Swedish for Idiots 101

So it’s been a little while since I’ve written a post about languages specifically, and I was thinking about writing a follow-up to the Finnish post I wrote a few months back, but then I thought… nah, why write something that might actually be useful to people? Let’s start a whole new language altogether. It’s more or less how I’ve been living my life up until this point, so it would make sense that I’d start doing it that way on my blog, too. At least the two are geographically close, if not linguistically?

As most of you probably already know, Swedish is a Germanic language, belonging to the Northern branch of the family tree along with Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic and Elfdalian. The first two, Danish and Norwegian are very close relatives. Like, very much so. I work with 3 Swedes, 2 Norwegians and a Dane, and we don’t have to alter our language at all to be understood. It’s pretty neat! So let’s get to teaching you some Swedish so you can take advantage of the Scandinavian connection like we have!

If you’re comparing Swedish to the other Germanic languages like Dutch, German or even English, you’re going to be surprised as to how simple it is. It doesn’t have that tricky putting the verb to the end of the sentence nonsense that German and Dutch have, and it doesn’t have all of those quirky eccentricities that English has. When it comes to verbs, there’s just one form for every person – so you don’t have to worry about conjugation tables or anything like that. Take, for example, the verb ‘to be’, att vara, which you can see in the table to the right. The only things that might cause problems is det, which alters depending on the noun it describes – but if you’re just saying ‘it is’, you would use det. And to negate it? Easy as pie! You just use the word inte, adding it to the end of any of the verb forms in the table, in the same way that you would use the word nicht in German (or niet in Dutch, or even not in English).

When it comes to practical applications, this is a very versatile little verb, though when it comes to introducing yourself (in contrast to Finnish), it’d be more common to use the word att heta. Those of you who have studied Dutch and German will doubtless see the similarity between the German verb heißen and the Dutch verb heten, meaning ‘to be called’. But don’t worry, forming the present tense is nice and easy. There are two types of verb in Swedish: ‘-er’ verbs and ‘-ar’ verbs. I’ll go into this in more detail in the next lesson, but for now, just remember that heta is an ‘-er’ verb. This means that the ‘-a’ is dropped from the infinitive form (the form you’d see in a dictionary) and you add ‘-er’. So you end up with jag heter, du heter, etc. See? It’s as easy as pie! There are a load of verbs that follow this pattern, but most of the ones that don’t take ‘-ar’ instead of ‘-er’. As with any language, there are a couple of irregularities, but it’s probably best not to dwell on them at this stage…

Now you can introduce yourself in Swedish! I’ll give you a couple of adjectives of nationality, so you can try out some sentences of your own! Go on, give it a try in the comments. I’ll give you some examples. Time to bust out the stereotypical names!

• Jag heter Björn. Jag är svensk.
• Jag heter Brad. Jag är inte amerikansk, jag är kanadensisk!
• Jag heter Frédéric. Jag är också* kanadensisk!

And just in case any of you were wondering, också is the Swedish word for ‘also’. It’s a good one to know, because it crops up all the damn time. Another pretty useful phrase you should know is trevligt att träffas, which means ‘nice to meet you’.

I’ll probably leave it there for now, there’d be no point in overloading you with information in the first lesson. Unlike Finnish, I actually do speak fluent Swedish so I’ll be more likely to come back to this in the future. I hope you’ve found it useful, and you definitely shouldn’t hesitate to give your newly developed Swedish a try in the comments!

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I hope some of you found that interesting! Now, as the more eagle-eyed among you may have already noticed, the format of my musical recommendations has changed… this is because the website I had been using had a facelift while I wasn’t looking, and… well, this is what they’re going to look like from now on. It does mean you’re getting less artists each time, but I’m sure you’ll be able to cope with that.

This time I’m recommending Ewa Farna’s «Leporelo» (x), Kati Wolf’s «Hívjuk Elő» (x) and Silbermond’s «Durch die Nacht» (x) – I listened to that last song a lot when I was about sixteen, and I thought it was really deep. I didn’t really understand the lyrics at all, but now I do… yikes. I still love it because of the nostalgia, but I prefer some of their newer stuff.

And on that note, I’m going to hit the hay. Keep your eyes peeled for Swedish for Idiots 102, and thanks for making it through this one. Jeg elsker jer (or in Swedish, jag älskar er!)

– Jonas

Tungumálið djöflaeyjunnar

Vitur maður sagði einu sinni að íslenska væri ekki erfitt tungumál. Þessi vitri maður hafði aldrei numið íslensku sem útlendingur. Ég segi ekki að þessi maður væri rangt, en hann kannski hafði vanmetið hversu erfitt það getur verið að læra nýtt tungumál á svo stuttum tíma.

