2002-07-26 14:20 (UTC+1)

I'm as busy as a spider spinning daydreams...

There's a thread on sci.lang about the pronounciation of Swedish "sk"/"sj"/"skj" - follow along on Google Groups if you don't speak Usenet. (Google hasn't collected my posts, yet, but it does have posts that haven't made it to my swerver. Usenet!)

Anyway, Tommi Ojanper� says

Here's a quote from Bertil Malmberg's "Svensk Fonetik" (p. 94):
"Fonemet /S/ i ord som _sk�r, skina, sju, skjorta_ uppvisar i svenskan en rik flora av varianter. Vi kan med en betydande f�renkling urskilja tv� huvudtyper, en fr�mre (apikal eller predorsal) och en bakre (dorsal)."

Bertil Malmberg wrote a book on the phonetics of Swedish! In Swedish! Once again I can only curse the fact that I was born in a world where Swedish booksellers won't do business with utlanders.

I like Malmberg's stuff, as we've established already and if I had a copy of this book I wouldn't bother trying to give an account of Swedish phonetics - I would merely refer people to the appropriate section in Malmberg. (Whether this would be a net gain or loss to the universe is another question altogether, of course.)

(And while I'm geeking out on phonetics again, I'll put in a mention for Stacey Kent singing Richard Rogers. It's the intense rhoticism she brings the word "care(s)" - on Nobody's Heart (Belongs To Me) in this case - that does it for me. If she ever makes an album without that word on it I'll be heartbroken)

2002-07-26 9:20 (UTC+1)

Now with 25% extra bliss!

I got distracted by an outbreak of beer last night, so I haven't been able to do a full scholarly exegis of my various sources, so I'll wing it. (Whatever I write, whenever I write it - that's Desbladet's Quality Pledge!)

I don't seem even to have linked the Aftonbladet Vickan special, which was very thoughtless indeed. It's really wildly entertaining and defies compact summary - the prolix vacuity of it is precisely what makes it fun.

Since I have now the very latest Point de Vue and it is indeed the long awaited Vickan cover story I'll be brief (I have urgent wallowing to do):

She is dating Daniel Westling, but it's not really fair to call him a personal trainer - he's the owner of an exclusive Stockholm gymn (2000 euros a year subscription) and he only trains selected clients. Besides, as Point de Vue points out, he is well-mannered, docile and has strong bones and teeth. It seems that his merits as potential breeding stock are becoming widely appreciated - from Aftonbladet:

I natt fick hennes pojkv�n Daniel Westling festa med Europas alla kungligheter.

Nu �r han accepterad av b�de kungen och Silvia.

Assuming that he managed to put up with Europas alla kungliheter ("That's Mr Your Gracious Majesty to you, proletarian pondslime!") it would seem that he is getting the Official Stamp of Approval. Even Aftonbladet's unders�kning approves.

Really, I think everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when Vickan is safely paired off and we can use the example of her (inevitable) domestic harmony to reproach Madeleine for her (equally inevitable) tempestuous and scandalous love life.

2002-07-25 14:42 (UTC+1)

Haphazard Hermeneutics

It's not often that I get involved in a genuine theological debate, and that's the way I like it. Trust me, Varied Reader, when I say that there are important matters at stake here, also.

AKMA says:

[I]magine an impious blasphemer who writes out longhand a copy of the words of the Bible, but illustrates it not with exquisite medieval woodcuts and delicate illuminations, but with caricatured exaggerations of all the most awkward passages, and who emphasizes everything that would embarrass the sensitive interpreter. I'd argue that one might make a case that this vandal had not in fact written out a copy of the Bible, even if the text of the scroll, or book, were identical to an approved version of that book.

This goes beyond Borges - Menard's Quixote was still the Quixote, even though it was different from that of Cervantes. I would counter, in my best King James' Pastiche:

A Pharisee came to AKMA and said,
A certain man had an impious son.
And it came to pass that this man became blind and could no longer read the word of the LORD, and he asked his son to read for him.
And his son, in his wickedness, obtained a copy of the scriptures illustrated with caricatured exaggerations of all the most awkward passages and emphasizing everything that would embarrass the sensitive interpreter.
And the son read to his father from this wicked book, and delighted much in its wickedness.
And it came to pass one day that the son was away wasting his substance with riotous living in a distant town, and the blind man asked his neighbour to read from him in his son's place.
And the neighbour was a devout man, and when he saw the book he was sore displeased. And yet there was no other copy of the scriptures to be had, for the impious son in his wickedness had destroyed them.
And the neighbour of the blind man read to him from the book, and he was much moved in his heart.
And the Pharisee asked AKMA saying,
And on which of these occasions were the scriptures read, and on which of them were the scriptures heard?

