Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 49 of 53 15 August 2008 at 3:05am | IP Logged |
Espling wrote:
On the swedish "negerbollar mentioned earlier, I would think that chocolate balls would be the more normal euphemism.
Otherwise swedish is quite free of the most horrible of euphemisms although still harbouring some quite interesting euphemism like words that are just stupid. One is the word "islamist". The swedish word for muslim is, well... "muslim", but the word "islamist" is an intellectually challenged term used by newspapers to describe "a person who commits terrorist acts in the name of Islam".
Phrases like ethnical minority and such are of course present, but they would be nothing new to the English speaker. One that bothers me though is that they replace "bög"(gay) and "lesbisk"(lesbian) with "person med alternativ sexuell orientering"(person with an alternative sexual orientation). I mean, wouldn't homosexual and bisexual be enough? |
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On an unrelated note, as 'bög' is a three-letter word, and hence is used in unrelated ways in many languages, but which amused me as your post mentioned both it and religion: 'bog' is used in several Slavic languages to mean 'god'. And in English, it means something else again entirely.
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Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5952 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian
| Message 50 of 53 15 August 2008 at 3:20am | IP Logged |
"Bög" in Swiss German means "snot", particularly in the Aargau region. In Zürich, "Bög" is an archaic straw puppet that is burnt and blown to bits with explosives each year to dispel winter.
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alfajuj Diglot Senior Member Taiwan Joined 6211 days ago 121 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Taiwanese, French
| Message 51 of 53 15 August 2008 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
"Bög" must be where we get the English word "booger"
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Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 52 of 53 16 August 2008 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
I'd expect the Swedish "bög" to be related to "bugger".
They sound clearly similar and the basic meaning is the same.
According to wwwebster: Main Entry: bug·ger
Etymology: Middle English bougre heretic, from Anglo-French bugre, from Medieval Latin Bulgarus, literally, Bulgarian; from the association of Bulgaria with the Bogomils, who were accused of sodomy
Date: 1555
1: sodomite
2 a: a worthless person : rascal b: fellow, chap
3: a small or annoying thing <put down my keys and now I can't find the buggers>
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Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5966 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German
| Message 53 of 53 24 August 2008 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
"Bög" and "bugger" are indeed related, and they both stem from those poor bulgars.
Last time I checked, almost every European language had a similar word, descending from the same source. "Bög" in Swedish is most recently borrowed from French, by none other than August Strindberg.
Edited by Calvino on 24 August 2008 at 4:38pm
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