Even for me, a guy descended from them, who has lived among them, learned their language, made friends with some of them, and immersed myself in their culture, Swedes can be confounding.
Among some things I will never understand is why they can't speak English. I've already talked about how they can't pronounce viking and video correctly even though THEY ARE PRONOUNCED WITH A V IN SWEDISH!
Now add the fact that they insist on calling polar bears 'icebears'. What is up with that? I may never know.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Sometimes I don't get Swedes
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3 comments:
Yea, the "wideo" thing is crazy. I guess they're so focused on getting the "w" right in words like "winter" ("vinter" in Swedish) and "wine" ("vin" in Swedish) that they just go with "w" on any word that's an initial "v" in Svedish.
You know what's really embarrassing? Hearing a Swede say "adwanced."
Germans do it, too! For some reason they have a desire to say "willage". Why they use the word village often enough for me to notice, I don't know.
Also, I think the linguistic term for it is hypercorrection.
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