2002-07-25 10:30 (UTC+1)

Tack s� mycket, Fiona!

I've just this day received a care parcel from Desbladet's roving Scottish correspondent, now thought to be in at least one of Copenhagen, K�penhamn or K�benhavn. Not only is there a whole copy of the marvellous Svensk Damtidning (my absolute favourite magazine in the whole wide world) but also selected highlights from the output of Svensk Elle and Cosmopolitan magazines.

So things may be a little quiet for a while, while I digest all this yummy goodness.

2002-07-24 13:41 (UTC+1)

In which I tell you how I live, and what it is I do

He said, " I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread -
A trifle; if you please."

From The Aged Aged Man by Lewis Carroll

I don't, of course. But yesterday I wrote (in Python) a program to convert Swedish ASCII IPA into Unicode for no better reason than to relieve the stress of working on my Official Work (and not-at-all linguistic) code and watched visitor numbers climb to record levels (thanks largely to Francis's recommendation) and wondered, not for the first time, if I should attempt some kind of biography for the benefit of newcomers.

And then I remembered that the Jargon File has an appendix which does a better job of describing who I am than I ever seem able to manage - the rest can be glarked from context.

2002-07-24 10:07 (UTC+1)

It was on the road to Abergaveny that the rain began to take hold...

A self-proclaimed Urban Futurist, I am besotted with concrete, steel and neon. The most beautiful landscape I know is the skyline of a Japanese city at night - the Pachinko parlour signs beaming their benevolent siren calls over the high-rise expressways that carry the bulk of the traffic six storeys up. At street level, too, the happy glow of yakitori-ya and noodle bars spills out on to the streets and you can't walk more than two blocks without passing a 24/7 conveni (7/11 isn't the force it was, but FamilyMart has taken up the slack).

You might not, then, expect me to delight in the search for pre-historic stone circles in the middle of the Welsh countryside, but I have a friend who does, and I share the view of many that I could stand to get out more. (Left to my own devices I would, and often do, stay in and read for a whole weekend, but I wouldn't want to do that every weekend. Or so I tell myself.)

I was prepared for all the trees and hills and grass and sheep and all that junk - even if you can't learn everything you need to know about the countryside looking out of a train window you can certainly learn all that stuff - but I wasn't prepared for the stone circles themselves, when we'd finally deciphered the combination of Ordnance Survey and gazette.

Was I struck by their timeless serenity and spiritual power, you ask?

Behave! I was struck by their size, or rather by their lack of it. It's hard to tower majestically from a height of 0.4 metres, believe me. (0.4 metres! It was very Sp�nal T�p, yes.) Besides, I am bound by a solemn oath to mock organised religion in all its forms, and I see no reason to exclude the unrecorded ceremonies of the stone age settlers of these islands. (In fact, the stone circles in question are thought to date from the bronze age, by which time - if you'll excuse my synchronically panoptical logocentrism - the Sumerians and Egyptians had both invented writing and desk jobs and other such necessary accoutrements of civilisation. I'm not calling anyone a bunch of dim provincial peasants, you understand, but really, 0.4 metres? The pyramids, it isn't.)

It is kind of neat, though, that the British countryside is liberally sprinkled with stone-age and bronze-age relics - on previous trips we've done iron-age hill forts, whatever-age burial chambers and all sorts, pretty much all of which have been unsignposted and unremarked (and in one notable case half-golf-coursed).

And of course by ancient and noble tradition the debriefing session includes drinking far too much beer and arguing about the state of the contemporary novel, and I'm always up for that and, despite the title, we didn't get rained on all that much. So hoorah, after all, for heritage!

2002-07-23 16:14 (UTC+1)

C'est magnifique! (Mais ce n'est pas la programmation.)

Messieurs Dames, the Sartre programming language:

Unlike traditional programming languages (or maybe very much like them), nothing in Sartre is guaranteed, except maybe for the fact that nothing is guaranteed. The Sartre compiler, therefore, must be case insensitive (technically, it requires all capital letters, but since nothing matters anyway, why should this?).

[...]

The Sartre language has two basic data types, the EN-SOI and the POUR-SOI. The en-soi is a completely filled heap of a specified rank, whereas the pour-soi is a dynamic structure which never has the same value. An integer may also be used in Sartre, but it may only take the value of zero (the Dada extensions to Sartre allow integers to also take on the value of "duck sauce", but that's neither here nor there--unless you happen to like duck sauce, of course).

If I didn't know better I'd think the universe were out to amuse me today.

2002-07-23 14:23 (UTC+1)

Fandom Findings

Although I've always been fond of comics, and I've certainly read my share of science fiction, I've never really quite grasped the point of fandoms - surely, I always thought, liking stuff is a simply a relationship between oneself and the stuff in question?

