Pirate cat

Grrrr says our cat Smokey... 

OK snapshot: Skandinaviska (Scandinavian)

Nu med egna vokaler...
a new language, Scandinavian, now with its own vowels? The umlaut o got
both dots (from Swedish and Finnish), and a slash (from Danish and
Norwegian). Well, whatever works, right?
What is in the bag? Strawberry-flavored candy that looks like long string.

OK snapshot: Ordföljd (word order)

Den hårfina men betydande skillnaden mellan "endast tillsatt" och "tillsatt endast"... ;)

English explanation:
Supermarket sign for dried fruit ('torkad frukt') with the addition 'Endast tillsatt socker' = only added sugar. I bet it should have been 'Endast socker tillsatt' = only sugar added. Sometimes the best order of words is a bit hard to figure out!

Tranströmer - tired of words

During the Nobel Prize party a few days ago, the wife of Thomas Tranströmer, the Novel Laureate in Literature, read this wonderful poem by him:  

Trött på alla som kommer med ord, ord, men inget språk
for jag till den snötäckta ön.
Det vilda har inga ord.
De oskrivna sidorna breder ut sig åt alla håll!
Jag stöter på spåren av rådjursklövar i snön.
Språk men inga ord.

Tired of everybody that comes with words, words, but no language

I traveled to the snow-covered island.

The wild has no words.

The unwritten pages extend outwards in all directions!

I discover the tracks of deer hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.

Thomas Tranströmer [translation by LS]

I can see it in front of me, an island surrounded by frozen water in winter, stillness, no people, just the man and the snow, frozen bare branches, blue icy sky, and a few birds looking for something to eat in the brush.  And then the tracks of the deer, winding its way through the landscape, telling a story without words.

Winter Sun, a photo from the Finnish Baltic archipelago by Niklas Sjöblom (Flickr)

In a way this also reminds me of a very different poem/song, Blå Hjärtans Blues, by Eva Dahlgren.  In English, the song (called Blue Hearts' Blues) starts with these lines (translated by me):

The island lays empty in the winter sea

a last ferry turns back towards the city

at the pier, here I stand

and see my lover choose

My head so heavy of the truth

I see your foot tracks in the snow on the way home

so light steps that say so much more

than frozen words on your lips

Bye baby blue
caresses me in the night

with her sadness
bye baby blue
all these memories

in a dull moonlight blue tune
[cont.]

That is the beginning of this song about relationships, break-ups, winter, ice, and islands, just like Tranströmer's poem. The blues song ('bye baby blue', etc.) she refers to I guess is something by Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. Listen to Eva performing the song here: Youtube link, and here are the complete Swedish lyrics.

Quote of the Day: autospeak from customer care agents

I called the Wells Fargo bank about our mortgage, and got to the wrong department.  The friendly, human but slightly automated person offered to transfer me to the mortgage department and I said 'of course, yes please'.  She then continued with this phrase:

"If I connect you, will that take care of the reason for your call?"

My mind did a double-take, went into reverse warp speed, hiccuped, and then I said "what?", since the logic didn't work in my brain.  She repeated her question, exactly like before. By then I had figured out what the sentence meant and how stupid it was, so I just answered:

"I don't know yet."

Whoever is writing these scripts for customer 'care' people who are answering the phones for companies really need to think a bit more human and logical.  How in the melting snow of Antarctica am I supposed to know if a transfer will take care of my problem?  How many stressed out people don't even bother to think and just automatically answer 'yes', when confronted with this an unanswerable question?  It seems like that the question is there just to provide some positive feedback to the customer 'care' agent.

A while ago I had to call the internet company and was on the phone with someone in the Philippines for half an hour.  When the call ended, he entered into the auto-stupid-written-down-speak and said 'thanks for calling Comcast, we are happy we could help you today..', whereby I interrupted and said 'actually, you didn't, the problem is still here and you couldn't solve it'.  He then admitted to that at least.

"I Don't Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore"

I just read a great thing about the way many people talk today = they talk in a way where it is impossible to understand exactly what they mean.  Or even remotely understand what they are trying to say.  The article is by Dan Pallotta, was published in Harvard Business Review, and you can read it here.  It is really worth to spend a few minutes on this article (it is not long).

