Swedish word 2
This time the word is “mat” (n. food). It’s pronounced with a long “a”.
Trajan
The first historic figure is the Roman emperor Trajan. When I was studying Ancient Culture and Society, he was always my favorite emperor. A seemingly good man, caught up in a difficult time. Ironically, though he seemed to have no taste for war and fighting, he was the Roman emperor credited with achieving the greatest expansion of the Roman empire. His life’s work has been documented on a monument in Rome, Trajan’s Column. There you can follow his career on what could be described as a sort of cartoon. In some images of Trajan he looks quite handsome. I imagine they are from his youth. So there you have him, one of the few Roman emperors about whom even the ancient Roman gossip columnists couldn’t find anything scandalous to say.
Today’s Swedish word: tröja
Today’s Swedish word: tröja (n. sweater, jumper, t-shirt). The “ö” is pronounced somewhat like the vowel in “word”.”stir” etc.
Swedish
Since I have come to realize that some people are actually quite interested in learning Swedish, I thought I’d start a little series: Today’s Swedish word. I’ll post one Swedish word and explain it briefly. Just a word of warning – even if it’s called Today’s Swedish word, it doesn’t mean I’ll be posting every day. I’ll post whenever I feel inspired, as usual.
Local history
On Monday I went to hear a man talk about his research about a match industry. That’s right, a place where they made matches. It was quite interesting, but in a way, sad too. So many people, mainly women and children, had to work for minimum wages and get sick from the phosphorus the matches were dipped in. My grandmother told my mother that in her class in school there were girls whose fathers’ work was dipping matches in phosphorus and the kids were clearly retarded, had speech impairments etc. Their parents often died from exposure to the chemicals. Their faces and hands turned pink and then they died, apparently. The local historian that I had the great fortune to meet on a few occasions, was mentioned too, and that made me sad. He was such a fantastic man and will be sorely missed. It’s like this town will never be the same without him.
Don’t get me wrong. This man – who actually is my former principal – had done his research well – and despite his own misgivings, his voice carried fine too. He told us he was disappointed his voice was so weak these days, since it used to be his instrument of work, as it were. It was scary to see the way he’d aged since I last saw him. He probably wasn’t exactly young at the time, it was kind of hard to tell for me as a teenager. All grownups looked the same, and besides I only ever saw him close up a few times, but still, I don’t think I’d have known if he hadn’t talked about his former job. Oh, well, that’s how it goes. I must try to get used to it, but I hate living in the same town I went to school in. There’s really no one from my old school I’d like to meet. Well, there was one guy, but sadly he’s dead so that’s not going to happen… 🙁
Another thing that bothered me was that all the other people in the audience were old. Retired people. It makes me sad to see old age and especially a whole room full.
Italian, Latin, Interlingua
Italian has to be the most beautiful language in the world – at least some dialacts. Lots of people are in agreement about that, so it’s not just my personal opinion. It’s about as easy (or difficult, if you see it that way) as Spanish. The languages are closely related. Just like Spanish, Italian comes from Latin, which was spoken in Ancient Rom. Italy was the homeland of the Romans.
Since I’m interested in history and subjects related to it, it’s especially nice to know Italian. In Italy many books are written about history, archaeology, art history and so on.
Italian is spoken mainly in Italy and in parts of Switzerland. I also happen to know that the people of Malta speak Italian, along with their native language Maltese and their ‘adopted’ language English. Also, there are people who have emigrated from Italy and who still speak their old language. They might be found anywhere in the world, but I think mostly in the US, Canada and Australia. In all, about 60 million people speak Italian, most of them in Europe.
And even if it’s got nothing to do with the language, I love Italian food. The various pastas and pizzas have such incredibly appetizing names. Don’t words like fettucine, lasagna, cannelloni och tagliatelle seem to taste just as well as the pasta by those names?
I’ve also studied Latin, but it’s really difficult. It’s a language that is at the same time unsophisticated and hard to learn. The grammar is tough. Though I have heard that ancient Greek, Russian and Serbo-Croatian are more difficult. A bit of Latin is good to know, if you want to study other modern languages. (Well, maybe not Chinese or Japanese, but many different European languages).
