Stoppa Svengelskan!

Easy tips to avoid sounding like a Yank



There are many of us who do pretty well with the Swedish language, thank you, but once in a while we let something slip - some little phrase or word or formulation that tips off the Swedes that we are really just fakes and wannabe-Swedes.

If you want to suppress those nasty Anglicisms in your speech, then study Karl-Erik Tallmo's Talar du svengelska? - undvik anglicismer! This is a handy guide to some of the common ways that we native English-speakers mutilate the Swedish language.

Tallmo lives in Stockholm and also publishes an electronic cultural magazine for the Web called the Art Bin.

I am sure someone could put together a similar list of those little Swedishisms that your Swedish friends just can't seem to expunge from their speech in English. (It could even cover physiological tip-offs as well as linguistic, such as that short, frightening gasp/inhaling sound that means simply "yes"). If there are any volunteers, please send a note to the editor at no.longer@possible.com ( REMEMBER this is HISTORY, thus it is useless to write ! )



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