Toad Sex and Word Play (for language nerds)

Hi friends! Firstly, I understand I've taken a few weeks off.

I am not sorry about it. You get what you pay for.

BUT for those of you patiently waiting for the answer to the Hello Monkey Goes? confusion in my last post, the answer is Hello Monkey Goes Italian. Hello Monkey is a restaurant, and it's going Italian.  It was all a clever marketing scheme and I guess it worked on me. So that's that.

In this edition of Adventures of Gino the Dog, I report on the rapid changes ushered by the Spring, and then I go totally nerdy with language. Hold on to your hats, language nerds.

Welcome Spring!

Spring is officially here, and the changes have been exciting.

Firstly, the days are getting longer FAST. We're getting as much as five minutes of extra sunlight each day. As one gets closer to the poles of the planet, the days get dramatically stretched or compressed in the Spring and Fall, repsectively. The process peaked on March 16th and 17th with five full extra minutes of light relative to the day prior. On the other side of the year, toward the end of September/beginning of October, each day loses about five minutes of light. By contrast, just after the solstices, day lengths change only by a few seconds, gaining a couple seconds after December 21 and loosing a couple seconds after June 21. At the equator, this is not nearly as dramatic. They have relatively consistent 12 hour days.

Secondly, the flora and fauna are awakening! At a nearby pond, my humans and I were lucky to observe (and record) participants in the annual migration of toads from their winter resting place in the woods to their spawning sites in the water. The adorable piggyback ride in the video below is actually a male toad hitching a ride atop a female toad on her way to the pond, where we can expect she'll lay her eggs and he'll fertilise them.

Look closely. It's a male road, hitching a ride to the pond atop a female toad (see video below). 

An obligatory picture of me in nature.

The humans have also been doing their best to get out of the house in the evenings. They attended a very surreal, very contemporary interpretation of Jane Eyre on Friday evening, and free choir concert honoring the late Swedish DJ, Avicii. The concert was hosted by a local church, and it was the first time either of the humans had seen a choir accompanied by a DJ. The lighting was pretty trippy too.

Choir concert honouring the late Swedish DJ, Avicii. 

Swedish word fun for language nerds.

Let me indulge my language nerd friends. You know who you are.

Below are some observations I've made about the Swedish language (strange, I'm a deaf dog, I get it, but I work really hard and read lips with my one working eye). I think these observations reveal as much about English as they do about Swedish, and they're enhanced by living in household with a native English speaker and a native Swedish speaker who can help clarify to each other when it's important to distinguish between phrases or not.  I've tried to describe them practically, without fancy grammatical terms, so even if you're not a linguist you might find it interesting. Or maybe not. Or maybe I don't care what you think. Enjoy.

God and Bra

Both bra and god mean good. Bra is more common, and used more generally to describe goodness. Are you good? Mår du bra? He is a good dog. Han är en bra hund.  God or gott (different genders of the same word) is rarer, and refers mostly to good tasting food (Maten är god), good smells (Maten luktar gott), and can sometimes be stretched to wish someone well (Ha det gott).  Definitely do not say Han är en god hund unless you're eating a dog. Don't eat dogs.

Thinking about, thinking that, and thinking as belief

English speakers smoosh a lot of meaning into the verb to think. The Swedes separate to think into att tänka, att tycka, att tro. All of these sort of mean ''to think'' but each of them represent a subtly different form of thinking. Att tänka is used when you think about something. Are you thinking about the world? Du tänker på världen. If I walk up to you, staring off into space and I'm wondering what you're thinking about, I might ask Vad tänker du på? Att tycka is used when you express an opinion about something in real life, in other words, when you think that something (non-hypothetical) is such-and-such. Do you think a book that you've read is bad? Du tycker att boken är dålig. Do you think Lebron James is overrated? Du tycker att Lebron James är överskattad.  Att tycka also has a special application: When you want to express that you like something, you can slap the word om after it. Do you like Chicago? Du tycker om Chicago. Do you like Michael Jordan more than Lebron James? Du tycker om Michael Jordan mer än Lebron James. Att tro is reserved for beliefs about hypothetical stuff, both profound and simple. Do you believe in life after love? (Tror du på livet efter kärleken?). I think the restaurant opens at 7. Jag tror att restaurangen öppnar klockan sju. The difference between att tycka and att tro can be subtle, but here's a good way to remember it: If you haven't eaten at the restaurant, but you've heard good things from friends, you might say, ''I think the food is good'' (Jag tror att maten är bra), but once you've tasted the food you can say ''I think the food is good'' (Jag tycker att maten är god). Same English translation. Different Swedish translation.   