Sjálfur hef ég mikinn áhuga á tungumálum, og mér finnst svo gaman að læra ný orð og hvernig maður get sett þau saman í setningar; en ég er svolítið áhyggjufullur að það var ég, sem hafði ofmetið getu mína. Ég tala ensku sem móðurmálið mitt, en ég hef lært dönsku, norsku og sænsku. Ég tala líka smá finnsku, eistnesku og rússnesku, og þótt þau séu erfið, ég var ekki svo hræddur þá ég nam þau sem ég var á fyrstu dögunum þessa námskeiðs. Ég hafði bara ekki íhugað að ég kannski ekki var tilbúinn að berjast við þennan djöful.

Tíminn leið og vitneskja leisti áhuggjur mínar af hólmi. Það sem ég elska með að læra nýtt tungumál er að það getur opnað svo margar dyr. Núna geti ég lesið bækur sem eru skrifaðar frá öðru sjónarhorni, um hluti sem ég aldrei hafði íhugað fyrr. Eins og til dæmis líf á Íslandi á meðan landið var hertekið af bresku hernum. Ég hafði aldrei dreymt að Íslendingarnir voru svo fátækir þá. Á námskeiðinu höfum við lesið margar bækur og stuttar sögur um líf á Íslandi á fyrri hluta 20. aldar og það var algerlega ekki sérstaklega glaðvær lestur. Það hafði ekki hugmynd um. Svo hef ég ákveðið að keypa svo margar bækur ég get tekið heim í farangrinum mínum og læra allt um Ísland.

Fyrir mig er það áhugavert að læra íslensk orð af því að það getur kennt mér meir um tungumálin sem ég nú þegur kann. Ég hef mikinn áhuga á orðsifjafræði, og það er frábært að geta lært meir um hvaðan orðin sem ég nota á hverjum degi koma. Til dæmis veit ég núna að orðið ‘bairn’, sem ég heyri alltaf á götunum í heimbænum mínum og þýðir ‘child’, kemur frá forníslensku orðinu ‘barn’, sem er líka hvernig maður segur barn á íslensku. Það er mjög spennandi fyrir mig. Það er líka áhugavert að sjá sambandið á milli íslensku og annarra norrænu tungumálanna (sem danska, elfdalska, færeyska, norska og sænska). Maður getur séð þróunina orðanna, og það er mikið athyglisvert, held ég.

Það að læra íslensku hefur verið ástavinnuafl fyrir mig. Það hefur verið erfitt og stundum hef ég viljað að gefast upp og læra eitthvað léttari (eins og kannski japanska eða kínverska), en núna er ég ánægður með að ég ekki gerði það. Ég er hélt ástfanginn af tungumálinu og landið. Núna vona ég að koma til baka til Íslands og vera í MA-námi hérna á Háskóla Íslands. Þótt ég fari burt, verður hjartað mítt áfram á Íslandi.

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Well, I hope that made sense. For those of you who don’t follow my exploits on Twitter and Tumblr, you may not know that for the past month I’ve been in Reykjavík, Iceland on an intensive language course at the University of Iceland (Háskóli Íslands). It’s been a real struggle sometimes but honestly it’s been one of the best months of my life, and I’ve completely fallen in love with the place, the people and the language. I’m going to be continuing my studies to the best of my ability when I get back to England, so you can expect to see some more posts in and about Icelandic on this blog. But for now, let’s have a look at the music I’ve been listening to while I’ve been studying, shall we?

This one kind of requires some explanation. As I use last.fm to find these pictures, I scrobble all of my music directly from my iTunes library… but my laptop doesn’t have the scrobbler, and I’ve been in Iceland all month. So these plays have entirely been from the 5 days in the beginning of the month before I left. I… er, well I had a bit of a Meghan Trainor kick the night before I left while I was packing, so… that’s how that happened. So I’d like to recommend one of her songs first, «Dear Future Husband» (x). It’s catchy as fuck, I think you’ll love it. I’d also like to recommend Missy Higgins’ «Scar» (x) and Regina Spektor’s «Après Moi» (x).

 As always, feedback is welcome (in English or Icelandic!). Thanks for reading, jeg elsker jer.

– Jonas

Language addicts anonymous

I expect you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today. My name is Jonas Nyholm and I am a language addict. There, I said it. To some extent, this has kind of always been the case; but recently I’ve started to realise that I might have an actual, real problem. Honestly, this is more of a plea for advice than anything else.

As some of you will already know, starting next week I’ll be studying in Reykjavík, attending a summer school to learn Modern Icelandic for four weeks until the beginning of August. I haven’t talked a lot about this here because the application process was pretty intensive – I ended up going through the prep course in about 2 weeks when it should probably have taken a lot longer, because I didn’t realise that tabs were a thing (meaning I’d only completed about a sixteenth of each chapter before 2 weeks before the deadline). So I stressed through all of that and then, somehow, still managed to get in. Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are. The upshot of this is, because I’d crammed so much into my tiny mind in such a short time, I’ve almost completely forgotten all of it. And for the past 3 weeks, I’ve been lying awake at night worrying that I’m not going to have what it takes. A sensible person would avoid all of this worry and brush up on their Icelandic. Make some flash cards, use some coloured pens. That is what a sensible person would do. What have I been doing, you ask? I’ve been teaching myself Slovene, and learning the Greek alphabet.

