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Swenglish

FÃ¥r Your Information

This is a confusing example of an ad that’s either too smart or too sloppy. It’s very hard to say whether it’s consciously using, or itself falling victim to a pronunciation mistake Swedes commonly make: that words beginning with sh… (sheep, for example) is pronounced the same way as words that begin with ch… (cheap, […]

Then-time /Now-time/ Front-time

The past in Swedish = dÃ¥tid, which translated back to English is “then-time” • the time that was then, before now The present in Swedish = nutid, which translated back to English is “now-time” • (self-explanatory) The future in Swedish = framtid, which translated back to English is “front-time” • the time that is in […]

Word Power #1

Earlier this summer, the journalist Lotta Olsson urged readers of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter to adopt an endangered Swedish word. Her feeling was that the Swedish language had become more and more impoverished, possibly due to the strong influence of English words, and she wanted to take action. Adopting a word meant promising to […]

Study-visit + Prao

The Swedish word “Studiebesök” seems to be missing in the English vocabulary. An attempt to translate: Study-visit noun • an act of going to visit/study somebody’s workplace. This is a quite common activity in Swedish schools, where the students are taken to check out a business, a facility or just about any workplace that seems […]

Open Call: Word Artists

Wordsmith noun • a skilled user of words. “Wordsmith” in Swedish is “ordkonstnär”, which translated back to English means “word artist”. A word artist is someone who is a skilled user of words, but not necessarily a comedian. Is it required to be a skillful writer or is the usage of words in spoken language […]