I shake my fist at you, Germany!

You know what sucks worse than your country being robbed of a goal?

Your country being robbed of a goal, and then losing so badly that it doesn't matter anyway.

Yes, the ref decided that THAT was not a goal. Really now?

I'm so embarrassed, I won't be able to sing "Land of Hope and Glory" for at least another week or two.

The World Cup

High on the list of things I love about living in Sweden is how diverse my group of friends here is. If you look at the last blog post, you'll see that my friends represent a pretty wide range of nationalities. This is cool -- I've never had friends from so many different countries before. And, in Sweden, we all have something in common -- namely, an inability to understand the love affair between Swedes and pickled herring. Truly, it is inspirational. I hope one day to have such a relationship in my life.

One time that this diversity is not cool, however, is during the World Cup, when I just want a little bit of old fashioned patriotism of the flag-waving, gun-toting, evolution-banning variety*. What is NOT fun is having a Swede, a Malawian, a Dutchman, and a Ghanian over to your apartment to watch Ghana beat the US soundly in soccer. Yes, soccer. Rest of the world: bite me.

*OK, so maybe that much patriotism would be a bit of an overload... but I wouldn't say no to a Sam Adams, some apple pie, and overweight people with the American flag painted on their faces.

I am currently in mourning.

However, this story isn't over yet. Dual Citizen Katie's British citizenship has arrived to save the day! So as of now, I have renounced my American-ness (and with it, my ability to make up words...) and am officially a Brit. I'm spending the next 15 hours brushing up on my English accent, watching Harry Potter and Narnia, and finding my British passport so I can flash it like Bond. James Bond.

And tomorrow I will watch a football match over a pint between the UK and Germany with, among others, a couple of Germans. I will eat chocolate buttons and Roses. I will drink tea and eat curry. I will carry the Union Jack everywhere I go. I will walk with a cane and wear a ridiculous hat. I will wear sandals and socks. I will cause several accidents by driving on the wrong side of the road. Most importantly, however, I will lie through my teeth.

So Germany, good luck. You're going to need it.

Love,

English Katie

Wait, this is really late.

Congratulations, Class of 2010!

Annoyances

1. The fact that the sun never sets here. It rather messes with the old circadian rhythms when the sun "sets" at 130 am and rises at 2 am. The birds don't like it either, and  begin chirping round about midnight to protest this unnatural order of things.

2. The fact that in January, when I converted all my USD to SEK, the exchange rate was 1 USD:7 SEK and now it is about 1 USD: 8 SEK. And because this whole "Moving to Sweden" idea was obviously meant to be a financial investment (as opposed to a cultural, lingual, and living-on-my-ownal experience), this makes my gap year an obvious bum failure.*

*In case my internet-sarcasm didn't come through, I jest

3. How monolingual I am. Don't get me wrong, I've learned enough Swedish to follow a recipe or read a newspaper, but compared to the polygluttonous wunderkinder* around me, I am woefully... American in my linguistic capacity. Please allow me to list a brief lingual profile of the people I consider friends here, in no particular order:

*Does that count as German?

Swede #1: Swedish, English, Russian fluently, plus some German

German # 1: German and English fluently, plus a lot of Swedish

Dutchie # 1: Dutch and English fluently, plus some Swedish

Chinese # 1: Mandarin, Cantonese, English fluently, plus a lot of Swedish

Canadians # 1 & 2: English, German, Swedish fluently

Malawian # 1: English, Chichewa fluently

Swede # 2: Swedish, English fluently

American # 1: English fluently, little bit of Swedish.

American #2: English fluently, little bit of Swedish.

Katie Roe: English almost fluently, little bit of Swedish and French

Hmm, what do the three Americans on this list have in common...
4. The fact that I am leaving in 10 days and cannot bring everyone I love in Sweden home with me. (But I can try. I'll keep you posted on those efforts)

5. Kids who write entire blog entries about things that annoy them.
UmWhat?

Swedish The Fish

True story: Swedish fish don't exist in Sweden.