This is my problem, you see. I’m a linguistics magpie. Instead of doing the work I’m actually supposed to be doing, I’ll scroll through all of the linguistics blogs I’m following on Tumblr and find myself staying up until 3am trying to get to the bottom of the dual number in Slovene, or writing lists of Russian idioms I mean to type up at a later date but will inevitably just gather dust on my groaning bookshelf in a pile of other notes I’ve been meaning to type up. I’ve got about 36 files in my language folder, all identical in format (it took me about a week to standardise them, because I’m a nerd) and all at varying levels of completion, for languages that I’ve never even been seriously learning. Languages I’ve never even had any interest in, but I’ve stumbled across a word on Tumblr and thought, ooh, that’s nice, I’ll pop it in my notes just in case.

I am a language hoarder. If I was a dragon, I’d be sitting atop a pile of untouched language coursebooks and handwritten notes that I’ve neglected to digitise because my claws keep ruining keyboards.

I know a lot of the people who’ll read this are of a similar persuasion – how do you guys cope with this sort of thing? How do you avoid wasting time on brain crack languages and get yourselves to focus on the languages you’re actually supposed to be learning? Leave a comment below or get in touch on Twitter or Tumblr, you’ll find me with the same username.

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Now, let’s take a look at some of the music I’ve been listening to when I should have been studying, shall we? I think that’s a good idea.

Okay so I’m slightly ashamed of listening to Dennis Fagerström so much, as it’s that one song from UMK last year, «My Little Honey Bee»… for some reason, it was all I wanted to listen to when I was landing in Helsinki at the beginning of the month. And obviously it made a bit of an impact on my listening figures. But I’m not going to recommend that, unless you’re into cheesy Europop that wasn’t quite cheesy enough to make it into Eurovision. You might prefer Walk the Moon’s «Shut up and Dance» (x), or perhaps even «Oublie Moi» by Cœur de Pirate (x). Or then there’s always Muse’s classic, «Supermassive Black Hole» (x). The oldies are the best.

Anyway, it would be nice to hear from you if you listened to any of these, with what you thought. Feedback is always welcome! As always, thanks for reading, jeg elsker jer.

– Jonas

Finnish for Idiots 101

Well hello there! I hope you’ve all recovered from the giddy festival of glitzy costumes and bad choreography that is Eurovision and have just about come back down to Earth now before you start getting excited about Sweden 2016. In the interlude, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk to you about Finnish!

Now, this blog is intended for people who don’t really know anything at all about Finnish, as I’ll be covering a lot of the basic stuff that people who have read the Wikipedia page will probably already know, but I’m trying to make it accessible to a wider audience without all of that off-putting grammar speak. «Idiots» is purely a term of endearment, I promise.

To start off with, Finnish is a Uralic language. That means, in other words, that it belongs to a family all of its own, and isn’t related (originally) to any of the languages that surround it – excepting Estonian and the Sámi languages. Nowadays, due to both Swedish and Russian occupation of Finland, there are a lot of loan words from both Swedish and Russian, though words that are originally Finnish do not share a common root with either the Germanic languages (Swedish, German, Dutch, English, etc.) or the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, etc.) Its nearest (and actually only) relations are Estonian, Hungarian (somewhat bizarrely) and the Sámi languages.

Let’s teach you some basic Finnish then, shall we? The verb ‘to be’ can be used to introduced oneself, and it changes depending on who is speaking. As you can see in the table, there are six forms (shown with the pronouns, that is to say, the words for ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’/’she’, etc.) You may notice that there is only one pronoun for ‘he’ and ‘she’; this is because Finnish doesn’t differentiate between genders for nouns or pronouns. I can hear the few of you who studied French or German at school cheering – but don’t cheer too loudly, there are still cases to contend with – and Finnish has more of those than even a Latin speaker would think necessary. But, back to the table. «Minä olen» means «I am». Underneath that, «you are» when speaking to one person, and underneath that, «(s)he is». To the right of each of these, you’ll find the plural forms (that is to say, «we are», «you are» and «they are».) Seems easy enough, right? Well, that’s because it is! The only slightly unusual part comes when you want to negate these verbs – by which I mean, say that you are not, as apposed to are. As you will see in the table, you’ll notice that there’s an extra word in there. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what the proper linguistic word for that is, so let’s call it a negator. This serves the purpose of the word ‘not’, and you may also notice that this is the word that takes ending, rather than the verb root, «ole». If there’s one thing I hope you take away from this blog post, I hope it’s that, because it’s pretty damn important when it comes to Finnish. So what’s the point of all of that? I’ll tell you – you just learned your first Finnish phrase! You can now introduce yourself! Minä olen Jonas. You can also make it more complicated and say who you aren’t. Minä en ole Paavo, minä olen Jonas. See? Isn’t that nifty?

