Swenglish and funny names

Last week, I was asked what the Swedish accent sounds like to a non-Swedish person.  An interesting question..

The majority of Swedes have very good English.  It's so good that sometimes you forget you're even Sweden and not somewhere like the U.K.  But as with any country where English is not its first language, there's often more than one opportunity to smile when speaking with the Swedes.

Swenglish.   Swedish English.  Swenglish.  Svengelska?

Swedish is a musical language.  There are many intonations, and lots of ups and downs when Swedes speak.    For example, I would simple say "sofa," placing a slight more emphasis on "so."  But when you hear this same words spoken by a Swede, it's like "so-oh-fa!"  There's more of an up and down movement of the sound, and just sounds funny and happy.  Seriously, even the most boring lecturer in class, so long as he or she has a heavy-ish accent, will make your day. I promise.  It's like the Ikea commercial guy, but a bit less dramatic (and probably less annoying).

Then there's the choice of words.  The trouble comes when Swedes try to translate from Swedish directly to English. This will often work, but not always.

"I went to a party at the union last night; it was so funny"  In Swedish, fun and funny use the same word (roligt)

"Katina, I'm going to learn you Swedish."  The words "learn" and "teach" use the same word in Swedish, so you hear this a lot.  "I'll learn you!"  Somehow, there's a bit of a charm when hearing this, so I prefer to not correct this mistake.

Finally, pronunciation.  In Swedish, "k" is often pronounced as "shhh."  And in spelling, k in Swedish becomes c in English (for instance, korridor becomes corridor, Kanada becomes Canada).  So often you'll hear them say, "Yes, the candles from Ikea were so sheep," or, "I love shocolate eggs!"  or, "There were only tree of us at school today."

I also wanted to share what I've learned about names in Sweden.  They choose no-frills surnames, these Swedes.  Andersson, Pettersson, Mikaelsson, Johansson.  Sons of Anders, Petter, and Mikael, Johan.  No wonder there are so many "ssons."  A long time ago, girls were called "dotter" instead of "sson."  Last names are also nature words.  Ström is a stream, Berg is mountain, and Lund is grove.  Now think back to all of your favourite NHL players:  Lindström, Forsberg ("River Mountain"), Naslund.  Imagine if I were Swedish; my name could be Katina Stansson.

There is a significant population of people of Swedish ancestry, due to a massive immigration, 1.3 million, in the 19th and 20th centuries (yes, I wikipedia'd this).  And all that happened to their surnames were slight changes, including changing the double s to a single s.  So if you know anyone called Anderson, Peterson, Michaelson, Johnson, they're probably of Swedish ancestry. But if it's Andersen or Olsen (e instead of o), then it's Danish.

I hope you found that informative.  Or at least interesting.  Also, I only have one month left here.  Time flies when you're having fun, right?