The Swedish language

Swedish people at a house party, saying Swedish expressions... OK, none of us i 100% Swedish...

My dear cool friend Maria, sent me an email today, with a link to a webpage with Swedish idiomatic expressions. Maria herself wrote something brilliant about it in her Blog and I got inspired.....

It made me remember the charming silliness of the Swedish language. I forwarded it to another Swedish friend, A, who also lives in London and who also shares the same appreciation for silly Swedish expressions as me and Maria, having lived outside of Sweden for quite some time now.

The best thing about the expressions really shows when you translate them into another language. Let's give it a shot with English and Spanish:

One of A's favourite ones is:
"Bang on the beetroot!" which means straight to the point. In Spanish it would be: "Bang en la remolacha!"

My favourite one is:

"Now there will be other buns!" which means ther will be a radical change - it can be used in both a negative and positive context. In Spanish: "Ahora habran otros bollos!"

Maria's favourite is:
"The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead" - a way to describe a not too clever person... In Spanish: "La rueda da vueltas pero el hamster está muerto"...

I admit I have just picked some of the raisins out of the cake, but the "Bang on the beetroot" is really the dot over the "i". I think it is safe to say that the thing is beef - Swedish idiomatic expressions will most likely cheer you up in some weird way. That is why I will put Rhubarbs on a few and keep my toungue correctly in my mouth and say them more often - even in English. Who said Swedish idiomatic expressions were nothing to hang in the Christmas tree?! ;-)