Apologies for my use of the word «nifty». I’m trying to bring it back. Get on board the nifty train. Moving swiftly on, let’s get to those cases I mentioned earlier. As you may know, German has 4 cases. Russian has 6. Finnish has 15. Yep, you read that right. Finnish has fifteen cases. But don’t let that put you off! It honestly isn’t as scary as it sounds. A lot of these cases are used in the place of prepositions, and the endings are pretty regular – so don’t even worry about it. I would go into that, but… that’s a story for another time, because let’s face it, if I start now, we’ll both be here for another thousand words. Might be best to call it a day, and come back to this at a later date.

Let’s hear from you. How about you introduce yourselves in Finnish in the comments? That would be just plain neat. I’d also like to know if you’d like to see more posts like this, because I’ve got another one about Icelandic that’s still in the planning stages, but if you thought it was a complete waste of time, I probably won’t bother.

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Right, time to get back to the music thing! I think if any of you know me at all, you’ll be able to predict that there’s a whole load of Eurovision music in there…

Although my highlights are actually none of those, because I’d like to recommend you check out «My Hart Bloei Vir Jou» by Elizma Theron, «Monogame Dyr» by Sys Bjerre and «Echt» by Glasperlenspiel. I’m not really feeling the English-language music this month, in case you hadn’t noticed! And on that note, I’m going to bed. Thanks for reading! Jeg elsker jer!

– Jonas

Eurovision 2015: Vienna, Austria

Hello again everybody! I know it’s hard to believe, but Eurovision time has come and gone again – it comes around again so quickly every year! Having looked back on my previous Eurovision posts, it appears I never actually did a write up of the contest in Copenhagen last year – which is frankly appalling – but I’ll be going back to the method I used in 2013, choosing 10 countries that will compete in the final and focusing on them.

I ended up buying the album when it was released in April so I could hear all of the songs, but previous years have taught me that I’m something of a Eurovision albatross – as soon as I declare support for a country, it usually means that they either don’t qualify for the grand final or end up very close to the bottom of the table. So, somewhat inevitably, a lot of the songs I’d earmarked for great things completely failed to make an impact – Denmark and Netherlands failed to make it to the final, their spots taken by Armenia and Albania, who frankly didn’t deserve to qualify, but… it’s too late to bellyache about that now. As for the songs that did qualify… let’s get started, shall we? In no particular order…

1. Serbia – Bojana Stamenov (Бојана Стаменов), «Beauty Never Lies»
You know, I really love this song. I don’t use this word lightly because I’m aware that it’s a massive cliché, but Bojana Stamenov is fabulous. She just commands your attention whenever she’s on stage, and she’s definitely a fan favourite – all of the commentators said that she was followed around Vienna by fans the whole time she was there, and I can completely see why. The song was catchy with a great message – after all, if Eurovision isn’t a celebration of our differences, I honestly don’t know what it is.

2. Latvia – Aminata, «Love Injected»
Well, when I first saw this in the semi-finals, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. As a first impression, it was a bit like Björk and Kate Bush had a secret love child and she’d taken to the Eurovision stage – it was a bit odd, but in the best possible way. The graphics and her outfit were completely on point, she looked like she was part of the stage! Nevertheless, I do have a couple of problems with her performance. I wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to understand what she was singing – whether that was her English ability, or accent, it’s hard to say (and I wonder, would the song really have been better if it was in Latvian, or even Russian?) And I don’t really know how suitable the word ‘injected’ is, it sounds a bit seedy to me. But that’s just personal taste.

3. Australia – Guy Sebastian, «Tonight Again»
Well, it was inevitable that I was going to write about Australia. They were really driving home the fact that they were going to be part of the show, they seemed to wish Aussie viewers a good morning about 6 times during each of the semis, and Guy Sebastian didn’t really disappoint! I didn’t know what to expect from Oz, it was a toss-up about whether they’d go all out and send Kylie Minogue, or whether they’d send a singer relatively unknown outside Oceania – they went for the latter, and he seemed like a sweet enough guy with a catchy song. I do think I’m slightly bitter that they didn’t give the UK any points – we were counting on you guys!

4. Hungary – BOGGIE, «Wars for Nothing»
On my first listen through the songs on the CD, this one didn’t really stand out to me at all. Then watching it performed on stage, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It’s simple, I’ll grant you, but it’s got a good message behind it and the graphics were really on point. Basically, I thought she was sweet and I enjoyed it. The one thing that really confused me about this is… her name is Boglárka, right? And yet she seemed very concerned that nobody would be able to pronounce it? …methinks Boggie may worry too much.

5. Georgia – Nina Sublatti (ნინა სუბლატი), «Warrior»
I loved this. This one was genuinely my favourite, but… unfortunately, the Eurovision albatross strikes again, and she ended up with a disappointing 51 points, in 11th place. I think she should have done a hell of a lot better than she did, but… there’s no use crying over spilled milk. She evidently gave it her all, her performance was amazing – though the staging was a little troubled at times. There were times when she couldn’t even be seen because of the overly-zealous smoke machine. I’d like to see her return to Eurovision some day, whether or not she decides to tape two dead crows onto her shoulders.

