
{"id":135,"date":"2002-10-02T18:45:50","date_gmt":"2002-10-03T01:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=135"},"modified":"2002-10-02T18:45:50","modified_gmt":"2002-10-03T01:45:50","slug":"fun-facts-about-the-swedish-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2002\/10\/fun-facts-about-the-swedish-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun facts about the Swedish language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The alphabet goes from A to &Ouml; ; there is no W, but after Z we get an &Aring;  (oh), an &Auml; (ay) and finally the &Ouml;  (the French euh). That&#8217;s in addition to A (ah), E (eh), O (ooh), I (ee), Y (eeh-ye) and U (The French uu). No wonder Swedish sounds the way it does.<\/p>\n<p>There is no word in Swedish for &#8220;Please&#8221;. You have to get all passive-aggressive and say something like &#8220;Can I have that, thanks.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>[Wed, Oct 02 2002 &#8211; 14:28] Felix <\/b> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.felixsalmon.com\">www<\/a>) (<a href=\"mailto:felix@felixsalmon.com\">email<\/a>) Talking of passive-agressive languages reminds me of German, where the standard response to &#8220;danke&#8221; (thank you) is &#8220;bitte&#8221; (in this context, &#8220;you&#8217;re welcome&#8221;). What happens is that you&#8217;ll be having a conversation at a restaurant, and the waitress will set down your plate with a &#8220;bitte&#8221; or &#8220;bitteschoen&#8221;, immediately making you feel guilty that you didn&#8217;t &#8220;danke&#8221; her (and, of course, now, it&#8217;s too late). But my German&#8217;s not that good, so this might only apply to me&#8230; <!-- comment --><\/p>\n<p><b>[Thu, Oct 03 2002 &#8211; 08:53] Mathew<\/b> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stefan.com\">www<\/a>) (<a href=\"mailto:matthew.rose@wsj.com\">email<\/a>) i think &#8220;bitte&#8221; doubles as &#8220;here-you-go,&#8221; as in, &#8220;take seven weeks of vacation and work 30 hours a week, bitte.&#8221; <!-- comment --><\/p>\n<p><b>[Thu, Oct 03 2002 &#8211; 09:34] eurof<\/b> (<a href=\"mailto:eurof@avocetcap.com\">email<\/a>) matthew is right. don&#8217;t get yer knickers in a twist, the german nation is not out to be passive-aggressively sarcastic at you for your apparent lack of politeness. while i love those goofy germans dearly, one has to admit that they are not necessarily the most sarcastic people in europe <!-- comment --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The alphabet goes from A to &Ouml; ; there is no W, but after Z we get an &Aring; (oh), an &Auml; (ay) and finally the &Ouml; (the French euh). That&#8217;s in addition to A (ah), E (eh), O (ooh), &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2002\/10\/fun-facts-about-the-swedish-language\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-2b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}