You know you're been in Sweden to long when ...
- Thread starter Humus
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CosmoKramer
Newcomer
Humus said:You haven't been to the north I see.
Interesting, I didn't know that. But, considering that 85% of the population lives in the southern half of the country I still don't consider that line worthy of being in a "You know you've been to Sweden...".
Xmas said:
No, not necessarily, although the concept of the future tense comes from Latin and the Romance languages where there is a clear morphological future as part of the verb inflections.
But in the case of English, calling the "will form" the English future tense is on rather shaky ground. There are a lot of other meanings for the word will, it is historically not specifically related to futurity and there are other often-used ways of referring to future events or actions.
In Swedish it is even more problematic. The present tense is usually used to refer to the future, the "kommer att" construct cannot be called a verb tense by any strech of imagination and the "ska" construct means at least intent, obligation, probability and going somewhere in addition to its use in referring to the future. So calling the "ska" form the Swedish future tense is not plausible.
But the point is not whether you can call the English "will form" the future (it's fine to do so for the sake of simplicity), what I am saying is that the astonishment caused by the fact that a language does not have a certain grammatical form is unnecessary. Grammar is one thing, meaning is another thing.
RM. Andersson
Newcomer
CosmoKramer said:Humus said:You haven't been to the north I see.
Interesting, I didn't know that. But, considering that 85% of the population lives in the southern half of the country I still don't consider that line worthy of being in a "You know you've been to Sweden...".
It´s only true in some strange parts of the country were they also eat "surströmming"(rotten fish).
RM. Andersson said:It´s only true in some strange parts of the country were they also eat "surströmming"(rotten fish).
Actually, it's not rotten, only fermented. And it tastes great too
, though there are different opinions on that. I like it at least. Surströmming is more of a common phenomenon across the whole country (though more popular in the mid and north) than the door bell skipping process RM. Andersson
Newcomer
Humus said:RM. Andersson said:It´s only true in some strange parts of the country were they also eat "surströmming"(rotten fish).
Actually, it's not rotten, only fermented. And it tastes great too
The problem is the smell. I don´t think I want to explain what it smells like. People might get shocked.
RM. Andersson said:The problem is the smell. I don´t think I want to explain what it smells like. People might get shocked.
You couldn't explain what it smells like even if you tried to. The stink of that shit is beyond comprehension. Mere words cannot possibly do that infernal stink any justice. It's the most vile, repulsive thing I have ever smelled.
Hell is supposed to smell like sulphur. I'd gladly go there just to escape the horrid stink of Surströmming. Even the thought of people gulping that crap down makes me wanna barf my intestines out.
RM. Andersson
Newcomer
L233 said:RM. Andersson said:The problem is the smell. I don´t think I want to explain what it smells like. People might get shocked.
You couldn't explain what it smells like even if you tried to. The stink of that shit is beyond comprehension. Mere words cannot possibly do that infernal stink any justice. It's the most vile, repulsive thing I have ever smelled.
Hell is supposed to smell like sulphur. I'd gladly go there just to escape the horrid stink of Surströmming. Even the thought of people gulping that crap down makes me wanna barf my intestines out.
I´m not guilty. We don´t eat surströmming in my part of Sweden. I agree it´s terrible.
I would prefer some wienerwurstchen and a warsteiner.
Struth yes! (I'd have been on "Who wants to be a Millionaire" and retired if that wasn't the caseakira888 said:Is there anything you don't know?!
)No great surprise- my wife's Turkish. Actually, I should know more but I'm terribly lazy when it comes to studying languages. We only speak English at home but knowing some Turkish would help me to communicate with my in-laws! The sad thing is that the only vocab' area I'm good with is "food" :?
I liked this one
139. Pigs say â€nerf nerfâ€, frogs say â€kvack, kvack†and roosters say â€kuckelikuâ€
if it wass pronouced anything like you would in english then it would seems rather silly.
Also
181. You not only order a pizza with asparagus, banana and bernaise sauce on it, but you actually like it and wonder why they don't offer it back in Australia.
ain't bad.
139. Pigs say â€nerf nerfâ€, frogs say â€kvack, kvack†and roosters say â€kuckelikuâ€
if it wass pronouced anything like you would in english then it would seems rather silly.
Also
181. You not only order a pizza with asparagus, banana and bernaise sauce on it, but you actually like it and wonder why they don't offer it back in Australia.
ain't bad.
Not surprising - According to the BBC program QI, frogs of various species around the world make an incredible variety of noises (I think they even mentioned one species sounding like a cow!). Apparently, the reason many think frogs make a "ribbet" noise is because the species that live around Los Angeles do. (Mind you - Hollywood also put Kookaburra calls in Africa!bloodbob said:
)RM. Andersson said:The problem is the smell. I don´t think I want to explain what it smells like. People might get shocked.
It's not that bad IMO. The taste is better than the smell, true, but it's not horrible. You usually eat surströmming outside anyway (unless you want the smell to remain in your house for a week or two), so the fresh air balances it out a little.
bloodbob said:
Well, pigs say "nöff", but I suppose they wrote it as "nerf" to get a reasonable english pronounciation. Otherwise I think people would think it should be read as "noff". Ö and O are very different in swedish, O is like in english, while Ö is like the E in the word "nerd". The last word, "kuckeliku" is kinda hard to describe the pronounciation, the sound of U in swedish doesn't exist in english. It's like an O, but you push your lips forward a little and put your tongue against your lower row of teeth.
Simon F said:
Actually, I never would have guessed that reason! Ironically, my father speaks it fairly fluently and my mother somewhat, however in our ethnicity we never use it at all (for obvious reasons) unless it is to some really old fellow who is monolingual (and most of these are gone now). All I know is my surname - "Karagozian" - means "black eye" or something to that effect.
Kara - black, göz - eye, that makes sense. The language itself is (usually) incredibly logical but amost everything is back-the-front from the way an English speaker expects itakira888 said:
Curiously, a Finnish friend of mine says that the Finnish and Turkish are somehow related - bizarre.
I believe Finnish and Turkish belong to some same linguistic family (Uralian something), along with Hungarian (and others?).Simon F said:
But a Finnish speaking doesen't understand a word in Turkish or Hungarian (or vice versa). They may sound similar mainly because of the use of vowels (might be other similarities, but I don't know any Turkish)
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