<\/p>\n
Borrowing vocabulary is no unusual linguistic phenomenon. Just look at English – there are French words all over the place!<\/p>\n
Most people know that a very large portion of English vocabulary is from other languages. Well, some of these thousands of words are, in fact, from Swedish! Here are 5 of them. Some, you may know; some might surprise you! Let’s take a look.<\/p>\n
An ombudsman<\/strong> is a public person who assists legal “persons”, most often individuals, in complaint errands against larger units such as companies or government agencies. The word comes from ombud<\/em>, meaning “delegate” or “representative”, and man<\/em> “man”. In Swedish, some people prefer to replace the second part -man<\/em> with -kvinna<\/em> “woman” in cases where the referent is female, but this is not required to make the use of the word correct.<\/p>\n Your favorite motor vehicle from your teenage years has a Swedish name! A moped<\/strong> is similar to a motorcycle, but has a smaller, less powerful motor<\/strong>, and sometimes also has pedals<\/strong>. This is exactly where its name comes from, and it was originally coined in Swedish magazine in the 1950’s. More specifically, the name is an abbreviated combination of motor<\/em> and pedaler<\/em>.<\/p>\n Tungsten,<\/strong> otherwise known as wolfram<\/em>, is one of the chemical element<\/strong>s. It is symbolized by the letter W and has the atomic number 74. The name tungsten<\/em> is one of the Swedish names for the element (the other being volfram<\/em>, as in English). It’s composed of the Swedish words tung<\/em> “heavy” and sten<\/em> “stone”. According to Wikipedia<\/a>, despite the name coming from Swedish, volfram<\/em> is used more commonly due to the colliding use of the same name tungsten<\/em> for the mineral “scheeite”, which is an ore from tungsten.<\/p>\n You may already know that lax<\/em> is the Swedish word for “salmon”. Well, gravlax<\/strong> has been imported more directly into English and consists of lax<\/em> suffixed by the verb grava<\/em>, which refers to the act of cutting or slicing fish, rubbing it with salt and spices, and then pressing it. And voil\u00e0, you’ve got gravlax<\/em>!<\/p>\n I’m sure you’ve heard this one before! A smorgasbord<\/strong> (correctly spelt sm\u00f6rg\u00e5sbord<\/em>) is another word for a buffet, often of small portions of food for individual choosing. Beyond this meaning, it can also refer to a varied collection of something in English. The word consists of sm\u00f6rg\u00e5s<\/em>, one word for “sandwich”, and bord<\/em> “table”.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Are there any other Swedish words you can think of in English? What about your own language? Share with us in the comments!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sources: Wikipedia; Wiktionary<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Borrowing vocabulary is no unusual linguistic phenomenon. Just look at English – there are French words all over the place! Most people know that a very large portion of English vocabulary is from other languages. Well, some of these thousands of words are, in fact, from Swedish! Here are 5 of them. Some, you…<\/p>\n2. Moped<\/h2>\n
3. Tungsten<\/h2>\n
4. Gravlax<\/h2>\n
5. Sm\u00f6rg\u00e5sbord<\/h2>\n