\nIngrid is good at keeping Swedish and Estonian apart. When she mixes, it’s mostly semi-intentional: if she doesn’t know the right word in one language, she may borrow from the other.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut then there are some cases where she’s picked one word and keeps using it in both languages, even though a word with the same sound exists in that language and means something completely different. She does it very thoroughly and uses the grammar of the “surrounding” language, which makes it sound even more surreal, and even harder to figure out unless the listener knows both languages.\n<\/p>\n
\nThus, we have doppa<\/i> (to dip<\/i>) in Swedish – often used at mealtimes because she likes dipping bread in soup, dipping pasta in ketchup, dipping carrots in milk etc. No matter how many times I refer to it as “sa kastad” in Estonian, she keeps saying “ma topin”, which means “I’m stuffing”.\n<\/p>\n
\nSticking\/piercing (as in sticking a needle in something) is called torkama<\/i> in Estonian. Ingrid keeps saying torka<\/i> in Swedish sentences, too, but torka<\/i> means to dry<\/i> in Swedish. So when she wants to say “I want to stick the potatoes” (to see if they’re done) she says “I want to dry the potatoes”.\n<\/p>\n
\nA mug is called kruus<\/i> in Estonian, and Ingrid keeps calling mugs krus<\/i> in Swedish, too – “pappa kan du ge mig den blommiga krusen”. But krus<\/i> in Swedish means ripple, crimp<\/i>, although there is also an older word meaning large jug<\/i>. An arrow is called nool<\/i> in Estonian, and Ingrid uses that in Swedish, too (“vi ska g\u00e5 dit n\u00e5len pekar”), but nål<\/i> means needle<\/i> in Swedish.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis is sort of funny to hear, but it is also interesting to observe, because in most cases, when I think about it, the words may mean different things in the two languages today, but they probably share a common root and origin. Needle \/ arrow is an obvious pair, mug \/ jug likewise. The Estonian language has gotten a lot of words from its various Germanic neighbours and conquerors, and it’s interesting to see just how deep such loans go, how common and quintessentially Estonian the words now feel. (The homophony of pierce \/ dry, however, looks to me like a total coincidence.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ingrid is good at keeping Swedish and Estonian apart. When she mixes, it’s mostly semi-intentional: if she doesn’t know the right word in one language, she may borrow from the other. But then there are some cases where she’s picked one word and keeps using it in both languages, even though a word with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[37,620,35,495,38],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geeky_things","category-ingrid_johanna","tag-estonian","tag-homophony","tag-language","tag-linguistics","tag-swedish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1950,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions\/1950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}