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Swedish after German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5434 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 17 of 18 29 November 2010 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
There are other examples, in which grave/acute accent separates dialects and not word meanings: - bálsam or bàlsam (the same reference, but one of them goes for southern Sweden and the other for the middle of/northern Sweden). - Málin or Màlin (exactly the same as in the example above - a regional difference, not a semantic one) ---- - gången (participle of the verb 'gå' or "the path/the aisle" depending on how you stress the first vowel, but it is still penultima in both cases) - màlen (participle of the verb 'mala', which is "grind" or "mill" in English) - málen ("the moth" in English) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| RVFA Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5183 days ago 13 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian | Message 18 of 18 30 November 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To t.chippendale:
Since this thread has slipped into areas quite different from your initial questions, I might as well add some more opinions. Why do you want to learn Swedish anyway ? Swedes are arrogant, two-faced, cynical, and pessimistic people. Ask a swede something and you will only get the politically correct answer, not what they actually think...unless they are drunk. Swedes see themselves as the only rational and ethical people on the planet, everyone else's opinions and actions must be wrong by default. They are the center of correctness, the "middle-porridge" in old story-tale: neither too hot nor too cold. Anyone who's not at the center, i.e. not moderate, is wrong. Swedes are only happy when others around them are miserable, if they see someone who looks happy they see it as their mission to bring them down into misery. Your duty is to be sad and depressed. Swedes see other cultures as fetish furniture, right now it is trendy with "Asian-stuff", people included, they pick Asian wifes simply because they fit in with their furniture. Asians in particular have been victims of positive racial profiling in Sweden, they are "industrious and hard-working people who don't make trouble",..unlike brown people and muslims who get quite a different treatment. Swedes are willfully ignorant, despite their self-acclaimed superior awareness of other cultures, something they love criticizing americans for lacking. Swedes themselves love to categorize people according to their ethnic appearance. Once they have classified you, like some animal or plant, you will belong to that classification and they will feel smug for figuring everything about, of being correct. Which of course only they can be. One of the first things a swede will ask you as a foreigner is where you really are from, if you are an African-American they will not be satisfied until you say which part of Africa you think you originate from, likewise if you are Asian-French and so on. Never mind if the person actually sees themselves as American or French - in the swedish mind such a thing is impossible, because they don't even regard their own minorities as being real swedes. What makes it worse is that swedes are not even aware of their own stereotyping and think they are non-racist simply by knowing in what country Goa lies. They are completely blind to their own ignorance. Multiculturalism ? there is only one acceptable culture here, conformity rules. As soon as people try practising other cultures swedes complain that integration does not work. Gender equality ? only at the low-wage level, not middle-and-upper levels. Many muslim countries have higher wage-equality than Sweden, yet all swedes complain about how Islam treats women. Ethnic equality ? the rule is simple: if you do not look swedish you will never be swedish, even if you are born there or have lived there 20 years or more and speak the language without a foreign accent. You will never be a "true" or genuine swede. It is impossible for swedes to understand other cultures because they lack the ability of introspection, the internal critical evaluation of yourself, seeing yourself from another's perspective. This self-detachment is a skill very few swedes possess. Yet, only with this skill can you begin to understand other cultures beyond the superficial. So why not learn Danish instead, the Danes are friendlier and more honest about what they think, heck they even smile every now and then ! If you smile in Sweden people will think you are on drugs ! I am not saying danes are more tolerant but they are much nicer to be around. Edited by RVFA on 30 November 2010 at 4:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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