Hänt i veckan
Den här bloggen är en blandning av mitt liv numera mellan Sydkalifornien och Sverige, samt djupdykningar i mina minnen av att växa upp i Sverige på 80- och 90-talet och av ett brokigt liv i olika delar av USA.
Today, we had a colleague and his family over for dinner, including their five year old daughter Katie who was very proud to tell me that she knows a lot of Swedish words, including
flicka pojke Vart ska du? barn goddag god kväll
The reason for her interest in Swedish culture is this
Kirsten Larson - the American Girl Doll and Katie´s new favorite toy.
I offered her a place in the Swedish class but unfortunately, her family is moving to the east coast so she had to turn it down. Otherwise, I think she´d have outshone all the students in the class real soon (wish I learned as fast as a five year old!).
Two posts in one day - that should tell you how much I don't want to write my article that's due soon.
Anyway, I follow a blog named "Cake Wrecks" which recently had a highly controversial entry about cakes in the image of the Dutch "Zwarte Piet" (Black Peter).
The commentaries about the Zwarte Piet-cakes include many, many who think that those cakes are no big deal. They are just a funny Christmas tradition. But racial categories/images were built into the European languages during an age when Europeans dominated half the globe, controlled the slave trade, divvied up China and "the Orient" and consumed South America. When all that changed, some traditions, phrases and...desserts...remained as reminders of the past. I'm sure it doesn't mean that the Dutch want to start up their slave trade again but is it a good reason to accept these reminders?
Sweden also has a politically incorrect dessert - negerbollar. I called them that without thinking much about the name for the first twenty years of my life. The day I had to translate them into English was the day I realized I should probably call them "chokladbollar" instead. Recently, it seems most people call them chokladbollar but everyone still knows what you are referring to when you use the earlier name.
Any language is a reflection of the culture in which it emerges and no language stays the same if it is used daily. "Negerbollar" or the "Zwarte Piet-tradition" reflect 19th and early 20th century European attitudes toward the rest of the world, the fascination with Africa and its peoples as something exotic and alarming (zwarte Piet accompanied Santa to punish bad children). The fact that negerbollar have become chokladbollar shows how new ideas and meetings will change languages.
Here's how language evolves in day-to-day interactions and the meeting between cultures:
and my 1-portion recipe for these politically incorrect delicacies:
Maria har skickat två svenska filmer som vi kan titta på när hösten kommer och mörkret faller. Sällskapsresan (1980) och Sällskapsresan 2 - Snowroller (1985) är klassiker om svensk charterturism till Spanien och till Alperna (Schweiz och Österrike).