6. United Kingdom – Electro Velvet, «Still In Love With You»
Sigh. I think we’re all well aware by now that nobody likes the UK. We’re used to that, we’ve even embraced it. But this year I really think Electro Velvet got royally shafted during the voting. I can’t help but think they deserved a lot more than 5 points – they were wearing glowing suits, for heaven’s sake! It’s hard to know what to do for the best when it comes to the UK. I personally think they did a good job – the song was catchy (although the lyrics were a little odd), and they performed it well, but they still ended up on the bottom right of the board.

7. Russia – Polina Gagarina (Полина Гагарина), «A Million Voices»
It was clear from the start that this was a strong candidate for the winning song. Polina Gagarina is a huge star in Russia, and it makes sense that she’d be a popular choice for the Russian diaspora all over Europe. Purely from a personal perspective, it was nice to see her perform (she really smashed it!) with a sea of rainbow flags waving all over the arena. Every time they cut to her in the green room, she seemed to be crying, which I can completely understand – Russia was booed last year, she probably expected the same thing. Instead, she finished a very respectable second place.

8. Norway – Mørland & Debrah Scarlett, «A Monster Like Me»
This was the first song I had downloaded before the contest. I’m still not entirely sure it’s Eurovision material, but it’s a very strong song. Their voices meshed really well together and their performances were flawless – they never seemed to falter with that last chorus, which I’m sure can’t have been easy! I hope they’re going to do more things together in the future, though I’m sure I’d enjoy them just as much solo. My only criticism of this was that the staging was a little simplistic – but then, I don’t know if an elaborate backdrop would have detracted from the performance. Well done, Norway!

9. Italy – Il Volo, «Grande Amore»
Firstly, I’m aware that there were three of these guys, but they always stood so far apart it was difficult to find a picture with them standing together – so I just went with the cute one. This was really a showcase of what you’d expect from Italy, and it was nice to see them singing in Italian – I really liked this, I’m glad it didn’t end up at the bottom of the table. I noticed that a lot of the points from this came from countries like Spain and San Remo, which is probably because they understood it. Better than I did, anyway – so I can’t comment on the lyrics. But it sounded lovely!

10. Lithuania – Monika Linkytė & Vaidas Baumila, «This Time»
Well, I thought this was cute. Nice, bright and sunny – the very essence of Eurovision, not to mention the fact that Vaidas Baumila is very easy on the eye! I did expect it to do a lot better during the voting, but it just goes to show that you can’t predict these things. Apparently their performance featured a gay kiss on stage, which somehow completely managed to pass me by – still, it’s probably for the best that they didn’t make a big deal of it, or it could have looked a little cheap and gimmicky. There was a lot of kissing in general, which was a little uncomfortable to watch sometimes, but… maybe they’re just in love. Who knows? They certainly wouldn’t confirm it.

I suppose I can’t really write a blog about the Eurovision without mentioning the winner, as much as I might like to. I’ve not made any secret of the fact that I’m not Måns Zelmerlöw’s biggest fan, but even I have to admit that the song he was singing was very catchy, and the staging was nothing short of amazing. It also means that I might actually be able to go to the contest next year, which is something I’ve always wanted to do – currently taking bets as to where it’ll be held. They did Malmö a few years ago, so the logical choice would be Stockholm or Gothenburg, but maybe they’ll throw us all a curved ball and we’ll all end up freezing our deely boppers off in an open-air event in Umeå. It’s impossible to say at this point. But well, congratulations Sweden, you won fair and square – it’ll be tough to top your half-time show from a few years ago, though I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

I think I’ve rambled on enough now, so thanks for getting this far – now I’d like to hear from you, what were your thoughts on the acts I mentioned? Did I miss out your favourite? Who do you think deserved to win? Leave a comment and let me know, you know I do so love to have a bit of interaction with you guys. There’s no music attached to this post because I’m saving those for my 1st of the month posts – so you’ll have to wait a week to confirm what you already knew, I’ve been listening to nothing but Eurovision songs for the past month. Until next time, jeg elsker jer.

– Jonas

A break in our regularly scheduled programming

Hello ladies, man-ladies and those outside the gender binary! I hope this post finds you well. Basically, this is sort of a placeholder post – the big thing I’ll be blogging about this month doesn’t occur until the middle of the month, and as such doesn’t really fit into my ‘new content on the first day of every month’ schedule.

I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but I’d rather write a good post about something I’m genuinely passionate about than knock out something mediocre just to fit into the pattern. As always, though, scroll down for music recommendations and remember to come back on the 24th of May for my write-up of the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria. As in previous years, I’ll be picking ten favourites and following them (hopefully) through to the final! So I’ll speak to you all then.

