“Du är en stor påse,” said my friend Maria in her best Swedish. To which the poor old woman who was waiting on her at the pharmacy calmly replied in English, “I think I know what you are trying to say.”
What Maria wanted to say to the clerk was: “Har du en stor påse ?” or do you have a big bag. What she actually said to the clerk was: You are a big bag.
Learning a new language is tough. There are so many subtleties to master. Maria is at that stage of Swedish where she knows just enough to be dangerous. But it’s good to laugh at yourself. Thanks for sharing this Maria.
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How about when I told Tom that I was going to “tvätta mitt ankskit” (wash my duck s–t instead of “ansikte”, face).
Or when I was skiing with work and we came home late at night. While we were noisily trying to get into our apartment, the neighbor opened the door and glared at us. Whereupon I said “Oj, vi måste vara tysta. Granarna börjar klaga!” (We have to be quiet. The pine trees are starting to complain!”) “Neighbors” has two n’s – grannarna.
I have a habit of swedifying English verbs – “Jag har inte beenit där”, for example. One day at work a colleague came into my room with a stack of papers and a binder. She asked me if I thought the papers would fit into the binder (yes, dumb question, but she asked it!). I replied, “Ja, jag tror att det kommer att fitta”. Too late I realized my mistake! “Fitta” is a very bad word for female genitalia…
But it works the other way, too. My husband-to-be ate dinner with me at my Grandmother’s. He told her she was a very good cock! (cook = kock).
I love these Sharon-especially the first and last! And I definitely try to Swedify English words all the time.
It was a terrible feeling but I laughed very hard when I walked out the door with my big bag!
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