Speaking in Tongues

It’s odd that people who don’t speak a given language automatically regard someone who has learnt a few words to be a linguistic genius. Perhaps I overgeneralise. Let me rephrase it. It’s odd that the English automatically regard someone who has learnt a few words of any other language to be a linguistic genius. English speakers are generally, and in my experience quite rightly, looked upon as the worst linguists in the world.

It’s only my theory but I put it down to a combination of laziness and convenience. As in, ‘everyone else speaks my language, so why should I be bothered to speak theirs’. You might add ‘insularity’ as an afterthought. But I don’t buy that. Americans of the USA variety are just as bad as the British without the excuse of isolation.

Still, it’s nice for those English-speakers who manage to string together a few foreign words into a sentence. With little effort and no tangible expense, they’re able to bask in the admiration of the more ignorant.

I know. I’ve been there. Despite my fascination for languages, I suck at them. But given my playboy jet-setting lifestyle, I’ve been forced to learn what is necessary to survive. When I started my self-imposed exile, hardly anyone in those countries I visited spoke English. In Italy, most of those who did manage a few words, did so uncomfortably. I guess this was because it acted as a frustrating brake on their usual volubility. Whatever the case, back in the seventies, it was pretty rare to meet an Italian who would manage more than a couple of sentences before lapsing back into the vernacular. And these people were rarely those that would help you to emerge intact from the vagaries of day-to-day existence.

The general lack of any kind of language expertise in Egypt couldn’t be put down to the same causes. It was rather a systemic lack of education and wherewithal. The small cache of riches tended to be largely nouveaux and thus from backgrounds with little schooling in anything other than making money. While the remnants of the more cultivated classes had either left the country (Greeks and Armenians) or chose French as their preferred patois.

Then there was the USSR, god bless it and all that sailed in her. The Unbreakable Union of Freeborn Republics (as the old anthem claimed) was largely a Russian artefact. So the USS of R had to cope not only with wilful isolation from the West but also an unshakeable belief in the superiority of all things Communist and Slavic.

I mean, I should complain. The Italian, Egyptian and Soviet lack of English guaranteed me a peripatetic job teaching English when I had itchy feet and no means of supporting them.

Things are, of course, different now. Globalisation has meant that you can go to Italy at least and someone will understand you if you speak in English, and in turn, make an effort to respond to your perceived needs. I haven’t been back to the other two countries. I had quite enough of them while I was there, and beside the Unbreakable Union has shattered into fragments in the meantime.

Moreover, these days, as you will have noticed if you are a regular non-fee-paying subscriber, I am now based in Sweden – and have been for the last 30-odd years. Even back in the nineties when I first arrived, any stumbling request in Swedish would meet with a reply in English. This was not only infuriating. It was also a serious impediment to getting anywhere with the learning process. Even after 30(-odd) years here, I still sometimes wonder whether my Swedish is as competent as my Italian was after two years.

Part of this has also to be put down to cultural differences between Swedes and Italians. For all their spontaneity, the inhabitants of the boot-shaped peninsula that I am no longer allowed, however affectionately, to call Eyeties, could show infinite patience when it came to understanding what you were trying to say, and would demonstrate how to say it better than you could. Swedes on the other hand, tend to be rather more…. enigmatic, shall we say. If they don’t immediately explain what you want to say back to you in your own language, they simply cock their heads and wait for an utterance they can understand and act upon it.

So as I say, I don’t consider myself fluent, even now, in Swedish. Still it’s nice to be able to speak a rapid burst of Swedish gobbledygook and still impress the hell out of your relatives.

Another advantage that English speakers have, and an almost equal handicap when it comes to learning foreign languages is the prevalence of English words that have made it into other languages. Thus, even if a given Swedish listener might claim not to speak the Muvver Tongue, it should theoretically be possible to weave together a few words in English to make oneself understood. Admittedly the end-result might be more absurd than immediately obviously useful. But what the hell! Communication involves so much more than meaning.

To give you an example, you might try this on an otherwise uncomprehending Swede:

‘Cool fucking mail, man’ would pose no problems of understanding, but has a rather limited application. But who cares, when the bond of mutual understanding has been achieved? Life-long friendships have surely sometimes been based on shakier foundations.

