Anbytarforum
Särskilda ämnen & övrigt => Archive - Swedish language => _Archives => Discussions in English => Diary entries => Ämnet startat av: Charles J. LaVine skrivet 2005-10-02, 22:27
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Dear All,
I am again asking for your help in translating three words and one idiomatic expression, or what I think might be such.
The three words are in caps and the sentences they are used in read as follows:
1. . men hejdas I sitt lop af ett SEHÄLL som gjordes ett tvärstreck uti jordlivets mandater.
2. Jag tog min post jemt andra uti ett gammmalt LAGGHUS på riverbanken, hvari hastigt skottgluggar anrättas.
3. Under denna färd SKULKADES Sundblad och höll sig undan på afträdet som gömställe till wi afmarcherat.
And the possible idiomatic expression like “gammal som en gata = old as the hills”:
4. .. sig, att wi ankomm för att dem aflösa, men wi hade allenast sjelfwillig åtagit oss denna färd som tross betäckning.
I would again appreciate your very helpful input.
Mvh,
Charles
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Hello again Charles,
Here is my translation:
1. ....but was stopped in its tracks by ? ( I don't know what 'sehäll' means) that put a cross stroke through (this) earthly lifes' mandates.
2. I took up my post with the others in an old 'Lagghus' ( probably means a store for barrels)on the riverbank inside of which we hastely made gun holes.
3. During this trip Sundblad skulked ( maybe it should be 'skolkade' which means being truant but the writer has mixed up the english 'skulked/ to skulk' with the Swedish 'skolka/skolkade) and hid himself in the privy until we marched again.
4. ...that we arrived to relieve them but we had only taken on this trip as baggage convoy/escorts, volentarily.
Gammal som en gata ( Old as a street)could mean 'Old as the hills' but I have never heard the expression before.
I hope someone else can help with the meaning of the word 'sehäll'.
Ann
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Maybe LAGGHUS is Swenglish for LOGHOUSE?
Regarde
Rolf Liljhammar
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Gammal som gatan is a common expression at least here in the nothern parth of Sweden where I live, about things or persons, who are very old.
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I\m sorry I mean northern part not northern parth
Ann-Mari Bäckman
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To All,
Thanks for your help.
I have another word to decipher or translate. It is in CAPITALS in the following sentance:
Jag blev högt SUPRINERAD att se min greenbacks sålunda förvexlade och refucerade derföre att dem emotaga såsom jag med sådant mynt, på min härnadståg hvarken kunde köpslaga med hvita, röda eller svarta personager.
Thanks in anticipation
Charles
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I suspect it is Swenglish for surprised.
// Bo Johansson
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I believe the correct meaning of the word is strained or overwhelmed, another swedish word is 'ansträngd/överbelastad'.
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Could SEHÄLL actually be SEHÅLL which may mean PEEPHOLE, or VISUAL OBSERVATION SLIT, as used in a building utilized as a fortification?
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Thomas! If you look at the sentence containing the word 'sehäll'( posting on 2/10/2005 by Charles J.LaVine at 22.27)you will see that your suggestion as to its meaning unfortunately does not make sence.
Ann Little
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Ann! Neither does your translation of the sentence make any sense, with or without the presence of the word for which I offered up an explanation.
My input, where no one had made any attempt at the word, was gingerly phrased as a question.
No doubt you have a suggested translation that is better than mine, of what I take to be Roos'rather lyrically convoluted and illiterate Swenglish.
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Snälla Anbytarvärden! Byt stavning på rubriken! Det handlar väl i alla fall om en dagbok = diary och inte ett mejeri = dairy?
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Christina,
You are quite right, I am working with a diary = dagbook not a dairy. My appologies.
I noted my misspelling after my first posting but since it did not seem to be causing any problems, continued to post under it.
Should I change and set up my next query under Diary? I am sure I will be making more. There are at least four or five more sections to translate.
Charles
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Excuse me Thomas but after nearly forty years in England I think I know my English, thank you very much!
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Charles,
The misspelling doesn't matter at all - keep posting here, it's best to have it all in one place.
I wonder if there's really an 'e' in sehäll, I suspect it should be schäll instead. A Swede who wasn't very good in English spelling would probably have written the word shell that way. (No wonder the person stopped by it didn't survive!)
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Sehäll could be swenglish too.
Shell= granat.
It looks a bit dramatic, if he was not killed he might have been wounded.
Looks to have some military meaning.
Åke
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Nobody seems to have checked SAOB - recommended for older words ...
http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/
SUPRINERAD: this is the spelling commonly used 1723-1845; the word is from the French surprendre - Swedish överraska, överrumpla (surprise)
This word is not Swenglish.
SKULKADES: this is the spelling commonly used 1682-1846; today we would use SKOLKA - with roughly the same meaning (being absent without leave or valid reason - AWOL)
Neither is this word Swenglish.
The words SEHÄLL and LAGGHUS however do not exist in Swedish (according to SAOB and they are usually right) and so are either misspellings, misreadings or - popular theory - Swenglish.
Ingela
PS Gammal som gatan is not a saying only in northern Sweden, it's common also on the west coast - and is in fact given as an example of colloquial Swedish usage at the word gammal in SAOB (and I think the translation old as the hills is quite correct).
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Regarding gammal som gatan translated into old as the hills. I've just been in US and came across the expression I probably would prefer to use: old as dirt. Gatan in old times wasn't paved as today but rather a dirt road = grusväg in today's world.
