Language
Category archives for Language
Marsh Meringue
Posted by Martin R on September 4, 2009 Visa större karta Here are two pieces of convoluted Scandy and English etymology that converge in my head. “Marshmallow” was originally the common name of a plant, Althaea officinalis (Sw. läkemalva), from which a thickening agent was made. This agent was added to meringue foam to produce the toastable sweet pillows we all know and…
Current Archaeology 232
Posted by Martin R on June 29, 2009 Current Archaeology’s July issue offers a lot of good reading, of which I particularly like the stories on human origins (see below) and garden archaeology at Kenilworth Castle. But I have two complaints. First point of criticism. The editors of CA have this weird habit of doing “media tie-ins” without any clear indication of authorship.…
Makin’ A Lastin’ Impression
Posted by Martin R on May 21, 2009 A lesson in Swedish from the mall at Sickla. Last = noun from the verb lasta, “to load”. In = in Fart = noun from the verb fara, “to travel”, cf. “wayfarer” and “fare thee well”. Load-in-travel. Delivery entrance.
Ancient Power Nodes
Posted by Martin R on May 8, 2009 Anglophones find it really funny that one of Sweden’s oldest towns is named Sick Tuna — spelled Sigtuna. However, -tuna has nothing to do with fish, being instead a cognate of Eng. town and Ge. Zaun. It has something to do with enclosed areas. As a reply to a question from my friend Per Vikstrand,…
Ola Wikander and Fictional Beings
Posted by Martin R on February 9, 2009 On Saturday night I attended a talk by bright young philology and religion studies comet Ola Wikander. In 2003, at age 22, he published a Swedish translation of the Baal cycle and other Canaanite mythological matter for the lay reader. In the five years since then, he’s done the Enuma Elish, the Chaldaean oracles, an…
Never Say Please To Mother
Posted by Martin R on January 24, 2009 My lovely Chinese wife came to Sweden with her family at age seven and grew up here. This has given her an unusual level of bicultural competence. I like to quip, lewdly, that she’s a dual boot machine with two operating systems and the most awesome hardware, man. She’s like this typical bright Swedish middle-class…
Gratuitous “Of” In US English
Posted by Martin R on January 17, 2009 Listening to podcasts and reading blogs I’ve come across a new dialectal quirk of US English. I don’t like it. It’s ugly. In standard English worldwide, people will tell you how much or little there is of something, how few or many of them. “I can’t get enough of her”. “I put too much of…
Gnome Poop Insane
Posted by Martin R on December 2, 2008 Conversing with a friend recently, I mused, what could be the background to the expression “batshit insane”? My friend suggested that it might have something to do with having bats in the belfry. I then wondered what the Swedish equivalent of this expression would be. In Swedish, you don’t have bats in the belfry. You…
Commanding English
Posted by Martin R on November 20, 2008 So you’re the principal of an English-language high school in Stockholm, Sweden. And you decide to put some serious money into an advertising campaign in the city’s subway. Now, you want to express what we in Sweden call att behärska engelska, “learning English really well”. And that’s when the idea hits you: “I’m gonna say…
Names of the Close Horizon
Posted by Martin R on October 30, 2008 Looking at a map of Stockholm’s suburbs, you find a swarm of place names denoting housing areas. The housing is almost entirely 20th century. But many of the names go back a thousand years or more. Today they’re all just suburbs. But not so long ago, all of these names were part of a hierarchical…