Apropos of which (‘apropos’, BTW, is pronounced in the same way with the same meaning in Swedish, even if the spelling is different – but then again, it doesn’t really count since it is a French loan word in both languages): The Danes are way ahead in that respect. They have been ‘fucking’ or at least using the word as an intensifier for decades now. But it is only relatively recently that the term has been introduced into Swedish.

This is maybe down to the ubiquity of rap music and the influx of immigrants. But now the epithet is a fixture in all the most colourful graffiti and street-speak. Before its introduction, the strongest Swedish expletives had all to do with the devil. So ‘What a fucking mess!’ in Swedish used to be rendered literally as ‘What a devilish mess!’ This certainly has an antiquated charm to it. One might expect such an utterance to conclude with a ‘Biggles’ or even ‘Carruthers’. But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, a tad lacking in impact – unless of course, you are a Bible-beating fundamentalist.

Having said all that, a Martian might well question why a pleasurable and biologically necessary act should have become such a strong expression of disapproval. Fuck knows how that happened. But that’s a different question.

And it’s not only swear words. Virtually all scientific names and definitely all IT terms, have been adopted with a minimum of syntactic abuse into the Swedish language. Even the humble ‘fish and chips’ has defied the miserable reputation of British cuisine and found its way on to menus over here.

By contrast there are but a few words that have made it into the English language from Swedish.

I’m on a fasting day and food is on my mind (rather than in my stomach where it should be). So the first couple that spring to my recollection are both related to eating.

Number one in my mental filing system is the smörgåsbord. Naturally enough we English ignore the diacritics and also pronounce it without them – that is, smorgasbord. If you really want to impress your friends with your erudition, you might try it the Swedish way – to wit, smurgawsbord. On the other hand, you might end up totally confusing them. In which case, the easiest explanation is the word ‘buffet’. Which does rather beg the question why we need the Swedish term in the first place. True, ‘buffet’ is of French origin, but it has been round for a lot longer. And unless you manage to serve up delicacies like rollmop herrings in twenty different sauces, Baltic herring, along with crispbread and a concoction of potatoes au gratin with anchovies called Jansson’s Temptation, then I’d settle for the French name. It covers all the bases and you never know when some pedant like me might turn up unexpectedly and completely poop your party by pointing out how misguided you are.

Which brings us on to the fika. Question. When is a coffee break not a coffee break but a fika?

AI tells me that whereas ‘a standard coffee break is just a functional pause to grab caffeine, a fika is a sacred Swedish social institution that prioritizes human connection and slowing down over the beverage itself’.

Okay, then. I can just about buy the Swedish institution bit, even though I’ve been involved in quite a few Swedish work fikas in my time which were spent in embarrassed silence as nobody had anything to say to people they had met on a daily basis for far too long. But I have difficulty remembering a great number of British ‘coffee breaks’ that were passed in the same silent fashion, however functional and rushed. If there is a moral to the story, it is that Swedes don’t often talk to each other at all at work about anything other than work. In my experience, the English take any chance to talk about anything other than that.

As for the out-of-work fika – the straight invitation to visit a café and have a chat in your free time, there is a better case to be made. But this is surely down to the fact that there were no real public bars in Sweden for such a very long time. (See my earlier ‘Beating the System’ blog.) In Britain you’d be (even these days surely?) more likely to invite someone out for a pint.

I can think of only one word that has survived migration across the North Sea with justification. Besides the name Viking, that is, which doesn’t really count because even Swedes can’t decide what it really means, let alone what its connotations are.

The term I have in mind this time is ombudsman.

And what a jolly good term that is. Finally. And a useful reminder stereotyped British image of the democratic and fair-minded Swede – an image that may not square well with reality, but which corresponds perfectly with the Swedes’ view of themselves. True, the Brits have had work tribunals for some time. But until the concept of the ombudsman was imported, we had no real means of redress against the government nor its agencies. So thank you Sweden. Of course, we still have no real means of redress against bureaucracy any more than they do in Sweden. But the existence of such a figure certainly makes me feel a great deal better and a great deal less helpless. A bit like talking to a shrink really. Except ombudsmen/ ombudswomen/ ombudspersons are free. Sort of. They come out of the taxes, but who’s complaining?