Bibi
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Webster?s Online Dictionary
Gammal som gatan= As old as the hill.
Mvh Åke
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Lagghus is probably a phonetic spelling of loghouse, which would make sense.
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Translation work is a bit similar to observing maps of hurricanes. Words and meanings are whipped about, absorbed, remixed and spun out at the periphery. At the centre, hot disagreement is the norm.
My response to Ann's invitation to ... help with the meaning of the word 'sehäll' was met with a putdown. Why my posting should have engendered that, when seemingly everyone else's brain-storming or well researched submissions are accepted without comment, is surprising indeed.
Mayhaps t'would be best I lie prone 'till this tempest bloweth o'er.
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Thomas, my comment was by no means meant as a put down and I'm sorry if that is how it seemed to you. Maybe I should have used a 'smiley'. I simply could not refrain from pointing out that your suggestion made no sence as in my estimation it would be impossible to be put out of action by a peephole or visual observation slit .
Ann
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Bibi,
Nowhere in the expression gammal som gatan is it stipulated how the gata was constructed.
The word gata is a very old one; it is found before 1521 - when a gata normally was not paved at all. Gata can be found in Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and even in regional English, around York, the Viking Jorvik (where some streets to this very day are called gate!).
Maybe you think of gata as (paved) street in town but the original use was of a road in the countryside, in a small village (practically all farmers lived in villages before the landreforms in the late 18th and early 19th century). It meant road bounded by enclosures or buildings; especially it was used for the road where the cattle was herded on their way to and from pasture. And such a gata was certainly not paved!
Thomas, Ann,
The word SEHÅLL - the version of SEHÄLL Thomas suggested - is not a Swedish word either (I mean, it has never existed in the opinion of SAOB - and those guys know).
So the misspelling / misreading is some other word.
Ingela
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Ingela, don't you think it could be a Swenglish spelling schäll for shell (granat) like I suggested above? It makes perfect sense in that sentence.
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I think LAGGHUS is a timbered cottage (build of logs).
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Elof Hällqvist in Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok say that the word SURPRENERA was very common at the first part of 19th century. This word have the same meaning as SURPRISE
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Ingela
That's exactly what I said: Gatan in old times wasn't paved as today but rather a dirt road = grusväg in today's world. Furthermore, dirt is according to Webster and Oxford an old Norse word: drit (Etymology: Middle English drit, from Old Norse; akin to Old English drItan to defecate). In today's American English, dirt is as often used for what in Swedish would be smuts etc. as for jord etc. I should have elaborated a little bit further, that old as dirt would be an idiom closer to the Swedish gammal som gatan using the same matter to describe the age, i.e. packed earth matter. A dirt road in British English is graveled road according dictionaries.
I've also asked a friend in Florida what she would use when translating the Swedish expression old as the road. This is her answer: We say old as the hills, which I think is the closest translation to old as the road. I have also often heard older than dirt. There are always Biblical references as well, such as as old as Methuselah. David's father used to say that something had been there since Noah was a pup. I am sure that there are many different comparisons in different areas. As you know, I love the old sayings and plays on words.
I have found that idioms most often are not the same in different languages, i.e. you can't make a straight translation; sometimes you will be understood but a lot of times not without explanations. You can be quite fluent in a foreign language but not quite until the idioms are the correct ones.
The differences between British and American English are much larger than most Swedes realize - we are taught the British in school and hear a lot of the American on TV etc (often not correctly translated). Our local newspaper in the US ran an article about 2 weeks ago about local groups of immigrants that met and talked about their native countries in their native tongues. Among the groups mentioned were Italian, Polish, Norwegian, Irish and English. The Englishmen explained their group as necessary to be able to speak English-English. I ran into quite a lot of misunderstandings during our first year in the States: I used the proper English word but was misunderstood or not understood at all and vice versa.
And Charles: when you live in a foreign country speaking both your own language and that of your new home you start to mix words of the new one into the old one by adding plurals, verb endings etc. from the old language to words in the new one. One example: walking would become walkande. At least this was our experience during our years in the States: we spoke Swedish within the family but as time went by we pulled in English words that we sometimes Swedified. And most of the time these mistakes went by unnoticed by the speakers.
Bibi
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Anna-Carin,
Yes, I agree: schäll as a Swedish misspelling of the English shell makes very good sense indeed.
Jan,
I agree with you too; lagghus as a Swedish misspelling of the English log house is also quite possible.
However, I don't see what the need here is for Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok - the definitive authority on Swedish language must always be SAOB. Of course, if it concerns a word later than till one has to use another dictionary but such was not the case here.
Bibi,
I'm sorry, I think I somehow misunderstood you and I certainly got a bad case of getting my wires crossed.
But I still think that as old as the hills is the best translation of this particular idiomatic expression into American English as it is a saying originating in the Bible (Job xv:7) - therefore probably particularly apt for something written a couple of centuries ago. American English was much more British in those days (the British English of yore, of course) and in making a translation I should think that it would be desirable to preserve also in English a little of the air of being written at that time.
Ingela
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To all,
The suggestion that sehäll could be schäll = gtanat or the Enlish shell was correct.
I have carefully looked again at the word and compared Roos' writing where he writes c elsewhere and that is what it is, a c.
Thanks,
Charles
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Great.
Actually there is no swedish word schäll, but it would be a likely misspelling of the english word shell if the writer is swedish and has limited knowledge of the english language.