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Here’s the music I’ve been listening to this month. I realise it’s fairly Marit Larsen heavy, but I went on a bit of an Amazon binge and bought all of her albums (including the new one which came out this month, so… yeah.)

So this month I’d like to recommend I Don’t Want To Talk About It from Marit Larsen’s new album because it’s just phenomenal, I Don’t Care by Fall Out Boy because it makes me feel 19 again and Aldri Vodka, Violeta by Kaizers Orchestra because they’re fucking weird and I love it. As always, let me know if you check out any of the songs (and of course, what you think) and I’ll see you guys back here after Eurovision. Thanks for reading, jeg elsker jer.

– Jonas

Man siger ikke ‘du’ til Dronning Margrethe

I dag fejrer hele Danmark Dronning Margrethes femoghalvtreds års fødselsdag. Det har været i nyhederne og i alle dagblade, og på mandag så var der pressmøde på Fredensborg slot, hvor pressen fik møde dronningen og spørge hende om nærmest alle mulige ting (der er vist en grænse). Alt virkede gå godt indtil én reporter lavede en fatal fejl. Han glemte væk al kongelig etikette og tiltalte dronningen med ’du’ i sit spørgsmål. Det var da dronningen satte foden ned, som du kan se i videoen.

Det er muligt at der er mange dansktalende fra udlandet, der læser, og det er muligt at de kommer fra lande hvor der findes inget kongehus – og det er ret forståeligt at de ikke sku’ kunde korrekt kongelig etikette. På engelsk findes der ingen forskel når man snakker med dronningen eller med en mand på gaden, man må bruge ordet you. Det er bare så det er. Men på dansk (og på mange andre sprog) er der en tydelig forskel mellem ordet du og De (det er som at bruge tu og vous på fransk, eller ты og вы på russisk). Man bruger simpelthen ikke det uformelle pronomenet med dronningen. Det er ikke ofte man skal bruge disse pronomener på moderne dansk, det er næsten kun når man snakker med dronningen eller sin familie.

Jeg har en hel del sympati for journalisten, det mærkedes at han var meget nervøs og det kan godt være at han bare glemte i øjeblikket på grund af stress. Der er ret mange, der synes at hun ku’ ha’ behandlet situationen lidt bedre, og jeg har snakket med mindst én person, der mener at Danmark er et frit land og man får jo kalde dronningen hvad som helst. Det kan jeg godt forstå, men jeg synes slet ikke at det her handler om ytringsfrihed, uden bare respekt.

Det er ingen hemmelighed at jeg har dansk som andresprog, og det er måske bare min brittiskhed, der får mig til at synes at det var uacceptabelt – derfor spurgte jeg nogle venner fra andre steder i Europa, hvad de syntes. De to nordmænden jeg spurgte troede at Kong Harald og alle i hans familie sku’ være ligeglad hvis nogen brugte det fejle pronomenet – kongehuset i Norge er meget åbent, og det er den nuværende konge Haralds far, Olav 5., der er anledningen til det. Alle jeg har snakket med har sagt at han var ‘folkets konge’, og medlemmer af det norske kongehus er kendt over hele verden for at bare dukke op på offentlig transport, for de plejer gå rundt uden nogen som helst vagt… og det er meget usædvanligt, især for os i England, der plejer se dronningen helt omfattet af vagter eller i en bil med skudsikkert glas.

Det her er en slags ekstra indlæg, det var bare noget jeg syntes var interessant; og jeg vil gerne høre jeres meninger om det. Synes du at man skal kunde sige hvad som helst til statshovedet? Eller skal man passe på det man siger og tiltale statshovedet med respekten de forventer? Jeg glæder mig til at høre hvad I mener. Til sidst ville jeg bare ønske Dronning Margrethe kæmpe stort tillykke med fødselsdag. Skål!

Og som altid, jeg vil takke jer for at I har læst, og jeg glæder mig til at høre hvad I mener om formel sprogbrug og hvordan man skal tiltale de kongelige. Jeg elsker jer,

– Jonas

An bhfuil Gaeilge agaibh?

Dia daoibh! Ní fhaca mé le fada sibh! Is mise Jonas agus is as Sasana mé. Tá Béarla, Sualainnis, Danmhairgis, Ioruais agus Gaeilge agam. An bhfuil Gaeilge agaibh?  And that, ladies and man-ladies, comprises all of the Irish I currently know – except of course, sláinte!

I can’t even tell you how much I hope that was correct. I’ve been poring over those few sentences for hours now, trying to make sure I’ve got the definite articles where they ought to be and whether or not the names of languages ought to be subject to eclipsis or lenited… sometimes, I think you guys are making up language rules just to bloody annoy me. As the more astute among you may have already noticed, I’ve recently started trying to teach myself Irish.