There’s a modern version of Latin – Interlingua. It’s a language that has been created. Basically, it’s simplified but more expressive than Latin. Mainly, it’s based on Spanish and Italian (with a bit of French, English and a number of other languages). The best thing about this language, is that you don’t need to learn it to understand it. If you’ve studied Spanish or Italian you’ll have no trouble understanding Interlingua. Of course, it’s more difficult to learn to write and speak, but then the same goes for every other language.
Since Interlingua has been created without any complicated grammar, it should be easier to learn than other languages. I haven’t studied it myself, but I can assure you that it’s very easy to understand text written in Interlingua.
You sometimes hear proposals about turning Latin into the EU’s official language. Whoever is suggesting that, can’t possibly have tried to study Latin himself – or it’s some professor of Latin who’s forgotten how difficult the language really is. However, now that there’s Interlingua (and a few similar languages), we could use that instead. Since it’s so easy to understand, most people would be able to read all the documents and articles written in it, without any further studies. Only the people who write those documents (or translate them) would have to learn Interlingua. Even if you did have to learn it, it doesn’t seem to be difficult.
I suspect that the reason proposals are made about making Latin the offical language of the EU, is because it would be awkward using a modern language that is still being used by one or several countries. That might give that country (or countries) an unfair advantage over the other member countries. Latin, on the other hand, isn’t officially spoken anywhere except for in the Vatican. Even better, Interlingua is spoken nowhere and everywhere, depending on wherever the students of the language live. It seems to me that it couldn’t get any fairer than that.
Language: Spanish and Portuguese
My next language was Spanish. Just like French, it was quite easy to learn. It’s quite similar to latin, which was, in a way, the English of ancient times. In Europe, it’s mostly spoken in Spain. Some people say that it’s also spoken in Andorra (but I think that’s because many Spaniards live there). Spanish is also spoken in North Africa and in the Philippines, and naturally in South America (also known as Latin America – in Mexico, Central America, some islands in the Caribbean).
According to some estimates, Spanish – or as people speaking the language outside Spain like to call it – Castilian – Castellano, is spoken by about 250 million people. That’s in no way an exact figure, but what you can be sure of is that spanish is a language that is good to know. It’s probably right behind English as ‘the most useful language in the world’. Though some people say that about French.
Here are some books that you might want to read: Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written several good books. So far I haven’t managed to read any of them in the original language, but I will, as soon as I can. Especially One Hundred Years of Solitude. I have read Love in the Time of Cholera, and with a few exceptions, it was really interesting. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in Spanish.
In Latin American literature the so called magical realism is typical. If I’ve understood it correctly, it means that the stories are a bit like fantasy or fairy tales. Many people recommend Isabel Allende’s book, The House of Spirits. I haven’t read it myself, not even in other languages, but it’s supposed to be good.
Since I’ve studied Spanish and Italian, I’d like to learn some Portuguese as well. Portugal is a fairly small country, but Portuguese is also spoken in Brazil. Also in a couple of countries in Africa, and in Asia – Macao. Portugal was, like Spain, the Netherlands, England and France good at colonizing and winning wars. Portuguese is spoken by about 10 million people in Portugal, and nearly 180 million people in Brazil. That adds up to about 200 million people worldwide.
Language: French
My third language was French. It’s not very difficult either, at least I don’t think so. Sure there are some irregular verbs, but I never worried much about that. That might be because I was quite young at the time. I’ve read that if you learn your first foreign language before the age of six, any other language you learn after that will be easier too. And speaking of learning languages, though this may be irrelevant, I recently read that if you play a musical instrument, it makes it easier to learn (any subject, apparently).
French is quite a beautiful language. Though I don’t find Swedish, Finnish and English particularly ugly. I won’t tell you which languages I find ugly. One of the difficulties with French is that it’s quite difficult to get enough practice. The best you can do is travel to France and stay there for at least a year. But how many people can do that? I’ve realized that I’ll never be completely fluent in French, and I’ve accepted that.
I’m doing my best with what I’ve got. I watch tv, read fiction, and listen to French music. As it happens, there are several sci fi books by French author Jules Verne. My favorite book is Voyage au centre du terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth). I’ve also read Paris au XXìeme siècle (Paris in the Twentieth Century), but that wasn’t such a good book. It’s easy to understand why Verne’s publisher wouldn’t accept that book. When I was a child I used to read some French books (translated into Swedish).One of those is Tistou les pouces verts (Sorry, don’t know what that’s called in English) by Maurice Druon. I’ve read it recently and I have to say that it’s probably the sort of story a child will appreciate more.