Dan Pallotta talks about the five expressions of this epidemic of stupid talking:
Abstractionitis
Acronymitis
Valley Girl 2.0
Meaningless Expressions
Abstract Valley Girl 2.0 Acronymitis Using Meaningless Expressions   

I have seen all of these in presentations and discussions, and it often drives me crazy, even if I am guilty of it too.  But no longer.  But I will still wear my T-shirt (which is on today!) that says "think outside the box"  with a drawing of a TV.  But I do think we need to get the language we use back to reality.

It is very interesting to ask someone that just has fed you a long sentence of abstractionitis, "So, what does that really mean?"  Often, they have no good answer.  Which means, they had nothing real to say to begin with. In Swedish, we call this 'ordbajseri'. (That means sort of like 'bullshitting' in Swedish, but more mean.)

Dan's example about 'exceeding expectations' is hilarious.  I think most consumers no longer have any (and certainly not high) expectations regarding services and products.  The products or services just break or don't work out well.  Just ask anybody that is flying with Continental recently, for example. So, exceeding expectations is not really what you want to focus on as a company.  How about focus on making products that are not made to break, try to make customers happy and satisfied and not just poor and angry, and have a personal, local touch?  Without speaking abstractionitis or acronymitis... :)

What if the people that suffers from these epidemic speech patterns not only speak but also think this way?  That would be scary.  How can they then reason logically, think straight, and make good decisions? So, back to simple reality, in speech too.

Weird real quotes: Waiter

While having lunch here in New Jersey a few days ago, the waiter came up after we had received our food and said:

"How did everything come out so far?"

Excuse me, but I am not in the bathroom. I am eating!

Somewhat to majorly non-sensical, logical, or funny Swedish words

... soppatorsk...  (literally meaning 'soup-cod', cod like the fish cod).  The meaning is: when you run out of gasoline while driving a car or boat.

...slå en sjua...  (literally meaning 'dial a seven').  This is the same for a man as in 'go and pee'.  I have never heard a woman say it.

...skitstövel....  (literally meaning a 'boot filled with shit') . Used about a person who is doing something really mean.

And then there are words that make sense but are kind of funny in their fantastic logical construction:

...slickepott... (literally meaning 'lick-the-pot'). Used for a silicon or rubber spatula used in the kitchen to scrape out the last of the dough from a bowl. 

...svartsjuk...  (literally meaning 'black-sick').  This means envy or envious.  Can't you see a person becoming black in his or her face of envy?

....grönsaker.... (literally meaning 'green things'.  This is of course vegetables, what else could it have been?

Enjoy!

OK snapshot: Avdelningen för... (Department for...)

...oönskade julklappar? (...unwanted Christmas gifts?)

Explanation for non-Swedes: Julklapp-skit = Christmas gift shit;
julklapps-kit = Christmas gift kit

Some thoughts on books (for those that say they are dead)

"Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one" -Augustine Birrell

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read" -Groucho Marx

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." -Mark Twain

"The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television" -Andrew Ross

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me" -Anatole France

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting" -Mary Wortley Montague

All those dots and rings, do they really make a difference?

In Swedish, that is.  Yes they do, and when you type on an American keyboard without ä, å, and ö, your Swedish text can become both hilarious and misinterpreted.  The a, ä, å, are treated as three different letters in Swedish and they mean very different things; it is not optional to add the diacritical marks when you use these letters in my mother tongue.

Well, it wasn't optional, until computers came into the picture and we all became anglicized (especially me, after living 15 years abroad)... To type "ä" on my laptop keyboard, I have to push two buttons (Fn + Alt), and then typing 0 2 2 8 while still pushing the two original, so six keystrokes in total, and three simultaneous button strokes for each one, for one simple little Swedish letter.  On a Swedish keyboard it is just a single keystroke of course.  So, I hope my Swedish relatives and friends forgive me for often assuming that they can add the rings and dots to the o's and a's in their heads while reading my ring-free and dot-free Swedish text sent via e-mail. There are a lot of common Swedish words that use these unusual letters (such as "är" for 'is, are').

