{"id":194,"date":"2003-03-14T03:04:16","date_gmt":"2003-03-14T10:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=194"},"modified":"2003-03-14T03:04:16","modified_gmt":"2003-03-14T10:04:16","slug":"continued-travails-in-swedish-social-realism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/03\/continued-travails-in-swedish-social-realism\/","title":{"rendered":"Continued travails in Swedish: Social Realism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three days in a row it’s been 10ºC and sunny in Stockholm. Three days in a row all the Swedes I know have tittered in unison about the coming of daylight savings time. March 30<\/font> this year.<\/span>But they reserve their widest smiles for when they tap me on the elbow and tell me, again, how wonderful<\/em> those outdoor cafés will be… in May.<\/p>\n

To better understand such ebullience at a mere turn in the weather, it helps to read a Swedish grammar exercise book. Exercise books in other languages deal with such innocuous topics as the color of one’s pencil. My exercise book has taken it upon itself Första övningsboken i svensk grammatik<\/em><\/a>, by Gunnar Hellström © 1994. I heartily recommend it. By far the best of its kind.<\/span>to prepare us immigrants for the Lutheran take on life:<\/p>\n

Jag får inte börja jobba. Jag har inget arbetstillstånd.<\/p>\n

<\/em>~ I am not allowed to work. I don’t have a work permit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ta det lugnt, mormor! Doktorn kommer snart här.<\/em><\/p>\n

~ Shut up, grandma! The doctor will soon be here.<\/span><\/p>\n

När tänker du betala tillbaka pengarna som du lånat?<\/em><\/p>\n

~ When are you thinking of paying me back the money you borrowed?<\/span><\/p>\n

Min mamma har cancer och tror att hon kommer att dö.<\/em><\/p>\n

~ My mother has cancer and she thinks she’s about to die.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those last two sentences are meant to illustrate that Swedes have 3 lexemes for the verb to think<\/em>, <\/p>\n

Not to be confused with morphemes<\/em><\/a>.<\/span>much like eskimos have 15 lexemes<\/a> to describe their wealth of experience with snow<\/em>. If you think you might die (belief), you tror<\/em>. If you’re thinking of suicide (intent), you tänker<\/em>, and if you think dying would be nice (opinion), you tycker<\/em>. Choose the wrong verb, and your fear of death turns into a deathwish. Who said Swedish was easy?<\/p>\n

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Three days in a row it’s been 10ºC and sunny in Stockholm. Three days in a row all the Swedes I know have tittered in unison about the coming of daylight savings time. March 30 this year.But they reserve their … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-38","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","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=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}