Something I learned over the weekend: rotten grapes smell like bad wine or vinegar. Makes sense, but I guess I never really thought about how similar rotting and fermentation really are.

One thing I've had difficulty with since I arrived in Sweden, but has flared up recently now I know more Swedish, is translations that are never quite accurate. That is, words that cannot be directly translated from Swedish to English or words that only cover half of a meaning in the other language. For an example of the latter, "upplevelse" and "erfarenhet" are both translated in English to "experience", but they are slightly different. Upplevelse is like life experience (i.e. life in Tucson) whereas erfarenhet is like acquired skill and knowledge through active participation (i.e. experience in aikido). This is a case where English has the upper hand; one word covers both meanings perfectly. This seems to be more an exception than a rule, though.
The example of the former is the very Swedish word "lagom"; (the Swedes practically pride themselves on the fact that this word cannot be directly translated directly into English) it means roughly "just right", "OK", "adequate". I think "just right" is the best for it but I'm told that's too good, that lagom isn't "good", it's just acceptable, but not in a bad way. It's a frustrating thing trying to understand the meaning behind a word, especially when I think the word encompasses almost mutually exclusive ideas. "Sub-par just right" is one definition I came up with in frustration that wasn't really disagreed with.
I understand of course that there are words and concepts in other languages that do not match words or concepts in English, there are overlapping and intermediate definitions of terms that perhaps facilitate a greater level of precision (the Saami and their many words for snow comes to mind) but sometimes I wonder if the Swedes are just quibbling about semantics with me. The word "mupp" means a silly or weird person ("Mupparna" is the Swedish translation for "The Muppets" if that gives you an idea). They were having difficulty finding an equivalent word in English, I suggested 'goofball' but they said that was just a bit too strong, I then offered simply 'goof' but that wasn't strong enough. So mupp is something between a goof and a goofball. It's examples like that that make me wonder if "lagom" is really so difficult to translate. Maybe it's a matter of people not realizing they're talking about the same thing, sort of like how if I tell you to think of a cup everyone will think of a different cup, even though they didn't think it incorrectly. That, or maybe lagom is just a pesky Swedish word.

Word of the Day: cavil- To find fault unnecessarily; raise trivial objections. (personally I like quibble more)