Having pointed out the paucity and inadequacy of Swedish loanwords in English, I have a few more for consideration. However, they pose other problems.

Frankly I’ve always felt a snappy term for a live-in lover, common-law wife/ husband would be useful. The word partner is far weak, not to say ambiguous. It can always leave the listener wondering if the partner in question is a sexual partner or a business proposition. Or both. Which would rather suggest you are his or her pimp.

The Swedes solve this problem in a typically Swedish way. They take the official term and make it more concise by abbreviating it. Thus samboende (living together, adjective) becomes sambo (noun), as in ‘Allow me to introduce you to my sambo’. Now there is an immediately obvious drawback to borrowing this term in English. Which is a damn shame when you think about it. So we’re stuck with the drifting clouds of ambiguity that waft across the various senses of ‘partner.’

My next possible loan has unfortunately been gazumped by the perfidious Danes. Suddenly we learn that there is nothing quite as effective a salve for the soul as a rattling good hygge. AI generously describes hygge as ‘cosiness, warmth and safe comfort’. I mean. Who wouldn’t want that? So how come the Danes have got a monopoly on the concept? Especially when you consider that if you pronounce it correctly (ie in the Danish way) is sounds remarkably like retching. To be fair, the vast majority of Danish words also remind me very much of the dry heave, but whaddyagonnado?

Mys on the other hand sounds relatively innocuous by comparison and thus closer to the required feeling of ‘cosiness, warmth and safe comfort’. It’s not easy to pronounce, but the only bodily function it is reminiscent of is a sneeze, the healthiest reaction to which would be a good dose of ‘cosiness etc’. Moreover, the Swedes, as I’ve explained already elsewhere have a genuine and long-standing monopoly on the ‘safe’ bit.

But the main question remains: why do we need a Scandinavian word for this at all? I mean we all know what it is and I think ‘cosiness’ more or less obviates the need for the rest of the definition. So the Brits already have a word for it too. As far as I can see, the only thing particularly Danish about the way this has been used in Britain involves using hygge as a marketing strategy, either for products like open sandwiches and pastries (note the ‘Danish’ is called ‘Viennese bread’ in both Denmark and Sweden), or tourism. As in, come to extremely windy Denmark and snuggle up with a friend in front of an open fire.

What’s more, in Sweden at least an integral part of mys involves turning off the electric light and lighting candles on the darkest days of the year. I mean are you crazy? Or perhaps it should be ‘they’. No doubt, some of those who value mys most of all are also amongst those who then complain of depression due to lack of sunlight-borne Vitamin D in winter and spend valuable time and money either under sunlamps or travelling to exotic destinations ostensibly for health reasons.

So thank you, but no. No mys or hygge for me, either as a word or as a linguistic practice.

I have, on the other hand, no objections at all to importing the verb (to) panta. The word has a long pedigree in Sweden, since it meant originally and still retains the sense of ‘to pawn’. So a pawnshop in Sweden is a Pantbank. The concept and its application are very similar to the pop shops in Britain, except that they lack the golden balls and are generally more upmarket, ie respectable-looking.

So far so useless for our purposes. But in more recent years, the term has come to be used for redeeming one’s deposit on an object so that the object can be recycled. Most obviously this applies to glass and plastic bottles, and aluminium cans. The practice is of long standing in Sweden, going back to the 1880s. But so it was in Britain too, until it was judged superfluous in the 1980s. Interestingly enough, there are plans to reintroduce a similar scheme in Britain for environmental reasons. Which of course, begs the question why it was ever allowed to lapse. (Easy answer: the economy, stupid). Whatever. Better late than never. And while we’re at it why not adopt the Swedish term and their ongoing classic advertising campaign. This is based on the Cuban song ‘Guantanamera’, for which Panta mera (‘more’) is substituted. The campaign has gone through versions in about thirty different musical genres to date.

