LillaGrisen's "Thank you"-thread

@creativemetaphor I saw your comment a couple of days back and was like "when I get the time, I have to reply". Of course, I then forgot all about it :cold_sweat:

But you're very welcome for the gifts! I don't think I need that much patience with your Swedish-skills, they're not questionable at all - I blame the lack of dots on your keyboard :wink: (unless your keyboard is Swedish. Then I blame it on you :lol:)
I also see no shame in using a translator to check if you understood a word/sentence correctly. Truth be told I do it all the time with English :kissing_closed_eyes:

By the way, no that you have to answer this question if you feel like it's too personal, but I was wondering why you are learning Swedish? I'm curious since it isn't exactly the most useful language (seeing how you could fit most of Sweden's population in NYC) and I can't imagine you started just because you wanted to know the origin of "common" words such as smorgasbord, ombudsman, gauntlet and tungsten :kissing: (useless trivia: tungsten literally means "heavy stone", but the metal itself goes by the name volfram in Swedish)

@LillaGrisen :lol: I do that all the time! (the whole I'll reply when I have a moment and then forget!)

I decided to learn Swedish since min morfars foraldrar kommer fram Sverige. (forgot how to make kommer past tense) So I'm a quarter Swedish. I'm also poking at Irish since I also have a lot of Irish heritage as well.

And no, I don't have a Swedish keyboard but I'm also being a little bit lazy, I *could* still figure it out...

And tungsten!! I know! :lol: I was laughing so hard when I figured that one out!

I do listen to some Swedish music (or well, Nordic anyway.) And no, I don't mean ABBA (but I do like them). I have some Garmarna, Hedningarna, and Gjallarhorn CDs, and some other random stuff off youtube that I like. And of course the movie The 13th Warrior, cool to hear the dialogue at the beginning (I'm guessing probably Norwegian or Icelandic?)

@creativemetaphor If you meant to write "My maternal grandfather and grandmother came from Sweden" that would be "Min morfar och mormor kom från Sverige" :smile:

I think it's nice that you're looking into your heritage. Personally I think Irish has a very nice ring to it and it looks beautiful as well, though my head kind of hurts when I try to make the connection between the written word and the spoken word - I wouldn't exactly say a word is pronounced the way it's spelled :lol: (Just realised it might sound like I actually know Irish. I don't know Irish. My knowledge of Irish is limited to my interest in various folklores :joy:)

Lol, while probably the most famous Swedish band, ABBA is far from the only Swedish band. I think Sweden actually is in second place when it comes to the most metal bands per capita (curse you Finland!)
I've never heard of that movie nor those bands before, but I gave the bands a listen and I'll definitely be adding those to my mental "to listen to"-list! I though they were great and very much down my alley! :blush: Though I think you should be warned that the Swedish they use is a bit older, so don't get discouraged if you don't understand what they're singing (I guess that's why it's called folkmusic :lol:)

As for the movie I looked up that it takes place in the late 10th century, which probably would make that language spoken Old Norse. That language is obviously dead today, but I'm pretty sure that Icelandic is pretty close; unlike Sweden, Denmark and Norway which have been heavily influenced by Germany the last couple of centuries (Danish being the language closest to German, Norwegian being the least similar I would say, perhaps understandibly so), Iceland is a tiny island pretty much in the middle of nowhere - no German influence there! :wink:

Actually you caught me just as I was editing because I realized I had the generation wrong! should be "min morfars foraldrar" I think? My grandpa's parents. But thank you for the correction on the rest :)

And yes, I've tried to describe Irish as "they ignore half the letters and mispronounce the rest" :lol: but I'm kinda getting the hang of it. Though when I'm supposed to add h's and b's and whatnot before or after letters is still just a huge mystery no matter how many times I read the rules! Though I can FAKE knowing Irish really really well because I bought The Hobbit in Irish, and since I know the beginning by heart I can totally pretend to sit there and translate it :lol:

I have heard that Icelandic is nearly unchanged from Old Norse, which I find very cool. I also play in a medieval reenactment group and so find learning anything medieval to be very fascinating! I would *love* to visit Iceland, as well as Scandinavia in general. I'm not sure where in Sweden my great grandparents came from but I'd love to see it!

I had noticed that the Swedish in some of the songs didn't align exactly with what I was learning, but then neither does a lot of English music so, eh. Glad you liked the sound!

@creativemetaphor Oh, geez, three generations back, now that's a bit more complicated :sweat_smile: I'd probably do something like "min s föräldrar" if that makes sense (it probably doesn't for now, but I'll try to explain). In this instance I think it would be something like "min mammas farföräldrar" (my mom's father's parents).
Also, I just want to make sure you are aware that Swedish has different words depending on if you're talking about maternal grandmothers/grandfathers or paternal grandmothers/grandfathers. "Mormor" (lit. mother-mother) is only used for example for maternal grandmothers, whereas paternal grandmothers are called "farmor" (lit. father-mother).

