h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...really gives me an insight into just how difficult it must be for a foreigner to learn Swedish (something I had suspected all along due to the many exceptions to the rather few grammatical and linguistical rules).

As translated by Google:
http://translate.google.se/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogg.alltombarn.se%2Fketchupmamma%2F2010%2F05%2F31%2Fnar-samlevnad-inte-ar-aktuellt%2F&sl=sv&tl=en

Translation by me will follow.

oh my bob, what happened here?

The trouble appears to be that the Swedish word 'man' has so many meanings; man (a male), one, you, we - even it.

crivvens

looks like I'm not out of a job just yet then!

Might even have stumped a Taliban

Crikey... reads like a tale of coerced sex and bloody murder.

Oh, now I get it! It was a parody of someone trying to sleep whilst being attacked by a mosquito, though initially it was meant to sound as if his wife/lover was the one "bugging" him. Evidently, even the onomatopoeia of sounds has its own connotation in Swedish. [kiss, kiss, kiss, puzzzzza] I've found that different nationalities have different ways of expressing certain common sounds. Makes for interesting juxtaposition in certain texts.




B4idredgemymemory4moreexamplesofoddlittlenoisomeidioms

B4. douze point!

Only a few weeks ago i saw a 'phrase book for animals'

In Denmark a duck says 'rap-rap', in English it says 'quack-quack'.

In German, French, Italian and other languages the duck is quite hard to understand

Quite a funny read

French shouldn't be that hard - 'cheval'means horse, 'pamplemousse' means grapefruit and so it goes on...

But maybe duck-French is different.....

Sooo... I did a web search for "German comics". I remembered when I was a young lad of 12 that we'd visited our family back in the home country, and one of the ways for me to quickly build my vocabulary was to read comics. I also recalled some of the dialog or 'sounds' portrayed in the panels sometimes made me smile, or scratch my head in puzzlement. For instance:

A horse whinnies by saying "Hiiiiii"
Asterix and Obelix have translated laughter to sound like "HiHiHi! HoHoHo!"
...as well as ramming Roman soldiers==> "Bang! TchicTchacTchoc!"
...and a punch to the chin==> "Paf!"
Tin Tin can upset a chess game with the SFX of "TCHANG!"

Oh, Lord, I wish I could remember all the odd little transliterations of onomatopoeia that used to make me giggle when I read those comics. And somehow, a comment my Oncle Rolf said while preparing a cook-out, is inextricably intertwined with these thoughts. He said, "You will become a hamburger."

Okay, the German phrase is "Du bekommst ein hamburger." which is more correctly stated as "You will receive a hamburger." I suppose you could understand my consternation when I at first thought my relatives had gone cannibal...

B4wefindoutwe'reallactuallytrying2samethesamethingsonlywithourownuniqueperspective

Don't get me started!

Growing up in the danish minority in northern Germany (part of it used to be Denmark) I have heard tons of "Untersetzungen" and "undersættelser"

I used to read Asterix in both german and danish. It was like reading completely different comixes