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2002-04-05 11:03

Several tongues galore

Several tongues galore!

An esteemed correspondent writes to suggest that I may further indulge my fascination with Scandinavian celebrity gossip via the magazines Se og H�r and Svensk DAMtidning. The first is in Danish and has a somewhat, um, Scandinavian attitude to nudity - it's perhaps not work-safe in the stuffier parts of the Anglophone world. And the second, sadly, has no website that I can find.

But in any case I am reminded that part of the appeal of Scandinavian languages is that when you buy Swedish you get 50% (Ja, femtio procent!) off Danish and if you buy both now we'll throw in Norwegian absolutely free. (Offer void where prohibited by law. Standard terms and conditions apply. Your home is at risk if you do not keep up repayments on a mortgage or other loan secured on it.)

And there's a shiny new blog on Danish phonetics to help out! And Danish has the charming letters � and � which I always think are so much more exotic and glamorous than the Swedish equivalents � and �. So I think from now on I shall declare myself to be officially useless in Swedish and Danish.

I'm also tempted by Icelandic, especially since this glossy pdf notes that some people "may learn Icelandic from an academic interest in the language and Icelandic literature". And because we just love the letters � and �.

The BBC has a page of Icelandic phrases, including the vital "I'm sorry, I don't speak Icelandic." [Both the above links from this comprehensive list]

Once upon an ever such a long time ago there was a much more poetic online phrasebooklet called Speak Icelandic Like a Restless Native which inspired many immitators and then vanished as suddenly and bewilderingly as it had come (the link above is to a mirror). It contained such phrases as: "Where is the railstation?" and "I think you have a cute president." Iceland was, of course, the first country to have an elected female head of state, but it does not have a railway system.

It also has a tutorial on pronouncing "Bj�rk" correctly, which is an important skill to have in today's fast moving cultural environment.

Sssh!

I said I wasn't going to do poetry and the world immediately conspires against me. The normally inane Aftonbladet gets all cultural with an article on T.S. Eliot's literary criticism and this delightfully vicious Christopher Hitchens article on the Queen Mother turns out to contain an unexpected (and hilarious) cameo from the great man himself. [The latter swiped from malpractice.]

Of course, the probability of anyone who is both literate in Scandinavian languages and interested in T.S. Eliot reading this blog is surely laughably small, but you just never know.

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