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English influence on Swedish Plurals | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 17 of 25 06 April 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haha, Tombstone got just the reaction from me that he wanted, and his answers to my post are equally predictable. So let's be done with it now shall we - we will never agree on these things and I knew I was wasting my time responding -- these things just draw into endless slagging matches to no ultimate end (and me always in the minority, harder work). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 19 of 25 06 April 2010 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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And what are you even doing in this thread?
You clearly don't know the Swedish language or care much about it. I think you're here for a good old quabble with me. Well, you had it, so game over! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 21 of 25 07 April 2010 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
Since you asked, I actually found the subject interesting because while loanwords are common "loan-grammar" is something of a new concept to me. And while I don't know the Swedish language, I do find it interesting and might like to learn some one day. I was just following the thread, happy to keep my mouth shut until I was informed that I was a cultural imperialist who eats Big Macs all day. Being a vegetarian who did his thesis on Irish attempts to subvert British linguistic and cultural imperialism, I found this a rather odd thing to be informed of and felt compelled to respond. Anyway, unless you send any more questions or barbs my way this will be the last from me here. I do wonder why you complain about being quabbled with when you seem to start a lot of quabbles, though. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5351 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 22 of 25 07 April 2010 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let's get this thread back on track, shall we? The question was after all if it's true or not that "more than half of all Swedes now make plurals by adding -s rather than by the normal Swedish way".
I can't say that I speak for all of us, but I'm pretty sure that I speak for at least more than half of the Swedes when I say that this is not as common as is implied by this comment. Sure, it exists, but I think only with loan words from English and as someone previously said this is just an alternate way of saying it since we usually have a Swedish form as well. But we would never say something like "hästs" (horses) or katts (katts). For Swedish words we still use our plural forms. But sometimes it's just more convenient for us to use the English plural form. Take the word "scanner" for example. It's simply easier for us to say "scanners" than "scannrar" as this is an English word. This doesn't have anything to do with what's "cool" to say. And as the matter of the problem with too much English influence on the Swedish language (and all the other languages), the way I see it we should stop the words from entering the language in the first place, not banning people from using them once they've entered the language. I admit that this is something I do too and not only this. I do what Cordelia seems to hate so much, I use English words although there is a Swedish word for it too. This for different reasons. It could be that it's the word that pops up in my head first, or I've temporarily forgotten the Swedish word for it, or the Swedish equivalent doesn't mean exactly the same thing. Also there are words that don't exist in Swedish that we still want to use, e.g. random (that is a very good word). This doesn't mean that I think less of the Swedish language, but you're right that the English language has influenced us, maybe too much. I'm usually not too fond of seeing the English possessive form on signs in Sweden. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 23 of 25 08 April 2010 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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The question was whether there was any truth to the statements made by Bill Bryson in his book "The Mother Tongue". I am not sure exactly what he wrote, but it would appear he was incorrect.
Either Bryson got the wrong end of the stick, didn't check his facts properly or the original poster misunderstood what he said. Bill Bryson's books on England are funny but he is quite prone to exaggerate and I would take his claims on anything with a pinch of salt. Normal Swedish people are definitely NOT using English plural endings on Swedish words, regardless what Bill Bryson or anyone else says. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 25 08 April 2010 at 2:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Agreed. Normal Swedish people don't use English plural endings on (a majority of) Swedish words, but then we have those kinds of words that WingSuet mentioned, e.g. "scanner"/"skanner" which more than often take -s plural instead of the normal -(r)ar form. Other examples include "thriller" and "blinker", where I've never heard anybody (honestly) say "thrillrar" or "blinkrar", but rather "thrillers" and "blinkers". I'm not even sure that "blinker" is used in its singular form that often, and can very well imagine people say "en blinkers", just as we regularly say "en keps" (from "cap"), "ett kex" (from "cake"), "en räls" (from "rail") and so on...
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