Talk:Swenglish

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I wrote this article about Swenglish but I didn't notice that I was offline. I am pretty much of a Swenglish speaker so I think there's alot of spelling mistakes and so on. Due to that I am a Swenglish speaker I can't look at this with English eyes and listen to it with English ears, so corrections and so on are welcomed. Both on my language and Swenglish in general. // Limpan

I don't think "mejla" and "printa" really are examples of bad swedish. They are so common now, they should be considered swedish words...

I agree when it comes to "mejla", but I've never heard anyone say "printa". "Skriva ut" is the only term I've heard in Swedish. - Gustav

Contents 1 Printa etc are bad Swedish :) 2 Poor Quality 3 False friends, "fart controllers" 4 Content from Swinglish 5 "Svengelska" not just English words in Swedish 6 Userbox Swenglish (svinglish josörbox) 7 A thought

[edit] Printa etc are bad Swedish :)

Printa, mejla etc are deprecated. TNC at http://www.tnc.se which is the closest we come to an authority on technical/computing-related words do not list them. Scanner, by the way, is also deprecated and skanner/bildläsare are recommended instead. Personally I still use scanner, but anyway... Since we have excellent and short words in Swedish for many (but not all) computer-related words, why not use them? Also, I very rarely hear or see the word printa. Mejla is however rather common, at least in spoken Swedish. In written Swedish I think it is somewhat less common.

I would not consider "printa" bad Swedish, but with "mejla" I would. The difference? One is using an English word and adding an ending to it based on Swedish grammar, while the second is changing the word to somethign looking more Swedish based on the pronunciation, "mejla" should, in my oppinion be "maila". 81.225.4.31 14:35, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Eh? Do you spell "fotölj" as "fauteuille" as well in Swedish? Adopting the spelling to Swedish standard is hardly unusual. - Gustav

Did a revamp of the Swenglish page. Hopefully it looks a bit better now, and perhaps even is a bit more readable... 12:27, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Use of the word "deprecated" (= strongly disapproved of) to mean "no longer current" is to be deprecated! -- Picapica 12:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Everything is Microsoft's fault. They have higher prices for Swedish-language office software than English-language versions, so many companies buy the English version. Therefore Swedish people say "printa", "sejva", "spellchecka" because that is what is written on the menu. Furthermore they encourage separate words even if it is not correct Swedish. For example "brunhårig" means brown-haired, while "brun hårig" means brown and hairy. "djupfryst" means deep-frozen while "djup fryst" means deep and frozen. Since combined words are not always included by the spell-checker people are encouraged to write separate words. This tendency to write incorrect separate words should be mentioned in the article, since it comes mainly from English. BIL 01:03, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Poor Quality

This entire article needs a rewrite...

You are always quite welcome to make any improvements you see fit. --EldKatt 13:48, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I just made a few improvements. Someone still needs to address the question of whether svengelska (in the sense of laughably bad English spoken by Swedes) is a real phenomenon, or just a joke created by supercilious Englishmen. "Raping at dinner?" I'd be willing to bet no Swede has ever said such a thing. The English, on the other hand -- when they bother to learn foreign languages at all -- have surely said "Det är på mig!" (what I call engska) when they're offering to treat. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-03 19:22 (UTC)

As I added in the article, Swinglish (note that I DON'T write Swenglish) is actually a real phenomenon which affects people from a Swedish and English-speaking background.

[edit] False friends, "fart controllers"

Those examples, fart, prick, etc. are classical examples of what a Swedish person might say, but really.... Has anybody ever made those mistakes for real? They've always seemed like jokes to me, like it would be funny if someone would actually say that, or simply as examples of Swedish words that native English speakers may find funny. "Infart", anybody?

A more realistic pair of false friends that I think some people actually do get confused is the english word eventually and the swedish eventuellt (possibly) (Entheta 22:31, 27 September 2005 (UTC))

I can't begin to tell you how many Swedish words my mother has made fun of. ('Farthinder', 'beslutsfattare'...) My friend, who is a native speaker of Swedish, has made some mistakes similar to what the article is talking about. However, I do agree- 'eventuellt' seems much more likely than any of the other ones.DTPQueen 21:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Answer: I once had a game of table tennis with some Swedes that thought it was hilarious to say "pricks" instead of "prickar" when holding the tally - but the ironic thing is that none of them actually knew what "prick" meant, namely, "gay".