That's awesome with the Hobbit :lol: I wonder sometimes who thought that those spellings made any sense whatsoever. I remember when I was in 7th grade (I think) we got an assignment in English class where we were supposed to prepare a presentation about something related to Ireland. I, as the fantasy-fantast I am, chose of course to do a presentation about Irish folklore and mythological creatures, since they have some pretty nice - and not to mention famous - ones including the banshee, the dullahan and leprechauns. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the "shee" in banshee was originally spelt "sidhe" :joy:

I've heard that as well, though I thought I'd omit that since I really didn't bother to check for any reliable source to confirm it. School has broken me, lol. Now I always feel a need to find a reliable source to confirm what I want to say if I want to say it :sweat_smile:
I'd like to learn Iceladic some day, though. How cool wouldn't that be, to be able to go around telling people that I basically can speak Old Norse? :mrgreen:

When you say "medieval reenactment", do you mean like larping? Do you reenact certain events and the characters that participated in them or do you make your own stories based on the Middle Ages?

I also like learning about the medieval time period. I mean, I'm fascinated by most history before 19th century, but I think the Middle Ages are just far enough to make it "mysterious", but not so far that I have to read about an intrigue-riddled empire commiting cultural genocide (at least when it comes to European history).

As for visiting Sweden I think you'll find it rather disappointing :confused: Unfortunately we're not as much vikings as we are politcally correct. This is probably what you'll find:


*see Edit 2: Not sure if this would interest you, but we actually do have a show in Sweden called "Allt för Sverige" (google tells me it's called the Great Swedish Adventure in the US), where Americans with Swedish heritage come to Sweden in search of their ancestors and to learn more about the country. Just thought I'd put it out there in case you ever decide to try and find where your Swedish ancestors lived :wink: If nothing else, I think it might be available in the US as well (don't take my word for it!), so you could probably watch it and learn some crappy Swedish (their Swedish-lessons usually consist of slightly outdated expression that were used mainly in the 80s or something. Certainly not expression I've used casually in my lifetime :lol:)

Watching this huge comment I really wish I could give you a TL;DR, but I'm not sure how. If you read all of it, I'm so sorry to have put you through this :cry:

Edit: Forgot about the last part. I totally agree that some songs just have such a weird rythm you can't even tell what they're singing. I, for example, really enjoy metal with influences of opera and classical music (I think the genre is called symphonic metal?), but sometimes they just sing in such a high-pitched voice I can barely follow the lyrics even when they're written down :expressionless:

Edit 2: Just realised I actually have no idea if you're American. :cold_sweat: I just assumed you were. So sorry for that :fearful: It's just that most English-speaking people here seem to be :astonished:

@LillaGrisen Yes I read it all and it was delightful! :tongue:

Oh dear lord, the polar bear comment reminded me of this:
The Great Canadian Wallpaper Festival It's a hilarious story of a Canadian playing up all the stereotypes to a naive American girl.

The medieval stuff I do is sort of like larping but less fantasy/staged and more just living the life, as it were. We try to do things as period correct as we can, but also accept that not everyone is as historically inclined as others. It's called the SCA .
I do embroidery, calligraphy, illumination,... I've even carved my very own runestone!

As for generations back, yeah, the Swedish is my mother's side, the Irish mostly comes from my father's.

I'm taking Swedish through the website Duolingo. It's pretty neat, that's where I'm taking the Irish as well!

@LillaGrisen :lol: Yep, American. It *is* a safe assumption ;)

@creativemetaphor Hahahaha! Loved that story, will be bookmarking that for future laughs :joy:

I've actually heard of the SCA before when I've been out and about on the internet looking for information on medieval stuff. Unfortunately not a big thing in Sweden, but then it's also a really small country. Sounds like fun, though; I really like the thought of learning how to carve my own runestone!

I'm Swedish on my mother's side as well :lol: I'll also be checking out Duolingo. Maybe I could brush up my German-skills :smiley: And learn some Polish, and then some-- *sigh* ...I have a long list of languages I'd like to learn. :disappointed:

Edit: Lol, just noticed they're working on Klingon for English speakers :lol:

@LillaGrisen Yup, the format is sort of set but the actual languages are crowd-sourced by people who are fluent in both languages so anyone can start a course in any language!

I totally forgot to post here last time as well, but thank you again @MariTomKaulitZ for your gift! I have added you to... "the list" :wink:

And many thanks also goes out to @lauravonawesome who also recently gifted me :blush: That's so kind of you! :smile: