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mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 225 of 228 30 December 2011 at 2:03am | IP Logged |
songlines wrote:
From a language-learning perspective, perhaps the best part of going to Ikea is getting the product assembly and
care instructions in multiple languages.
But if you really like the Swedish names: David Lebovitz, a Paris-based American pastry chef, has an amusing little
piece on his visit to Ikea, incorporating fake-Swedish names for the products. I don't know if the humour falls flat if
you actually do really know Swedish, but here's the link:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2007/04/je-
craquepour-l-1/
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The humor does not fall flat for me, the mock English names with whatever strange spelling Lebovitz dreamt up were hilarious.
Iversen wrote:
I have never been inside an Ikea nor read the catalogue so I don't know much about the original Swedish/Ikeastish product names - but apart from Daim there aren't any trace of Swedish products in the array of names lined up here. They are in Mock English with a funny spelling, and yes, they are funny.
PS: "DRËKK" is in Mock Gërman |
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I never knew "DRËKK" came from German (Mock or otherwise). I knew the English word "dreck" and according to my English dictionary it can also be spelled "drek", but I would have guessed it was yet another borrowing from French or Latin. This makes English a little more interesting to me, it seems that as I delve deeper into other Germanic languages I find more and more basic vocabulary that is shared with English.
Slightly off-topic comment: I hope I am not becoming a language snob, but when I went to IKEA and heard people pronouncing "SMÅLAND as "SMALL LAND" it really bothered me. This should not be a big deal to me; I know that Swedish isn't widely spoken in Washington State and Småland is actually the name of a region in Sweden as well as the name of IKEA's children's play area and that since "små" does mean "small" this isn't technically a mistake. Unfortunately I also know that the letter "Å" would not be a really difficult sound for English speakers to make if they ever heard the word "småland" pronounced properly.
Edited by mick33 on 30 December 2011 at 11:20am
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 226 of 228 30 December 2011 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
Brun Ugle wrote:
Det er kjempekult at du leser om Trøndelag. Hvis du noen gang bestemmer deg for å lære norsk på ordentlig, burde du lære en trøndersk dialekt. De er de beste i hele Norge!
P.S. Jeg bor i Trøndelag -- et fantastisk sted. |
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Jeg håper at reise til Norge, men jeg vet ikke når jeg kan komme. Trøndelag ser deilig og jeg har bare se noen bilder. Jeg vil gjerne lære meg en trøndersk dialekt noen gang, hvis bare jeg kan snakke og skrive bedre svensk først.
Edited by mick33 on 30 December 2011 at 11:21am
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 227 of 228 30 December 2011 at 11:19am | IP Logged |
¡Ay de mi! He olvidado más palabras del idioma español, ojála que recuerde algunas estructuras gramáticas. Escuché el radio sino entender pequeño.
As I suspected, my Spanish has declined considerably. Hmmm.... Maybe I really do prefer Germanic languages or I am just too lazy to focus on reviving and improving my skills in Spanish. Oh well, at least I haven't forgotten everything I knew.
Buenas noches
Mick
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5921 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 228 of 228 01 January 2012 at 12:37am | IP Logged |
I am prepearing to go out dancing tonight so this hopefully this will be a brief message.
This last year was a good year for learning languages, even if none of my target languages can challenge English as the dominant language I use for thoughts and communication. The 6 Week Challenges with Sprachprofi's Twitter bot were fun and I got an idea of how much time I actually spend in the beginning stages of learning a language. I did frequently give in to wanderlust, by which I mean I dabbled with quite a few languages to find out if I wanted actually learn them or not. I have definitely decided that wanderlust is a very good thing, somewhat like test driving cars or trying on clothing in a store so that I can hopefully make an informed choice in the future.
I will admit that, due to laziness and my near-constant desire to learn Swedish and nothing else, my Spanish and Afrikaans skills have definitely declined. A year ago I though I had attained almost mid-intermediate level in writing and low-intermediate comprehension in listening in reading for both languages, but I am now certain that I am not at that level now and my speaking was never good for either language. My Swedish was probably at mid-beginner level in writing and listening comprehension a year ago and I hope I have improved to low-intermediate (see link above) but my reading and speaking levels are nowhere what I call low-intermediate.
My Finnish has never moved past the mid-beginner level in writing, speaking, listening, or reading. Italian is at low-beginner level for every skill I try to assess but the similarities with Spanish help a little with reading and listening.
I have just begun Thai, so I admit to knowing almost nothing at this point.
I know that self-assessment is very imperfect for many reasons, thus it is quite likely that my skills in every language are worse than I think but I still think self-assessment can give me some ideas about what I can learn on my own and what I still need to learn.
Since I have joined two TAC teams, I decided to start a new log for 2012 and end this one.
I hope everyone who has read this log had a good year and I wish you all a Happy New Year!
hasta la vista
hej då
näkemiin
ciao
totsiens
Mick
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