Swedish The Language

There's an interesting linguistic theory about the relationship between the language we speak and our thought processes. According to this theory, a native English speaker, for example, would think about certain concepts very differently than, say, a native Hopi speaker. You can read a brief but interesting account of this phenomenon in this article. For the linguistic buffs out there, here is a link that goes rather more in-depth.


So with that stellar introduction, it is now my turn to take you down the path of my own personal observations of Swedish. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. Imagine the world without my Completely Unqualified linguistic commentary. Scary, isn't it? You're welcome.

One of the most important things I've noticed about the Swedish language is how similar it is to the English language. I am far from a lingual expert, but I have studied French, German, and Swedish all to at least a passing degree of familiarity, and I can say that grammatically and vocabularily (is that a word?), Swedish is much closer to English than either French or German. In addition to the obvious vocabulary similarities (book is "livre", "Buch", and "bok" in French, German, and Swedish, respectively), the grammatical structure is very similar to English. Unlike German, Swedish nouns do not undergo any nasty declensions (eg. "The dog ran" and "I hugged the dog" would use the same word for "the dog"). Unlike French, the word order mostly makes sense (eg. "I love you", directly translated, is "I love you", instead of this "I you love" silliness).


There are a few minorish differences, though. One is the gender system. Swedish and the other Scandinavian languages are, as far as I can tell, unique in their gender system. Swedish has two genders, but unlike the classical "masculine" and "feminine" distinction, Swedish nouns are "common" and "neuter". There are rather more common nouns than neuter nouns, and the main distinction that I can find is that neuter nouns are less likely to be people or other living things. There are, however, exceptions to this – "barn" is Swedish for "child" or "baby", and is a neuter noun.



Swedish is also a fairly synthetic language. This makes it reasonably easy for a someone (read: me) who doesn't speak the language to understand a lot of vocabulary that I don't actually know. For example, dictionary is "ordbok" (Word+Book), future is "framtid" (Forward+Time), Toast is Rostbröd (Roasted+Bread), and so on and so forth.



Another interesting anachronism is "I'm sorry". First of all, Swedes are not big on apologies in the first place, so if a Swede apologizes to you, brace yourself for some seriously bad news. On the scale of "You didn't REALLY like your laptop, did you?" or "Whoops, I thought the safety was on that gun".
So how, exactly, do Swedes apologize? They say "Förlåt mig", which directly translates to "forgive me". This always throws me off a little… shouldn't I get to decide whether or not I forgive someone? It feels a bit strange to me that a Swedes way of apologizing is to demand forgiveness, but… Swedes can be a bit brusque that way.


Similarly, Swedes are not big on saying "How are you?" as a common greeting. There is an equivalent – "Hur mår du?" – but I get the feeling that it is used more when there is a genuine desire for an information transfer – eg. "You just returned to work from minor surgery. Hur mår du?" – rather than "Good morning, I haven't seen you since yesterday at five o'clock. Hur mår du?" Except they would actually never say that much, because they consider excess verbosity to be a sign of weakness*.


*Case in point: Many Swedes will take you by the shoulders and physically move you if you are in their way in a public place rather than say "excuse me"


The most informative glimpse into the Swedish lingual psyche, though? I would have to say it is the Swedish word "gift", which means both "married" and "poison".


So if a Swede proposes, before you make a rostbröd to your framtid, get out the ordbok and make sure you really know what they're talking about.


And if they follow their proposal with "förlåt mig", just start running.

Disappearing Act

So I haven't posted for awhile, largely because I've been rather busy. In the past month, I have visted Holland and the UK, and hosted my mum for a visit! (It was lovely, love you Mum). I am currently preparing for a visit next week from my lovely friend from the States. When combined with your typical Stockholm activities (fairs, concerts, and the like), I've been a pretty busy person.

I haven't had time to write a proper post detailing the events in my life, and I keep on putting it off. I decided, however, that a short post is better than nothing. So, hello. I'm still alive. I'm a bit better-travelled than I was a month ago.

All the Swedish gymnasiums (Translation: high schools) graduated this week, so there has been much partying throught Stockholm! Also, I went to see Mando Diao, a relatively well-known Swedish band, which was fun, except for the part where some creep in the audience stole my phone! For shame!

A better post later, I promise, but here is June's first post, and with it, the first post of my last month in Sweden!