Language and style

I recently read an article about the Swedish. By Swedish I refer to the unique attributes of Sweden.

Among comments I saw one about the Swedish silence, and this should be read in a social context. Another concerned our language and its ability to give colour to our surrounding nature.

The reason I bring this up is a number of conversations I've participated in, digital as well as over a beer on a pub. People from here, here being Sweden, find it hard to accept that there should exist unique aspects of our language, ad that it therefore lends itself better or worse to certain types of expressions.

Now, with the supreme arrogance only the ignorant can afford, Swedish people feel secure in their absolute knowledge that only they are able to find, and refute, nuances in a language they've grown up with since birth. A foreigner noticing the stark contrast to another reality taken for granted is either blind, deaf or otherwise linguistically deficient. Or, maybe, we just happen to be blind ourselves.

So I once again state my opinion that different languages work best with different styles of stories, and every story has a style, and every translation is, for that reason, either a transformation into an environment where that style is lost or misunderstood, or an interpretation where the translation is no longer entirely linguistically true to the original.

When you can, read in the original language, because language has style. Whether you like that style or not is, of course, entirely a matter of your own personal taste.

Spekulative fiction in Sweden

In an article Johan A points out some aspects of the problematic life speculative fiction has to endure in Sweden.

In as much as new titles in these genres are covered by our media at all they tend to be regarded as children's books, or possibly YA. Considering the enormous popularity of the Harry Potter books this tendency has by now become cemented here. Adult fantasy is like those white spots on old maps where be dragons.

Add that the so called literary elite in Sweden has decided that speculative fiction is not proper literature at all, but rather a sub-standard substitute for proper literature. Pulp fiction of the original meaning. They prefer not to be reminded of sub-standard authors like George Orwell, H G Wells, Aldous Huxley, William Golding and Doris Lessing, which should go a long way towards exemplifying the enormous difference with which the genre is looked upon by English and Swedish eyes. Ironically enough the Nobel Prize is a Swedish prize.

However, one problem with the article is that the author tries to prove that adult fantasy in Sweden is on the verge of dying because Swedish publishers are vary of placing their money in that field. Nothing could be further from the truth. With over 80% of the population labeled as knowing English, speculative fiction lives a healthy life here. Speculative fiction written in Swedish, or even translated into Swedish, well that is another matter.

On thee and thou

A fun piece of knowledge for an avid reader of fantasy. Thee, thou and thine are popular in stock fantasy. They are, apparently, almost always incorrectly used.

Even though Wikipedia should be used with care, this article conforms with the literature I have available.

Primarily used to denote familiarity, or by a superior to an inferior, the usage of these words in fantasy becomes rather hilarious. Rather than use the formal 'you' our heroes deliberately insult kings, queens and fair ladies all around them.

I can only quote Sir Edward Coke: "I thou thee, thou traitor!"