On the whole, I think it's probably for the best if I steer clear of Princess fandom, too, but it is out there - there's a message board dedicated to the lovely Victoria Ingrid Alice D�sir�e and also a site for the also lovely Madeleine Th�r�se Amelie Josephin.

(I haven't looked for a Mette-Marit fandom, and I'm currently doing my level best to repress even the thought of fanfic. Ewww!)

2002-07-23 12:01 (UTC+1)

Comprehensively Outclassed!

Zoinks! I thought I was a keen student of the Swedish Royal Family, but compared to Ritva I've barely scratched the surface!

I am torn between awe and intense envy at the number of skvallerbladets she has at her disposal - 17 are cited for last week. Most of them are in German, which I don't read, but I didn't even know there was a Swedish version of Se och H�r! (Even with Hello! and Point de Vue at my disposal I'm pretty comprehensively outgunned here.)

She also has a frighteningly complete chronological archive linking to all stories from the Swedish and Norwegian press since before I even started skvallering.

She doesn't do Mette-Marit or the Danes, though (Aftonbladet did eventually get around to covering the new Danish prince. Hoorah for Prince As-Yet-Unnamed!) and there's very little in English, so I think my wibblings can still Serve A Useful (Ahem) Purpose.

And if she can get Svensk Damtidning in Switzerland, then surely I can get it in the UK.

Must. Try. Harder...

2002-07-22 17:13

Danish dress codes

An Aftonbladet article on Kronprins Fred of Denmark credits Ekstra Bladet with the story, so I popped over to check it out.

I wish I hadn't bothered, now - it has sections labelled massage and escort, erotik and a side 9 pigen (page 9 girl - and as you've probably guessed she's forgotten to put any clothes on).

I've already had to write off (the net version of) Se og H�r as a source of Kunglig gossip for pretty much this reason.

("No, honestly, Mr or Ms Acceptable-Use-Policy, I was reading it for the gossip! I'm no happier about the nekkid ladies than you are!"
"You speak Danish, then?"
"Well, no. I know some Swedish, though!"
"...")

To cap it all, Billed Bladet (Danmarks royale ugeblad), the only Danish resource I knew which combined a love of royal gossip with a lack of full-frontal nudity, no longer offers any content on the web. (No stort sommernummer for you, English freeloader!)

This in turn is even more galling than it might otherwise be since the small gif of the current cover they do condescend to provide suggests that they're doing a major Vickan billed speciell right now.

In the great division between things that are as they should be and things that are otherwise I feel very strongly that this falls into the latter category.

2002-07-22 13:29 (UTC+1)

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens?

Better! Engelska p� resan - the 1971 Berlitz English phrasebook for Swedish speakers, courtesy of a second-hand bookshop in Brecon, Wales.

It explains bubble and squeak, bread and butter pudding (both firm favourites of the Desbladet editorial staff), and the then new-fangled decimal currency, and even finds space for the vital phrase Skulle ni vilja s�tta p� mig den h�r postischen/peruken? ("Would you put on this hair-piece/wig for me please?").

On the other hand they refrain - probably wisely - from attempting to explain cricket:

Tyv�rr har vi inte tid att f�rklara denna f�r England s� karakteristiska sport. Kanske r�cker det att s�ger att en match kan vara i tre dagar!

Truly, though, this is a fascinating piece of social history. Even better, there must be tons of this stuff - I now desparately want a 1950s French guidebook to England. Can you imagine what they must have made of the food?! This is arguably an even better research project than pan-European skvallerbladet studies, although I certainly don't intend to give that up.

(Incidentally, the book encourages the popular Scandinavian misconception that the English word for "kronor" is "crowns". Actually the British say "kronor", albeit with a mute r and a schwa for the second vowel.)

2002-07-22 09:51 (UTC+1)

We don't need no steenkin' service industry!

In a picture frame on top of the television:

THE REDACTED GUEST HOUSE

BREAKFAST SERVED BETWEEN 8.00 AM AND 9.00 AM.
NO BREAKFAST SERVED AFTER 9.00 AM.
EVENING MEAL SERVED 6.30 PM PROMPT.

---

IF YOU REQUIRE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST PLEASE LET US KNOW THE NIGHT BEFORE.

---

ALL ROOMS TO BE VACATED BY 10.30 AM OTHERWISE IT WILL BE ASSUMED THAT YOU WILL BE STAYING ANOTHER NIGHT AND YOU WILL BE CHARGED ACCORDINGLY.

MRS LASTNAME

We didn't get to meet Mrs Lastname - Mr Lastname seemed to be running the show. I was more than a little relieved, to be honest.