My family doesn’t really have any connection to Ireland that I’m aware of – the branches of my family tree that stem from the British Isles tend to be concentrated in the North East of England and Southern Scotland; we aren’t all that adventurous, as a rule. So there isn’t a familial reason to make me want to learn Irish. But a few years ago, I flew over to Dublin for the day with my parents (because I’d never been and the flights were only £1), and I sort of fell in love. It rained all day, as I understand it is wont to do in Dublin; but we had a good old wander around the Jameson’s whiskey distillery and went for lunch at an Italian restaurant (which was called Luigi Malone’s, which even now tickles me slightly) before settling down for an obligatory pint of Guinness in one of the most expensive pubs I’d been to in my life (I mean honestly, £8 for a pint? Who do you think you are, Oslo?) At the time, my love of linguistics and foreign languages was only just beginning to develop – I’d started looking into Norwegian, but I wasn’t very good at it, and I was still recovering from taking a GCSE in Latin, so I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about Irish. It wasn’t until we got back to the airport and there was… hmm, now, I can’t remember if it was a sculpture or a photographic installation, but Dublin airport was plastered in quotes in a language I’d never seen before. My first instinct was that it was Elvish, because it looked very elegant with its long, flowing words arranged in sentences that didn’t mean a damn thing to me. All I knew was that I liked it.

Despite liking it, I didn’t do a hell of a lot with that information until very recently, when Duolingo released their Irish course. I had looked into it briefly before but had written it off as being far too difficult for my tiny mind ever to be able to comprehend. And after having spent a good week doing the Duolingo course, I fear I may have been correct (all of this lenition and eclipsis nonsense, I ask you!) but I’m determined to give it a damn good go, it really is a beautiful language. I’d recommend it to any of you, if you’ve got 5 minutes to spare while you’re sitting on the bus (or perhaps even spending some time in the smallest room), or even while your boss isn’t looking. There are now officially more people learning Irish on Duolingo than there are native Irish speakers left in Ireland. Which is equal parts encouraging and thoroughly depressing.

Wow, I’ve written so much already and I’ve not even started talking about the language itself… I’ll revisit this at a later date when I’ve learned a little more, and I’ll tell you all about na gaeltachtaí and how those bloody English did their level best to stamp out the language in the early 19th Century. And I might even tell you all about the wonderful play that Brian Friel wrote about the whole affair. I guess you can consider this my origin story, as an Irish speaker – hopefully with more to follow. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment with some thoughts – you get bonus points if you write it in Irish!

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I hope you liked that – I’ve been wanting to write a bit more about languages for a while, so it’s nice to finally make good on one of my promises. Here are my eight artists for the month!

No judgement, if you please. I realise that Hanson are probably not the most current or ‘cool’ choice, but I have listened to them quite a bit this month (mostly on YouTube, until my good friend Anna lent me their album – which was signed!) so they’re going to have to make it into my recommendations. So if you like, you can check out Give a Little (by Hanson), Verseau (by Cœur de Pirate) and A Monster Like Me (by Mørland & Debrah Scarlett). Feel free to drop me a comment about any of those, too! As always, thanks for reading, jeg elsker jer.

– Jonas

Things that go bump in the night

Recently, a friend of mine recommended a podcast about ghost stories and the supernatural in general called Real Ghost Stories Online. Now, I’m not what you’d call a sceptic when it comes to this sort of thing – I have a pretty open mind, based on a couple of experiences I had at university and a couple of stories my parents told me from when I was younger. I guess the best way to do this is to just dive in!

In my second year of university, was living in York in a typical terraced house – our house was on the end of the row, and there was nobody living in the house next door – so we didn’t have a lot of noise. I lived with three other girls who were all on the same course, so they were often out of the house at the same time. One day, I was sitting in my bedroom with a friend waiting to go to a lecture and we heard someone run up the stairs. We shouted hello to see who it was, but there was no reply. Turns out, the girls were at lectures all day. So that was a bit creepy. We ended up calling our ‘ghost’ Neville. That never really came to anything, he was pretty harmless.

Another of my friends had a totally different experience. She lived in a much older house, and she would often hear whistling in her kitchen. I’d told her about Neville and, as we were in York at the time after all and it does have a reputation for being fairly active ghost-wise, that was all it came to. Then, one day, she was coming up stairs with two cups of tea for her and her boyfriend and someone started chasing her up the stairs – she assumed it was her boyfriend, who had been to the bathroom or something and ended up on the stairs behind her – she shouted at him to stop it, and lo and behold, her boyfriend pops his head out of her bedroom door at the top of the stairs. She spins around to see that there was no one behind her.

After that, things started happening more frequently. She and her housemate had taken to leaving their phones on the landing recording, to see if they could catch any unusual noises – but I don’t think either of them ever did. To be honest, we thought she was making it up – she was (and still is) a gifted storyteller and she had a real way with words – it always made for an interesting story over a pint. But then one evening, she had cooked us dinner and had gone out for something, so we were all sitting talking in the living room. The television was off, but it was one of those old ones with a glass screen so it was reflecting the room we were in and the kitchen behind. I had been looking at it, and I could see a shape in the television next to the fridge. I nudged the friend next to me and asked if she could see it too – and she could. It turned out that we could all see it, but none of us could work out what was causing the reflection – there was nothing next to the fridge in actuality. We all played it off as a trick of the light and didn’t think much more about it… until it vanished. We took turns hosting after that, none of us were all that keen to go back.

