Swedish is such a strange language. It sounds like English but foreign.
Anyone else feel this way?
"Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français" - Rivarol
Could be the Old Norse influences?
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MovieChat Forums > Flickan som lekte med elden (2010) Discussion > Swedish is such a strange language. It s...
I wonder if it's because it comes from Latin, like English, German, and many other languages?
Like "Lake" would be "Lakken" in Swedish. "Table" would be "tahbel." I just made those examples up, but that's what it seems like to me.
French, too. Le table for "table." "Restaurante" for "restaurant." The english word "vacation" in French is....you guessed it...."vacatione."
Well, they are both gemanic languages and both draw heavily from french, greek and latin for "fancier" words. So yeah, they are pretty similar.
In sweden a lot of words related to "fine culture" like the theater or so have loan words from french (due to a 18th century fondness for France) things related to buildings and such often have loan words from german. (German (and dutch) workforce and know-how helpt build a lot of our cities.) And recently, well english dominates in all media thanks to the US. Also, words related to science are mostly from greek originally.
(And "lake" is "sjö" and "table" is "bord".)
Very interesting. Danka!
share> Le table for "table." "Restaurante" for "restaurant." The
> english word "vacation" in French is....you guessed it....
> "vacatione."
*La* table, *restaurant*, and *vacances*.
Don't forget that between the departure of the Roman legions in 410 and the arrival of the Normans in 1066, the main invaders of the British Isles were Germanic and Scandinavian (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Danes).
"Lake" in Swedish is "sjö" and "table" is "bord. Just saying ^^
COMMUNICATION IS ONLY POSSIBLE BETWEEN EQUALS
"Like "Lake" would be "Lakken" in Swedish. "Table" would be "tahbel." I just made those examples up, but that's what it seems like to me."
Wtf? lol. do you claim to know Swedish? because i have no freaking idea what Lakken or tahbel means, and im Swedish. Lol. :)
Well, I have relatives from the Faroe Islands (semi-independent territory of Denmark in the North Sea), and their language, Faroese, is a mix of the rest of the Scandinavian languages (with the greatest resemblance, I believe, to Icelandic), so the Swedish language actually sounds very comforting and a little familiar to me. I've only in the past year visited my relatives and began learning their language, so I didn't exactly grow up on Scandinavian linguistics, but they still have a good place in my heart.
Proud member of SHREWS (Society for the Honor Required of Eyes Wide Shut)
There isnt anything too strange about it. Swedish and english are both Germanic languages so certain words are exactly the same in terms of pronunciation etc.
share"Anyone else feel this way? "
No.
One should judge a man mainly from his depravities.Virtues can be faked.Depravities are real.Kinski
english is the most diverse language and has the most words by far of any language. it is also made up from many languages and its easy to trace them back.
it is nade up mostly from latin and germanic origins - more specifically scandnavian/celtic, french, and latin.
mostly due to the amount of times we were invaded and then ocupied.
there would have been an early britton labguage, and when the vikings came they introduced scandanavian langue, hense the swedish similarities (although some go back in the modern area due to english being a very common language in films etc. probably words like okay)
after the vikings we had the romans, latin was then the written language for us. the romans invading from the south east pushed the celtic settlers (mixtures of brittons and vikings) north, west and south west, which is why there are strong celtic languages in ireland, scotland, wales and even cornwall.
then we had the normans (french) and they brought a newer language devised from latin.
these were the 3 main settlers in our wonderfully invaded little island and contributed to disversity of the english language. there must be thousands of english words you can trace to a french, latin or scandanavian word. they wont all be the same, as language evolves constantly, but you can see where they come from quite easily often.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3136037
I like this discussion since it shows that subtitled films make us much more open-minded to other cultures and languages than dubbed films. Up to the age eight-nine it's OK but then everyone should learn to read subtitles and listen to the original language even if they don't understand a word (as for me with Finish, Chinese and Japanese for example)
Tehilla Blad
even if they don't understand a word (as for me with Finish, Chinese and Japanese for example)
I find that I will almost never make it to the end of a subtitled movie and still literally not know a single word of the language. I just can't help picking up a word or two here and there. The most common things to pick up are "yes", "no", and "thank you" (along with "hello" and "goodbye"); those are things that often are used all by themselves in conversation, so you can absorb the individual words.
(It took me a comparatively long time to pick up "no" in Japanese. It's a cultural thing that even when they are declining or refusing things they rarely respond with just a flat "no". It's almost always couched in more verbiage to be conciliatory.)
Sometimes something else will be impossible to not learn, depending on the particular movie. For example, it's hard for me to imagine anybody watching Persona and not knowing by the end that "ingeting" (or however it is spelled) is Swedish for "nothing".
PS: It may be more difficult to truly learn words in a "tonal" language this way, if you're not already used listening / speaking in one. I'm referring to languages such as Thai, where pitch is as important in identifying a word as the diction (as we're used to thinking of it) is. share
You should read up on your history, cause you have it mixed up pretty badly. For one, the Roman empire ended like 500 years before the vikings invaded Britain! ;)
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wow youre really going with the old spelling error angle?
get over your self, language is diverse, the only goal is to get the point across. did you understand every work i wrote? then thats all that matters.
to claim my overall writing ability, and then claiming im letting the country down, is a reflection of my actual ability is very arrogant.
i have a good education, a levels and a degree, i can spell words accurately and have a wide vocabulary, but i dont waste my life spell checking and proof reading posts on imdb. where do you think you are? get off your high horse.
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actually there are no 'errors'. i dont bother with most punctuation as in most cases, in this casual environment, its the point you are getting across which is most important. an error is unintentional, mine are not.
so congratulations for pointing out the obvious, and good luck on your crusade to make everyone type with capital letters, apostrophes etc in the correct places so as to improve your life.
i, however, will type as i like, using only the most important grammar to convey my posts. the way you mock my education means that you must be a phd in english language, if this is not the case not only do you not have the right to demand i type better, but you also dont have the pedastal to look down on me.
oh and for future reference, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors dont correlate to intelligence, as your immaculate posts prove.
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you may think im showing up the british for crimes against grammar but its clear youre showing up the british by being arrogant, pompous and xenophobic. nice work.
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ah borderline racist now, youre starting to come out of this very well.
well im glad your racist undertone to this whole conversation has come out, i think you owe an apology to anyone who is not british. insulting my english is one thing, but to pull someone up on it who you believe not to be as well versed in the english language is rude and pedantic.
also just to prove you wrong (because you were asking for it) i am 100% british and so are my parents, who are by the way a special needs teacher and a speech and language therapist (both jobs involving teaching reading and writing to children). not a single foreigner until 4 or so generations back (which, unlike you seemingly, i have no issue even if there was).
maybe you should apologise to anyone non-british reading this as now you are clearly trolling or intentionally trying to spread racial stereotyping.
"after the vikings we had the romans,"
The Romans left over three hundred years before the Vikings arrived. In between we had the Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings influence on the English language is quite small, and predominates in the north-east.
I think it's beautiful and I want to learn it!
share> Anyone else feel this way?
About ten years ago I was crossing southern England by train. A group of teenage girls a little way along the carriage were chattering loudly, but over the noise of the train I couldn't make out more than a few words. Curious, I tried to focus on their conversation, but still, apart from a few scattered words and the general familiarity of the sounds they were making, I couldn't understand their conversation.
I'd read "A Clockwork Orange" not long before, and became convinced that they were speaking a kind of Nadsat. Finally I plucked up the courage to go ask them what language they were speaking, half expecting them to reply "English" - or with tolchocks and ultraviolence.
They were speaking Swedish.