions ahead were even worse. And they were. By the time we got to Härnösand, my hands were stiff from hanging on to the steering wheel for dear life. It did eventually get better after Sundsvall.

But all that bad weather made me think about Nils and his goose. (Why Nils? If I remember correctly, he had also started his journey in March.)

Oh how I wished for a goose to spirit me away high above the snowy countryside. Or at the very least – for a goose who could drive in the snow.

You know about Nils and his story, right? But do you know that the story is immortalized on the 20 krona bill? I am ashamed to admit that I never paid much attention to what’s on my money apart from the obvious – the denomination and what it could buy. To me, tjugo kronor simply meant two cartons of milk. Yeah, I knew it had pretty pictures on it, but who holds on to the money long enough to examine the graphics? Not me, as it turned out.

And that’s how it was until a few years ago when a French friend pointed out the goose. And since when a French person talks about geese that always makes me think about foie gras, so it took me a few seconds to realize that this was about Selma Lagerlöf’s story.

Selma Lagerlöf (1858 – 1940) is the stern-looking lady on the other side of the 20 krona bill. Her claim to fame was that she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for “the appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.” That was back in 1909. But when World War II began, she sent her Nobel Prize medal (though why not the money, huh?) and her gold medal from the Swedish Academy (the body that awards the Nobel Prize) to the government of Finland to help them raise money to fight the Soviet Union. The Finns were so moved by this gesture that they managed to raise all the money by themselves and returned the medals to Selma.

What else? The lady’s old home in Mårbacka is now a museum. I haven’t been there yet.

But of course, she is most known for the book about the little fella flying on a goose across all of Sweden. Well, nearly all of Sweden, as it happens, because he skips a province. The book is of course “Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige”, which was kind of awkwardly translated into English as “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils”.

I have read the book, and sadly I must say, I’m not a huge fan. Maybe it’s because it was the first book ever that I read in Swedish. I much preferred the anime version “Nirusu no Fushigi na Tabi.” So much, in fact, that I even own the DVD box set of the animated series. And yes, “Nirusu” is “Nils” in Japanese.

Word Order in Subordinate Clauses

Posted by Transparent Language 7 Comments
Mar 3 2009

Remember when we talked about adverbial clauses?

Yes, boring grammar stuff today, sorry! But we haven’t quite finished with the subject, and actually, the bit we will discuss today is interesting. What, you didn’t know that grammar can be interesting? Don’t believe me? Just wait and see for yourself! (And it’s easy, too – I promise!)

So, let’s dig out the last example from that previous post. Here it is:

  • Jag blir arg, om han kommer hit. – I get mad if he comes here.

Last time I told you about word order in such sentences. And then I mentioned that it gets all goofy when you add “inte” to the mix in that subordinate clause.

So, what happens is you want to say: I get mad if he doesn’t come here? Watch this:

  • Jag blir arg om han inte kommer hit.

See the odd location of “inte” in this example? It’s because “inte” is technically a sentence adverbial, and as such it is ALWAYS positioned BEFORE the verb in a subordinate clause.

Other examples of sentence adverbials are:

  • alltid,
  • ofta
  • aldrig

and other similar words.

So, if you want to say that you get mad, because he always comes late, how would you do it? Like that:

  • Jag blir arg, eftersom han alltid kommer för sent.

And just like “inte,” this “alltid” when used in a subordinate clause ends up BEFORE the verb.

And if you want to say that you DON’T get angry if he doesn’t come here? Easy!

  • Jag blir inte arg om han inte kommer hit.

See? It’s only in the subordinate clause that “inte” moves to the front of the verb.

Now, that wasn’t that bad, was it?
Easy peasy. But oddly enough, this word order bit is one of the most common mistakes that non-native speakers of Swedish tend to make. So, get this one right and you can make a very good impression by showing how duktig you are. :)

PS. When you read this post I will be moving house and most likely without an internet connection for a few days. I will be back here posting as usual vecka 11.

Vi ses!

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