I still think there could be a logical explanation to all of these things… but it’s fun to think about, isn’t it? I’d definitely recommend the podcast, you can find it all on YouTube or if you pop Real Ghost Stories Online into your iPhone podcast app (that’s what I use, so I don’t know anything about Google Play or other services) you should be able to find it. But what about you, have you had any experience with the supernatural? Have you ever lived in a haunted house? I might come back to this topic in a later blog because I’ve got way more stories. Leave a comment down below if you’ve ever witnessed any creepy goings on!

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Just a final note, here’s my top eight artists for the month…

Some highlights are (x), (x) and (x)! Let me know if you give any of them a listen and if you like any of them, and as always – thanks for reading, jeg elsker jer.

– Jonas

Let’s talk about Esperanto

So I’ve been looking into the basics of Esperanto for a little while now, and I’d just like to talk it through with you guys… get it straight in my head. I know Esperantists are fiercely protective of their language and it isn’t my intention to piss anybody off, but… here’s the thing: I don’t like Esperanto. But I love the idea of Esperanto.

I think it’s fair to say that English is generally accepted as a worldwide language. As an English speaker, you can expect to find at least one person nearby who speaks your language no matter where you are in the world – unless of course you’re trekking through the rainforest and come across a tribe of people who’ve had no contact with the outside world at all, but I think that’s what you’d call an outlier. And although that’s widely considered to be a good thing because it enables travel and international trade and other lovely things, it does make English feel a little less… I don’t know, special.

Let me try and explain what I mean. One of my favourite things about myself is that I speak four languages. I love being able to walk down the street (here in the UK) speaking Danish or Swedish and being fairly certain (though not entirely, which I might just tell you about someday) that no-one will understand what I’m saying. It’s like having your own secret code, and that’s a perk that I enjoy and utilise to its full effect. My point is that I can’t do that with English – and that’s sad, because as wonderful as Swedish and Danish are, there are things you can say in English that don’t sound quite right in a foreign tongue. That’s why I would be completely over the moon if the use of English suddenly died out and Esperanto took its place. I would get my secret language back! You know, if I had one wish, I think that might even be it. Who needs world peace?

I asked around a couple of my linguist friends both at work and online to get a feel for what they thought of Esperanto because I’d heard that it wasn’t exactly popular in the wider linguistic community. The results were actually a lot more mixed than I’d anticipated – a couple of people thought it was a great idea, though they were reluctant to learn it themselves because they had already put a lot of energy into learning English which works just as well (if not better) as a universal language. Another theme that popped up in their answers was the idea that language and culture are interlinked and it seems pointless to learn a language with no clear cultural background. Well I’m here to tell you that not only is that not the case, it’s actually one of the most interesting things about Esperanto – the fact that the culture developed from the language and not the other way around. The culture that’s sprung up around Esperanto is fascinating – thanks to the passion its speakers have for it – and there are books translated into Esperanto, bands that sing exclusively in Esperanto and international conferences – there’s even a flag! How cool is that?

There’s just one problem. I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s a huge stumbling block for me and it did come up multiple times in the mini-survey I carried out (in a highly unscientific manner, I should stress) – Esperanto is just plain ugly. Now, I know beauty is only skin deep, and I should stress that this is only my opinion… but I just can’t get past it. It just feels alien on the tongue and despite its simplicity, seems to defy instinct – whose idea was it to use a feminine definite indicator like ‘la’ and then make all nouns end in ‘-o’? It’s madness, I tell you! Madness!

Otherwise, it ticks all my boxes, it even has extra letters in its alphabet, which (although these ones don’t seem to be able to be typed on any keyboard I’ve come across) is always a plus for me. I guess that’s why I keep trying to pick it up – I really, desperately want to like Esperanto, but I just can’t. I think the secret is to try and immerse myself into Esperanto culture, so I’ve started tracking tags on Tumblr and I’m trying really hard to get into the Esperanto groove – so I guess we’ll see if I can warm up to it a little, shall we? And who knows, maybe it’ll help me along with developing my own constructed language. I’ve neglected it for far too long.

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Thanks for your attention so far, but we’re not quite done. I want to try something a little different this year… I want to try and bring more music into my blog, so for every monthly blog post I’m going to post a chart of the artists I’ve listened to most in the past month, and recommend some songs. So, let’s go!

If you like the look of any of these artists, you should definitely check out these songs: (x) (x) (x). And as always, I want to thank you for reading and welcome you to leave comments and feedback – share your thoughts. Jeg elsker jer!

– Jonas