Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

swedish idioms painfully literally translated into english

silvysartfulness:

speculativexenolinguist:

useless-swedenfacts:

- now you’ve shat in the blue cupboard

- the taste is like the butt

- there’s no cow on the ice

- i sense owls in the marsh

- to walk like a cat around hot porridge

- don’t paint the devil on the wall

- to be out biking

- cake on cake

okay @chigrima @silvysartfulness  I need you guys to help me out: what are the actual Swedish phrases AND WHAT DO THESE MEAN?!

@chigrima is probably replying to this as I type, but that only means you get twice the swedesplaining, @speculativexenolinguist . u.u

- now you’ve shat in the blue cupboard

Actual phrase: Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpet.

As far as a I know, this one dates back to ye olde times, where you’d store the night pot in a cupboard by the bed. In the kitchen area, you had another fancier cabinet (blue, for example, is fancy, maybe some flowers painted on there, pretty stuff) where you kept the “china” to eat on. So to say you’ve shat in the blue cupboard means you’ve made a huge mistake - like using your dinner china for going poo-poo in.

- the taste is like the butt (divided)

Actual phrase: Smaken är som baken - delad

Literally means that just the way the butt is split into two ass-cheeks, so peoples’ tastes and preferences may be divided. The last part of the idiom is often left out since everyone knows what it is.

- there’s no cow on the ice

Actual phrase: Det är ingen ko på isen.

A cow that’s gotten lost from the pasture and wandered onto the frozen nearby body of water is bad. You may end up with drowned cow. So as long as there’s no cow on the ice, whatever you need to do isn’t really in a hurry. If there WAS a cow on the ice, you’d be in a rush to fix it before it got worse, though.

- i sense owls in the marsh

Actual phrase: Jag anar ugglor i mossen

It means to suspect foul play (fowl play, ha, see it works in English, too), that something’s not quite right. Since I didn’t know how it originated, I’ll leave you with the wisdom of Wikipedia - it’s originally a Danish idiom where the owls were actually wolves (which makes more sense, something creepy’s about) that got mistranslated into owls because apparently unbaptised children who died out of wedlock turned into owly marsh-spirits-… you know, that’s fucked up creepy, too. That, and I now feel a very strong urge to incorporate cursed owl-featured child-zombies of the marshes into like ALL my original stories. Anyway. Moving on.

- to walk like a cat around hot porridge

Actual phrase: Att gå som katten kring het gröt.

Circling but evading an issue, being reluctant to bring something up. Porridge was often served with butter and milk, which were tasties for cats. But the porridge was too hot, so the cat would just slink around, waiting for it to cool down. So evading something until, preferably, someone else brings it up or it goes away. Like the heat of the porridge.

- don’t paint the devil on the wall

Actual phrase: Måla inte fan på väggen

This is so visually poetic. It means you shouldn’t invite trouble, or borrow misery. Things might just work out fine, so if you start painting up vivid scenarios of everything that COULD go wrong, you may end up screwing things up for yourself. Don’t.

- to be out biking

Actual phrase: Nu är du helt ute och cyklar

Means to be completely and utterly wrong, way off topic, making no sense. Like being out biking and getting yourself utterly lost. Which happens faster if you’re biking than walking? Or something.

- cake on cake

Actual phrase: tårta på tårta

Literally means to stack one cake on top of another. Ie doing something to extreme excess, exaggerating, too much of any one thing. Is often used about language taking a turn for the purpler - you needn’t describe the polar bear to be furry and white, it’s a polar bear, they’re ALWAYS furry and white, kinda thing.

Finally, because no post about Swedish is complete without it, I shall add on my very favourite Swedish insult: Skitstövel. It literally means shit-boot, and I think that’s beautiful.

(via rumpenstiltzkin)

cups-of-tea-and-history:

violetimpudence:

prokopetz:

I love the phrase “what the entire fuck” because it implies that there exists some scenario that warrants only a “what the partial fuck”.

Well, since there are clearly scenarios which warrant giving zero fucks, it seems plausible to infer that there exists a 0 … 1 scale of fuckitude, containing a potentially infinite number of fractional fuckery scenarios.

Fractional Fuckery Scenarios is going to be my first short story collection.

(via threegoblinsinatrenchcoat)

adogadogonedog:

kimerakincaid:

the asl sign for “transgender“ is basically the same as the sign for ”beautiful“ but signed at the chest instead of in front of the face.

so that’s cool.

this is my imperfect not-a-fluent-signer understanding but:

(based on a presentation by a deaf trans guy i was at in 2005 where he was promoting that sign)

it seems like that sign was invented and implemented by trans people over the last 10-ish years. before that the predominant vocabulary was “sex change” and then some deaf trans people were like “yo fuck that” and came up with the current sign, which starts off with the sign for “myself,” then motion that indicates both change and coming together, and ends with the closed hand held against the sternum.

and in the process it also mimics the sign for “beautiful”

and because of spatial grammar, things closer to the front of your body in ASL are generally more vital, more emphatic, more immediate, more present.

so it’s actually a case where the word coherently indicates “beauty” and “self transformation” and contains hints of the complete thought of “my self transforming, through a coming together of disparate factors, into something more real, immediate, and vital than I was before.”

so yeah. that’s just fuckin’ awesome.

and that’s just the way to express that concept now.

(via hypnoplasmids)

I feel bad about myself when it comes to language

because generally I don’t give a crap about spelling and grammar

if you communicate the point then well done you won the game congratulations I don’t care how you did it that’s more than most people manage and I mean fuck look at the garbage I’m typing now not a punctuation mark in sight after I went to bloody British grammar school for how many goddamn years and do I give two shits no I do not

this also applies to keysmash because I mean damn if you feel KAFHLSKAHFGKLASG then you feel KAFHLSKAHFGKLASG ain’t nobody going to tell you otherwise

and yet

and yet

if you say things like ‘b4’ and 'u r’

UNIRONICALLY

I will judge you

until your dying

day

…

and then even after that because your epitaph would probably be 'YOLO’

yeah so that’s why I feel bad about language in regards to my massive hypocritical self but I am still judging yooooooouuuuu