You can see the problem with things as they stand though. It’s just not going to work with ‘Claim your redeemable deposit more’. So it’s time for the government to act. If you can legislate for the reintroduction of Deposit Returns, then they can do the same a more succinct term for it.

On the face of it, an even better case can be made for a key element of Swedish lifestyle philosophy. This is represented by the word lagom. I have to confess – this concept was so alien to my own way of life that it took me a few years to fully grasp its implications.

Let’s have a look at how AI looks at it: for Google’s app this means “just the right amount,” “not too much, not too little,” or “in moderation”. And if we still need a little help: ‘It reflects a cultural philosophy of balance, fairness, and avoiding excess.’

I’m sure you’ll agree that this accords pretty well with your own preconceptions about the Swedes and Sweden. And one can work out where it’s come from. I mean, this degree of restraint was hardly characteristics of the Vikings, was it? I attribute it entirely to the Pauline influence on Swedish Lutheranism. In Paul’s Epistle to someone called Timothy, he advises the aforementioned to ‘stop drinking only water and to use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and frequent illnesses’.

Hence, according to my theory, the dominance of ‘moderation’ in the lagom ethos.

I’m also not sure of the dictum’s applicability on payday Friday evenings on the streets of Gothenburg at chucking-out time. Still, even if lagomness is more honoured in the breach than the observance, it doesn’t necessarily not mean that it is a quality that is generally admired and aspired to. If you follow my not necessarily very clear meaning.

The value in question has as one of its major by-products the so-called Jantelagen. This corresponds more or less exactly to the Australian Tall Poppy syndrome, so I won’t go into excruciating detail about this now. But this does beg another question. One of the most idolised Swedish figures in recent years was Zlatan Ibrahimovich, who apart from being a gifted footballer, has also clearly studied at the Christian Ronaldo School of Humility, Decency and Unpretentiousness. The implication being that we have yet another example of the defenestration of Jante lagomness as a prevailing guide for life in modern Sweden.

But this in turn makes me wonder if I would really like to see the doctrine introduced into Britain. For, much as I think Zlatan was a king-size carbuncle on the posterior, I have to admit that his brashness was quite refreshing in a Swedish environment. He was, and I assume still is, a bit of a character. Not one I’d want for myself, but what the heck. And Zlatan-idolatry made a welcome change from all the false modesty and grey uniformity that characterises much of Middle Sweden. To put it into a pecan casing, even in Sweden the idea of lagom may have had its day.

Which is where I run out of ideas, I’m afraid. There are a few Swedish words I would really like to see introduced. But either we already have equivalents of they again pose problems of their own.

I love the word torsk for instance. On the face of it, this means ‘cod’. But in urban slang, it means a person that is easily fooled or conned, supposedly because the fish is remarkably easy to catch in a net. Indeed we already have a gentle variation of this in the expression ‘to cod somebody’. Thing is though, we already have the word ‘sucker’ for a person that is more briskly codded, along with a few others that vividly describe the phenomenon. And ‘sucker’ is so deeply ingrained in the idiom that it’s hard to see how it’s going to lose its place at the top of the sapping order. So a wistful smile for all those cods that are never going to get an even break in English.

Another favourite is snuskhummer, literally a foul-smelling lobster. You should by now be getting the hang of things – Sweden has a very long coastline so many of the idioms are marine related. In this case, the lobster in question is a slippery customer, in both word and deed. But once again, sadly, ‘sleazebag’ is already in place and so stuck in place that I fear no number of rancid crustaceans would be able to displace it. Interestingly though, these days the word extends to those who have an addiction to pornography. And given the ready availability of porn online, a case might be made for its more specific use in the Mother Tongue. So I’ll try it out on the members of my English family and get back to you. If my reputation survives the experience.

In the meantime, I’ll leave that insalubrious specimen of Swedish patois with you in the hope it might enrich your otherwise grey linguistic lives. For, otherwise as we’ve seen, there’s little else in the Swedish linguistic cupboard that is likely to do so.

Next time, for those of you that haven’t already switched to a different channel, I’ll present you with some suitable candidates for similar treatment from Melpa, the language of the hill folk of the Papuan Western Highlands. Or not, as the case may be.