I’ve also found a series of historic mysteries by a guy called Jean-Francois Parot. The series is about Nicolas Le Floch, who works as a police officer in Paris in the 18 century, during l’Ancien Régime (before the Revolution).
Of course, you can cheat. Read books translated into French. I’ve done that, but it isn’t all that great, if you want to learn the language properly. The book was first written in one language, then the translator has to create a version of the book in his or her language. How much of the original language flavor is lost that way?
The French and the Belgians make lots of great comics. That’s one good way of practicing a language. TinTin and Laureline et Valerian (not sure what they’re called in English, sorry) are a few good examples, and there are many others. Read them if you’re into comics.
French is of course, spoken in France, but also in Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monaco, parts of Africa, parts of Asia and in parts of Canada, primarily Quebec. Also in the Caribbean (several islands, where people also speak creole, which is supposed to be based on French), and South America (French Guyana) and in some smaller islands in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
There are different opinions about how many people really speak French in the world today. To some extent that depends how you define ‘francophone’. Does that include everyone who speaks French as their first language, or everyone who is able to communicate relatively fluently in French, or everyone who has ever studied French for a few years? In any case, the number of French speaking people is somewhere between 100 miljoner and more than 200 miljoner. It’s said that French is the most useful language to learn, unless you count English, though that is being said about Spanish and a few other languages as well.
With Christianity and the increasing influence of the church, latin became mixed into Swedish (and most likely the same thing happened Norway and Denmark as well).
During the 17 and 18 century, France was a major political power in Europe (though up until the early 1700’s, Sweden too, was a political power to be reckoned with, at least in the Baltic area). From France terms connected to science and culture made its way into the Swedish language (and many other European languages).
Finally (well, up until now), during the second half of the 20 century, English began its victorious conquest of the other languages of the world. Of course, as I’ve already explained, I prefer to call this version of the English language Anglo.
The reason for this is that I don’t speak English, and neither do my friends in Lithuania and India. We’re not English and we don’t live in England. Some people do their best to imitate the English as it’s spoken in England or in the US. I prefer not to. I’ve never spent much time in the UK – never for longer than about two weeks at a time.
Language – Anglo (English)
English might not need a closer introduction, but I’ll say a few words about it anyway. Nowadays, you simply can’t get along without english.
Personally, I don’t find english difficult at all. Unlike many other languages, you can practice English almost daily. English is all around. That can be practical since you need to learn it. I started learning it when I was about two years old. Actually, it was mom who was going to study, but I was the one who found it a lot of fun, so I was the one who learned the most.
English is spoken practically everywhere, by several billion people (at least as a second or a third language). As a first language it’s spoken by about 300 million people. Wherever you go, you can probably get by with English.
I prefer to refer to the international version of English as Anglo. That’s because I live in Northern Europe, and my friends in for instance Lithuania and India, hardly speak English. I mean, we don’t live in England, and we’re not from there. We don’t speak American either, like the people of the USA, or Canadian, as they do in Canada, or aussie or oz (or whatever they call it in Australia) etc. Anglo. If you have a better suggestion, please let me know.
Language 2
In general, I can say, that with the exception of English (Anglo), it’s difficult to become really fluent, unless you’re prepared to travel to the country where the language is spoken, to work or study, for at least a year. Sure you can do that, if you’re content to study one or two languages, but if you want to know several it could be difficult. The best I can do, is read as many books as possible and watch tv and movies in the language in question.
Another thing you can do, is to take advantage of the internet. There are news sites, in many different languages and sometimes free literature for download. Of course there are all kinds of web pages in many different languages. Apart from that, there are also sites dedicated to the study of languages, with forums and chat rooms, where you can use the language.
Without the internet, I would have been able to use so many of my languages.
I’ve chatted with people in French, German, Spanish and Italian (not always completely successfully, I might add). Unfortunately, not everyone you encounter want to help you out. Instead they choose to get by in their own, not always so great, English. But if you do meet someone who wants to help you, it’s the best. Much better than any dictionary.
You can also use the computer offline. I’ve bought a language software, Languages of the World. Most of the major languages of the world are available on those CD:s, but I think it might be best to just use the program to practice languages you’ve already studied, rather than starting out with a new language.