Well I have heard stories, maybe just stories, about a guy called Jönsson (a normal Swedish name), saying "Hi my name is Jönsson, that is Johnsson with two pricks". (prick means penis not only gay). A manager opened an fair (exhibition), saying "I declare this mess opened". Fair="Mässa" in Swedish. And a group testing Swedish cars in the US. The police showed up in their garage asking what they were doing. "We are screwing with a car". The last one is true, one of the guys told it to the author of the article. -- BIL 22:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't "prick" mean penis, rather than gay? (In an extended sense, "despicable person" or similar...) 惑乱 分からん 12:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I wrote this article in the first place. And the examples I used were made up (raping at dinner etc). No one may have said so or someone did, I don't care. I wrote this article because there were no other earlier adressing this. I wanted to write about what make Swenglish different from English and other local variants. And the Swenglish/Swinglish thing. I think they should be merged if they have not already. In my mind it's written Swenglish. Because neither Swedish or English is spelled Swidish and Inglish, they are only pronunced that way, therfor Swenglish not Swinglish. I would like to see that someone with more language skills than me can add some common mispronunciations. Limpan 13:33 , 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Content from Swinglish

I redirected the recently created Swinglish and I'm pasting the prose content of the article here if anyone wants to include it. Please delete this post after merging the material.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Swinglish is a portmanteau made by mixing the words Swedish (Swedish language) and English (English language). Swinglish, or Swedish English, refers to a linguistic combination of Swedish and English, the Swedish native speakers' version of the English language.

The languages are closely related Germanic languages, and Swedes are taught English in elementary school. In addition, English spoken movies and programmes are not post-synchronised (dubbed) on Swedish television, giving most people the impression that the Swedish are fluent in English. However, listening to a Swede speaking English will reveal this is not always the case. The Swedes and other Nordic people in practice sometimes make systematic mistakes when speaking and writing English.

"Errors" occur mainly in pronunciation, word order and the meaning of words.

Swinglish has a bunch of meanings, so I created a disambiguation page. --Cultural Freedom talk 06:42, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

One phenomenon which you failed to mention is the jargon spoken by the children of native Swedish speakers in English speaking countries or vice versa. This is the real Swinglish because it is used as a mother tongue and not simply as a bridge between languages.

[edit] "Svengelska" not just English words in Swedish

Svengelska is not just "Swedish with many English words" but is a wider term. It refers to Swedish that is noticably affected (or contaminated, according to the point of view) by English. This includes, for example, literally translating English idiom into Swedish, even if only Swedish words are used. An example (from an English-born judge in the dance programme Lets Dance on Swedish TV4):

English: "You are going from strength to strength"

Svengelska: "Du går från styrka till styrka"

The phrase literally translated into Swedish makes little sense to a Swedish listener. Tamino 20:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I thought Swedish "corrupted" by English was "engska" in Swedish. That's what I've always called it, and heard it called. Either way, it certainly shouldn't be covered by the same word meaning English "corrupted" by Swedish. In one case we're talking about (bad) Swedish, in another (bad) English. "I invite you" (I'll treat) instead of "Jag bjuder" (på en öl) is svengelska. "Vad är uppe?" ("What's up?") is engska. --Cultural Freedom talk 15:51, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Engska? Is that like a reversed form of Svengelska? Never heard it, but why not?... 惑乱 分からん 22:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, it's what corresponds to the phenomenon of an English speaker saying Vad är uppe? ("What's up?"). That shouldn't be part of what we describe here as Swenglish, or? (or there was an example of svengelska :) ) --Cultural Freedom talk 06:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I haven't heard the term before... 惑乱 分からん 13:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it's just something my quirky academic friends and I use. I get no hits on Google (aside from typos), so it shouldn't be mentioned here. Either way, a lot of different things are being discussed at once here (English spoken weirdly, Swedish with incorrect English influences, Swedish with now acceptable English influence...), and they should perhaps be organized in a better way. --Cultural Freedom talk 16:21, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Knäckebröd is listed as being 'rye bread', but Knäckebröd is not rye bread, it is 'Crisp Bread' in English.

Look, if you say "crisp bread" in an English speaking country then no one will understand you. Instead, "rye bread" is the appropriate alternative. "Crisp" is a far to broad term to be used on such a specific product name. "Rye" refers to the actual grain that the product is made of which indicates exactly what you are talking about. Rye, unlike crisp, has more specific connotations.

Surely "hard bread" must be a better word for knäckebröd notwist (talk) 08:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox Swenglish (svinglish josörbox)

Fri att användas!Aaker 22:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A thought

Swedish and English has in part different grammar that could cause mistakes when translating. One common thing is to leave out the word "the", whose counterpart "den"/"det" is used only in connection with adjectives in Swedish (like "det stora huset"). Example: "Bilen är röd"→"Car is red"[citation needed]. (In Swedish, definiteness is marked with a suffix.)

This section has to be incorrect. Even though it is true that a suffix is used to mark definiteness ("huset" for "the house") it is incorrect that "den/det" is only used in connection with adjectives. One could say "det huset" instead of "huset" and it has a different meaning ("that house" compared to "the house"). I also disagree that it is a common error to leave out the word "the" notwist (talk) 08:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)