Sunday, September 18, 2005

No point to this post this time, just fun and random/interesting bits.
It's so much nicer when it rains, especially in Sweden. I always liked cloudy days and rain is soothing to me. The only bad thing about it is the Tucson variety that comes all at once, uprooting trees and flooding major streets. Here there is a lot more rain but it is so much weaker. Today was really windy and rainy but as hard as it tried it couldn't really match the awesome might of a Tucson rainstorm.

A few weeks ago I was at a department store where I saw a cart full of stuff with a sign on it saying "HISS!" turns out that means 'elevator' but at the time I thought it was a clever way of telling people to leave the cart alone.

There is no Swedish word for jerk; all they have are either insults to one's intelligence or coolness. The only words that define someone as rude and mean are very antiquated and are the equivalent of calling someone a ruffian.
I gather that the high school social class system is different in Sweden as well. The closest word for prep is "fjortis" which refers to anyone, male or female, who acts like the stereotypical teenager. I guess teeny-bopper is pretty close approximation.
Conversely, there are words that exist in Swedish that do not exist in English. One such example is "återställare" the drink one has when one wakes up to dull the pain of a hangover.

There are different dialects in Swedish that are often difficult to get a grasp of. The people from the north of Sweden will pronounce "sj" like "sh" in contrast to the colloquial dialect that pronounces it closer to if you blow out a candle. There's also the Stockholm dialect which sounds close to the colloquial dialect but to the Swedes it sounds snobby. It's impossible for me to convey it in typed words so just try to imagine a Swedish accent with a little bit of valley girl mixed in.

I never really thought about pop up and banner ads being different depending on where you lived. It's really strange seeing banners telling me I've one ten thousand Euros or offers to get me a green card.

What would the world be like if it went Goth? Better and worse at the same time.

Words of the Day: autochthonous- Native to the place inhabited; indigenous.
bivouac- A temporary encampment often in an unsheltered area.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

you did not just use "i've one ten thousand euros".


i had better hopes for you.

tsk tsk.

Kevin said...

hey even the best of us make mistakes Ms. "decapitating illnesses." You'll notice none of the words are misspelled though.

Feifei said...

I absolutely love your blog! Uppsala seems much cooler from an international students' perspective. I like your observations about Sweden and Swedes.. Life just seems much more fun with hissing carts and the need to know the word återställare. I wanna be an intis too. Keep up the good work, and hope you have fun here in Uppsala!