Languages

PluMGMK said:
Oh sorry, I guess Swedish does have masc/fem pronouns, just no masc/fem grammatical gender (which English doesn't either) :oops2:
Click to expand...
Yeah pretty much like this. I know French, German, and Spanish have those genders though, and to me it would be so confusing to get used to. One other thing Swedish has, and I'm not sure about other languages, is that you actually refer to people from family based on the side they are from.

For example, we say grandmother and grandfather, they have

farfar = father's father
farmor = father's mother
mormor = mother's mother
morfar = mother's father

They do the same with uncles and aunts etc.
 
Steo said:
PluMGMK said:
Oh sorry, I guess Swedish does have masc/fem pronouns, just no masc/fem grammatical gender (which English doesn't either) :oops2:
Click to expand...
Yeah pretty much like this. I know French, German, and Spanish have those genders though, and to me it would be so confusing to get used to. One other thing Swedish has, and I'm not sure about other languages, is that you actually refer to people from family based on the side they are from.

For example, we say grandmother and grandfather, they have

farfar = father's father
farmor = father's mother
mormor = mother's mother
morfar = mother's father

They do the same with uncles and aunts etc.
Click to expand...

True! It also reminds me of Turkish!

Anne: Mother
Anneanne: Grandmother from mom's side
Baba: Father
Babaanne: Grandmother from dad's side

This is where it changes though, as grandfather is "büyükbaba" or "dede".
 
Rsandee said:
True! It also reminds me of Turkish!

Anne: Mother
Anneanne: Grandmother from mom's side
Baba: Father
Babaanne: Grandmother from dad's side

This is where it changes though, as grandfather is "büyükbaba" or "dede".
Click to expand...
Interesting, maybe it's just common for certain languages then. The ones who do use it think English is confusing, because they're like "which grandfather, which grandmother, which uncle, etc. It seems weird to them because it's vague in comparison. Swedish though is a very specific language compared to English, everything seems so specific. Even flygplats, that's airport, it literally means "flying place".
 
It's strange that English has this problem, given that "grand" was borrowed from French. I'd have to check, but it's possible that the Germanic terms in Old English would still have had the same specificity that survives into Modern Swedish…
 
Yeah "flygplats" right? In Dutch that sounds like "vliegplaats', but we say "vliegveld", which means "fly field".
In German it's "Flughafen", which sounds like "fly harbor" in Dutch, which sounds strange.
Even more stranger: a "meer" is a lake in Dutch, while "zee" means sea.
In German: "Meer" means sea while "See" means a lake.
 
That's funny about the swapping of meanings between Meer and See :oops2: I'm guessing Meer is borrowed from French and See is native…
 
Rsandee said:
True! It also reminds me of Turkish!

Anne: Mother
Anneanne: Grandmother from mom's side
Baba: Father
Babaanne: Grandmother from dad's side

This is where it changes though, as grandfather is "büyükbaba" or "dede".
Click to expand...

dede: grandfather from mom's side in most cases. Just grandfather actually.
büyükbaba: grandfather from dad's side, but rarely used.

There is also
nene: grandmother from mom's side

And, let's not forget ebe
ebe: grandmother and also another meaning too. I am leaving for you Rsandee.
 
Returning to what I alluded to earlier: whenever I use an "Eject" button, I usually whisper to myself "eīciō eīcere eiēcī eiectum" and it feels so satisfying :hap:
 
For a while I could do it in Old Norse too, for the stong verbs. I only had that ability for a few weeks in mid-2022 though, then I lost it again from lack of practice :oops2:
 
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