Friday night - and once again, I'm not going out. It's partly because Channel 4 won't let me - I can't remember the last time I was so transfixed by a programme quite as gruesome as My New Best Friend. It's amazing how these people seem quite happy to inflict lasting damage on their most valuable relationships for the sake of ten grand. I mean, it's not *that* much money, surely - and most of the people who go in for it seem to be doing alright money-wise anyway. Still, nowt as queer as folk etc.
Anyway, the real reason I'm not going out is that I'm off to Manchester tomorrow to spend the day trying to Norwegify my Swedish as I'll be out living it up with a group of rather boisterous Norwegians.
Well, it is Europride!
Posted by Eurodan at August 23, 2003 12:18 AMSo how was it? (Europride or your Norwegified Swedish, your choice :)
Posted by: matt at August 24, 2003 9:56 PMWell, Europride was *great* actually. A really upbeat, positive atmosphere, but I think that may have been because I was there for just long enough (around 24 hours) and was in pleasant company (the Norwegians).
As for the language issue, I just spoke Swedish (which was generally understood), but got Norwegian back - which is alright most of the time, but it *does* have some syntactical and, more importantly, lexical differences. It's a bit like hearing a sentence with a crucial word substituted for one you don't know. In fact, it's not just like that - that's actually what happens. Linguists call it 'code noise', I believe - the gradually increasing levels of divergence as dialects differ and then eventually stop being mutually intelligible. The Nordic languages are fascinating to study for that reason. They seem to almost morph into each other as you move through the border regions.
But I digress, I think...
Posted by: Eurodan at August 24, 2003 10:18 PMI once spent an evening with a Norwegian, a Swede and two Finnish girls in a Spanish bar. Apart from the odd interjection of English for my benefit, the evening proceeded in a succession of indeterminate Scandinavian languages, which I found to be recognisably distinct, though completely incomprehensible. Of course, everyone else understood what was going on :-)
Posted by: ShyBoy at August 25, 2003 5:11 AM