Here are some examples of Swedish words with and without the umlauts (that is what the dots and rings are called, linguistically), showing the difference those little marks make in Swedish.

vanliga = common; vänliga = friendly
halsningar = swallow (like drinking beer); hälsningar = greetings
slakt = slaughter; släkt = family (extended, including grandmothers and cousins, etc.)
kram = hug; kråm = decorations; kräm = creme, gel, paste
ta = take; tå = toe
laka = leach; läka = heal
lov = vacation; löv = leaf
al = alder; ål = eel
ost = cheese; öst = east
sal = large room; säl = seal
as = dead animal, carcass; ås = esker, long narrow hill
osa = smoke; ösa = bailing, emptying water out of something
sova = to sleep; söva = to put someone to sleep, like anesthesia
lada = barn; låda = box
bar = bar; bär = berries; bår = stretcher
bor = live; bör = ought to
borda = enter, board (especially about boats, like pirates do); börda = weight, burden
aska = ashes; åska = thunder
åra = oar; ära = honor
hora = hore; höra = hear
kar = basin; kär = in love; kår = chill, sudden wind blast
sas = was said; sås = sauce
tal = speech, number; tål = endure
gata = street; gåta = mystery
etc....

I am sure the Swedes here on the blog can come up with even more of these.

"Med vanliga halsningar till hela slakten!"  (With common 'swallowings/gulps' to the whole slaughter)
and
also "med vänliga hälsningar till hela släkten" (with best wishes to the whole family)!

LS snapshot: What happened to my car?

Watch out if you have a 'violated vehicle', originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

The grammar police is needed here... :)

OK snapshot: Language is not easy

"Do not operate machinery" is a common disclamer. But what about writing?
;)
(Seen in Stockholm, Sweden, presumably)

Language is not easy...

From a friend of ours:

I bought a little 7" TV/Monitor/AVPlayer for my video work, and reading the manual, I fell off my chair, ROTFL-ing:
 

"Do not put the player in bed, sofa, cloth and clothes, etc to avoid jams in the hole."

LS snapshot: school has started

And the kids have started to practice their reading and writing skills. How about a 'bra' car? Bra means good in Swedish, by the way. This car has seen better days though.

In Södertälje, the graffiti people have properly (?) marked the road sign with BOV (criminal), and a house with STORT E (capital E). What this really means we can only ponder...

Bad Aftonbladet Day 2

"”Det där med en kyrka för alla låter först kankse inte så dumt, men är man inte beredd att ta konsekvenserna är det bara tomma ord”"

'Kanske' är kanske ett svårt ord?

New Series: Bad Aftonbladet Day - BAD

I have to admit to a not-so-secret secret: I am an avid web reader of the evening newspaper Aftonbladet online, mainly because they have the best and fastest Swedish news on their award-winning website (aftonbladet.se). Unfortunately it is mixed in with lots of not so newsworthy noise from the entertainment area, diet frenzies, sports, and advertisement, and is therefore considered a less than great newspaper by my Swedish relatives (' en ren blaska'). It is the most read newspaper in Sweden (2.3 million online readers per day). In Sweden, it is the most visited website after MSN. Which leads me to my pet peeve...

One thing that drives me crazy is the lack of proofreading in this paper, and especially the lack of spell and grammar check on the main home page. Therefore, with glee, and with absolutely no empathy for summer substitutes without a degree from journalism school that will be in charge in a few weeks on AB, I will start posting some of the typos, grammar issues, and simply hilarious sentences you can find at this newspaper. It will be in Swedish, not much to do about that.

"Palentologen om världshysterin kring Ida" Vad hände med det tredje o:et i Paleontologen? Dog det ut? (link) {haha, while I was writing this, they corrected it!}

"EU-valskolan del 4 – de de har störst makt i EU" De de? Stammande journalist?

Sedan har de en del som bara är roligt eller konstigt:
Möt mystiska korvmän. [= Meet strange sausage men]
Fick ett ägg upptryckt i ansiktet - 18 personer omhändertagna

Quote of the day

In an e-mail I was sent a few days ago:

"Let me know if I can be of further existence."

Hilarious or sad? - this person doesn't know the difference between existence or assistance.

Quotation marks

This is a hilarious blog about unnecessary quotation marks, worth a visit.

24 different accents

How about that! I only know three accents in Swedish and switch between mine involuntarily when I talk to people from these regions. (Göteborgska, bräkig Eskilstunska, and inflyttad stockholmska, if you would like to know). In America, I just speak English with some dubious northern Scandinavian accent.

(found this on swissmiss)