Difference as rarity, difference as distinction, and difference as variety

In Swedish, there are three ways to talk about difference: annorlunda, skillnad, and olika. The word annorlunda is probably the 'purest' translation of the word different, used to describe a single thing that is generally different from other things.  'Their house was different from other houses on the block.'' Deras hus var annorlunda än andra hus i kvarteret. She was different than other women. Hon var annorlunda än andra kvinnor. The word skillnad (pronounced HWILL-nahd) is perhaps best translated ''distinction''. It's used when comparing things, usually two things. ''What is the difference between the Swedish flag and the Norwegian flag?'' Vad är skillnaden mellan svenska den flaggan och den norska flaggan? The word olika is used when talking about a variety of different things and is interchangeable with the word various. There were many different houses in the neighbourhood. Det fanns många olika hus i området. We have a selection of seven different sandwiches. Vi har ett urval av sju olika smörgåsar.  

Things, things, and things. 

En grej, en sak, or (rarely) en ting. All of these are things. How are the first two different, I'm not exactly sure. En sak is much more general, while en grej (pronounced gray) is usually something you can touch. If you wanted to say ''One thing is sure'' En sak är säker, or ''Pack up your things'' Packa upp dina saker. The word grej is rarer, a little more slang, and is typically used to describe physical things, but you can almost always use sak. Ting is hardly ever used by itself, but it's attached to other words and kinda means thing, for example the word ingenting means ''nothing'', någonting mean ''anything'' but ting by itself is a bizarre word in Swedish that doesn't really mean ''thing'', although ting most definitely means ''thing'' in Danish. 

Before, before, and before

This is probably the most confusing example of multiple Swedish words that have the same English meaning. Innan, före, and förut all mean before. Their difference is very subtle, and very much wound up in complex grammar rules. I promised above that I wouldn't get technical in this post. I'm afraid that just this once I have to break my promise, because there's just no other way to explain it. Innan is a subjunciton. WAIT! NO! DON'T LEAVE ME PLEASE. It connects an independent and dependent clause, or a cause-effect relationship in time. I want to eat before we go to the party. Jag vill äta innan vi åker till festen. Students take math before they take biology. Elevarna pluggar matematik innan de pluggar biologi. There are subjects (a sentient being or beings with desires!) on both sides of innan. Före is more simply a preposition, and is best thought of as ''in front of'' in time. It only refers to things before each other, not entire clauses. So, Breakfast is before lunch. Frukost är före middag. The meeting with Bob is before the meeting with Suzy Mötet med Bob är före mötet med Suzy. Förut or förr  refers to a block of time in the past. It is grammatically the simplest. It often stands on its own. We talked before. Vi pratade förut. I've never seen that before. Jag har inte sett det förut, or as the Swedish singer Laleh says, ...och aldrig mer som förut (and never again as before).

Some other oddities 

Double sided words: teach/learn, lend/borrow

In English, we have separate words for lending and borrowing. Not in Swedish, where att låna means both to lend and to borrow. This results in Swedes commonly offering to ''borrow'' people things and money, or the library ''borrowing'' books. Similarly, teaching and learning are both att lära, resulting in Swedes sometimes offering to ''learn you something.'' Fortunately, learning is a reflexive verb and you have to add the words mig, dig, or sig (pronounced may, day, or say) to att lära to clarify who is learning themselves. Fortunately, there are other words for teaching, like att undervisa. 

No casual word for ''please''

There's not a great way to say ''please'' without sounding really desperate. The word snälla (pronounced SNEH-lah) is the best translation, but it's a bit desperate sounding. You can also use the word for ''thank you'', tack, where you might typically use ''please'' in English. If you want to say, ''I would like a coffee, please'', you might say Jag skulle vilja ha ett kaffe, tack. 

The word for ''you're welcome'' has multiple meanings
The Swedish response to ''thank you'' is varsågod (pronounced varsha-GO). This is literally translated was-so-good, but it is used like the English ''you're welcome.'' Varsågod is also used in the same way English speakers use ''by all means'' or ''here you go'' if, for example, I was holding the door open for you. If I'm serving food to you, I will likely say varsågod as I place it on your plate. Strangely there is no good English phrase for serving food or initiating a meal. We often borrow the French bon appetit. Saying ''Your meal is served'' is very formal.
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So what have we learned from all of this language fun? Languages are very much tangled up in context and culture: words do not map onto each other one-to-one, so being in a place and using a language is extremely important if you want to master it.

That's all for this week, and there's a whole lot more language exciting where that came from. Next week, ManHuman will be traveling to other regions of Sweden, so he'll surely be sharing stories with me, and I will happily relay them on to you.