Harry Potter and the Swedish Language

I’ve wanted to learn Swedish ever since I met my Swedish husband eleven years ago. When I say he’s Swedish, I don’t mean his grandparents emigrated from Sweden, I mean he himself spent the first 24 years of his life in Sweden. He’s more than fluent; it’s his mother language. His parents speak Swedish. His brother speaks Swedish. His friends speak Swedish. I feel left out.

But learning from him just hasn’t worked out all that well, and so it’s been left to me to learn the Nordic tongue. I’ve tried audio tapes, but trouble is, I’m more of a visual learner. And then I stumbled on the perfect solution. Harry Potter.

The Harry Potter books have been translated into pretty much every language in the world, including Swedish, and I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve probably read some of the books forty or more times. Why not use my fluency in Harry to help me learn Swedish?

I won the HP Swedish books 1-6 in an epic eBay battle, and since then I’ve been battling with myself, trying to find the perfect lesson plan. I’ve abandoned word-by-word translation, and am now just straight reading through, with the English version open beside me and my Swenglish dictionary close at hand.

Let me tell you something. Swedish is a highly annoying language to learn. (I don't want you to think I hate Swedish. I don't. I just find myself challenged by it, and, though I usually don't back down from a challenge, I generally feel compelled to whine about it. :-)) I took Spanish in high school. Spanish was not annoying. It made sense. Even that silly grammatical tic of making all the words be girls or boys (el/la) was okay. Swedish? OMFG. Really.

You know how English has synonyms, where several words all mean the same thing? Swedish has those too, but they also have these things that are the opposite of synonyms. (No, not antonyms, smart ass.) One word, which means many different words. I call these the little fiddly words, and their meaning is dependent on their affiliation with other words and combination with similar fiddly words. For instance, the Swedish word som, depending on its usage, can mean as, in, like, which, that, who or whom. Additionally, the Swedish word på can mean at, in connection with, on, of, to, or upon. This is not an uncommon occurrence. All their freaking words have like six meanings which have nothing to do with each other.

Also, the Swedish language is wordy. All those little fiddly words you have to combine precisely to create your meaning? They add up. This becomes evident when you realize the English page 23 corresponds to page 35 in the Swedish edition. However, as an example—

“Now what?” said Aunt Petunia.

“Vad ska vi nu ta oss till?” sade moster Petunia.

Yep. That’s what I’m talking about.

So, maybe the Swedes realized they were using entirely too many words, when one would do. Their solution to this is, when they have a longish phrase, to mash all the words together into one long word. For example, “Keeper of the Keys,” becomes “Nyckelv­­áktaren.” Here’s the problem. Go into the Swedish dictionary and look up nyckelv­­áktaren. You won’t find it. Wanna know why? Because up until now, the word didn’t exist. Of course, any person fluent in Swedish is going to be like, oh, okay…Keeper of the Keys! But an English speaker looking up every other word in their trusty Swenglish dictionary is sweating and panicking going, “I can’t find the word, I can’t find the word, what does it mean????” *shriek!!!!* Not knowing, of course, that if one looks up the word v­­áktare, one will find that the word means guardian. Key-guardian. Duh. Okay, then. Why didn’t you just say so in two words?

So, in summary, the Swedish language often uses six words when two would do, one word when between two and four are needed, and, rather than creating a new word for each possible meaning, uses just the one and leave you to guess what they mean.

           

           It’s going to be a long road to Half-Blood Prince.

Wither, by Lauren DeStefano

Synopsis: Our bumbling, meddlesome species finally comes up with a cure for cancer (and just about anything else that plagues us), and ends up dooming humanity. Every person born after the cure was developed dies young; girls at age 20, boys at age 25. Rich men take on multiple wives in an effort to keep the population going, but these wives aren’t willing; they’re kidnapped, bought and sold like the most precious of commodities. Rhine is separated from her twin brother after she’s abducted and married to Linden Ashby. Trapped in the lap of luxury, she plots her escape, despite new friendships with her sister wives, her growing empathy for Linden, and her dangerous feelings for servant boy Gabriel.

What I Liked: Wither hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. Despite the fact that it’s kind of a far-fetched concept, scientifically speaking, DeStefano makes the world completely plausible. Linden’s father, Vaughn, is perfectly creeptastic, and adds the necessary element of danger. And even though the book is set in the future, it has a vaguely steampunky feel. I think this is due to the presence of such advanced science in a sociologically stunted society. The cover art is very Victorian/ubermodern, too, which probably contributed to my perception. Either way, I liked it. It made the atmosphere even creepier.

What I Didn’t: Rhine’s name. Because the story is told in first person, we don’t hear it often enough to get used to it. It’s a very masculine-sounding name, at least to me, and so every time someone said, ‘Rhine,’ I was like, wait, who’s that guy? I found it very distracting. But that’s just me nitpicking.

Rating: Four Cheezits out of five.

Note: The sequel to this (I believe) three-part series, Fever (Chemical Garden Trilogy, the) is set to release on February 21, 2012. I’ve already preordered.