Posted in Politics & Society | Tags: Languages, Sweden, USA, | Archive | 12 Comments »

I hate when it’s assumed that American things are universal things. Like A Wikipedia article I read a couple of days ago, written entirely from an American perspective with examples only taken from USA.

Another example is one of those silly IQ tests I took online. It wasn’t a real IQ test, more like a test of how much you know about the world. Still, the problem was that half of the questions were all about USA. So since I didn’t know much about American presidents and such I’m apparently stupid.

But why should I know who the founding fathers were? I live in Sweden. We have our own famous politicians. Not to mention musicians, writers, artists, athletes and actors.

For about twenty-five years I thought Evel Knievel was a Star Wars character. I mean, just listen to the guys name! It really could be a space opera name! I understand that he’s quite a legend in the US but once again, why should I know that? I’m Swedish.

Speaking of USA. Which English do you guys speak and write? American or British? My English is probably a mix of both but in school I was taught British English. It’s hard not to mix in American English though since I no longer study the language but only encounter it online, in movies, music and books. And of course American English is the most common in all of those medias. I still try to use the British words as much as I can though. After all, I’m European.

Plugs: Angie, k0ph, Kimmy, Grace, Becky, tiff k, Vashael, Joebs, maria, Wtfbbq, Of flamers and political history « W H I R L W I N D

Posted in Site | Tags: Languages, | Archive | 8 Comments »

Someone from France Googled “blog teenage 14 years nue” and ended up on my site. I guess nue is a combination of the French word nu which means naked and the English nude. The perv must have been very disappointed because there’s no 14 year old here and no nudity either. This tops my list of weird things people Google and end up on my site.

It’s a bit disturbing that nu actually means nude in French. I got a .nu address because nu means now in Swedish and my site at the time was all written in Swedish. I may have chosen something else if I at the time had known about the French meaning, or that I’d eventually change the language of the site. Now I’m stuck with this though because after four and a half years with this address I’m reluctant to changing it. I’m used to this address and so are the people who have been visiting me in the past years.

So yeah, please keep visiting Whirlwind.NUDE

Now I wonder how many weird Google hits this blog post will give me, with all these references to nudity.

Plugs: Brian, maria, Marie Claire, Giza, kitty, Gel, Vivian, tiff k

Posted in Yada Yada | Tags: Languages, | Archive | 20 Comments »

I was just reading about the wonderful benefits of using Colagate whitening toothpaste on the toothpaste tube and stopped to think about how funny it is when they mix swedish and norwegian on grocery (and other) packages. Swedish and norwegian are very similar so to keep the lenght of the text down whoever makes the package descriptions often write the text in this weird mix of both languages since the words which aren’t exactly the same mostly are just spelled slightly differently.

So, what I started to think about was wether there are other languages which are this similar to eachother. You people from all over the world reading my blog maybe can answear that question. Is there a language similar to yours which you even if you don’t speak can understand perfectly?

When asked about how many languages I speak I always say two; swedish and english. But it’s more like two and a half really because even if I can’t actually speak norwegian I understand it.  God knows there are swedish accents which are harder to understand than norwegiean (hello skånska).

Speaking of languages, I really regret that I didn’t continue with french when I started high school. I studied it for four years but now it’s been ten years since my last french class. Need I say that I’ve forgot most of it? The only thing I really remember except for a few simple words is how to pronounce things. Put a french text in front of me and I’ll read it to you in perfect french (except for those weird R:s) but don’t expect me to understand more than ten words of what I just read to you. Funny, isn’t it?

I also knew sign language. I took sing language courses with mom, grandpa and my sister when I was a kid and also studied it in high school but that’s a long time ago so I barely remember anything of that language either. That’s such a shame because it’s a perfect thing to use when you don’t want people to know what you’re saying. Like this time when me and my sister discussed a group of people standing next to us saying in sign language that the girls were bimbos and the guy a player.

Ok this was gonna be a short entry but it obviously didn’t turn out that way. I’m gonna stop now before you fall asleep. Since I have nothing else to do I’m gonna clean my apartment, again. It’s only been three days since I last cleaned it but there’s cat hair everywhery. Laters!

Plugs: Maria, Maria, Chiui, Kari, Justin, Nile, Vashael, Monica, Nicolah, snez, Jhoice, Jaclyn, sarahc, Holly, Aleida, Sakura, Jane, Belinda, kitty

Posted in Yada Yada | Tags: Languages, | Archive | 11 Comments »

I think it’s really bad that I only speak swedish and english. It’s kind of embarassing aswell since a third language is mandatory in swedish schools. I did study french for four years between the age of 12-15 but when I started high school I chose not to continue with it. I regret that now because almost everything I once knew I’ve forgot. The only things I remember are the very basiscs. Numbers, colours, simple phrases. I can say things like “My name is Angelica, I’m swedish” and “I have a white cat”.  If I watch a french movie with swedish or english subtitles I can make out a word here and there but nothing more.

Even if I had kept studying french throughout high school I probably would have forgot a lot of it by now – more than six years later – since well, when would I get the chance to use my knowledge of french? English is everywhere in a way french isn’t. I’ve read somewhere that 75 or maybe even 85% of everything on swedish tv is in english. How much is in french? Not much.

I guess I should be happy I at least speak two languages because that’s more than many people do.

How many languages do you speak?

Plugs: katie, Laura, sarah b, Mihoriel, Kya, Bonnie, Lauren, Gel, Sakura, Ashlie