Rickard "is afraid" (Page 1 of 2)

pedrotuga: you must read my posts to find a very bad english

It's a language trick, a very common one. And not only in English and Swedish, but others countries as well. For example the *same* expression exist in French, with the same meaning. It has various means, depending on the exact context, but they mostly aren't strong one, that doesn't change the sentence or the original meaning.

I'm glad you brought up "Swenglish". I was actually planning on blogging about this, but I guess I'll write it down here instead. One thing in particular regarding Swenglish that annoys the hell out of me, is how Swedes have a tendency to confuse the letter v for w. Pretty much every day I hear someone on Swedish television pronounce MTV as MTWE, Windows Vista as Windows Wista or Eurovision as Eurowision. I throw up a little in my mouth every time I hear someone say it. I have no idea where this comes from. The letter W wasn't even properly included in the Swedish alphabet until earlier this year (going from 28 to 29 letters). I guess one potential cause for the confusion is the fact that the English translation of many Swedish words have v swapped out with w:

Vete -> Wheat
Vi -> We
Sverige -> Sweden

I don't know. Still bugs me though.

Lots of people who speak english as an additional language swap Vs and Ws I find. One thing I must say though, I am always extremely impressed with your english, I am sure it is better than mine

I wouldn't be sticking my tongue out so close to it?

Heh. Yeah, I guess I'll have to go thank my government or whoever controls all that too someday

That's surprising (really). The stereotype I hear here in the U.S. tends towards the opposite, i.e. "Sveden ya!"

This thread reminds me of Elmer Fudd

Be very very quiet, I'm hunting wabbits

This reminds me of my English professor of the previous two years. All conversations during those classes were in English only (I'm from Belgium, Flanders to be more precise, so we speak Dutch) and whenever someone said just a single word in Dutch, she said she did not understand Swahili. lol
I'd like to hear some Swenglish IRL btw

Back on topic then... in Dutch the expression "I'm afraid..." also exists: "Ik ben bang dat...", and in French too: "J'ai peur que...". So it really isn't just English!

I'm sure the Dutch speak English like that, but us Belgians can actually speak

The word "Swenglish" makes me chuckle every time that I see it.