Jag söker svenska idiomen!

March 7, 2013 7:07 AM

I'm learning Swedish in advance of a trip to Stockholm to visit friends this summer. (Yes, I know Swedes generally speak excellent English; learning languages is a hobby.) When I'm there, I'd like to pepper some of my conversations with colorful sayings, slang, and idioms. Kan du hjälpa mig?

I've found this site, and I can ask my Swedish tutor, but I'd love your input.

As examples I'd take anything from the deliberately / ironically outdated ("Well, shiver my timbers!"), to the colorful / salty ("It's colder than a witch's tit in a brass brassiere this morning!"), to the everyday colorful ("I'm so fucking hungover, I think I am going to die"), to kid speak ("That was fucking amazeballs!"). I'm not looking for translations of those phrases per se--just whatever the analogous things would be på svenska. How would your granddad swear? How does your 12-year-old cousin say something's awesome?

Bonus question: can you recommend any good Swedish pop culture sites or blogs to keep up on what's cool and how people are talking?

Tack så mycket!

posted by Admiral Haddock to writing & language (5 answers total)

Lista över svenska idiomatiska uttryck
posted by martinrebas at 7:42 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

You could also try:

The Avancera series - these are not good for up to date "slang", but will fill an advanced student in on the set idioms and vocab used in, for example, newspapers. Avancera Ord was particularly helpful to me: I finished a relatively slim workbook and could suddenly read just about any book or article I wanted without a dictionary. Svår Svenska is also good for this type of "formalized" idiomatic speech.

SR has tons of podcasts available, many packing the double whammy of having lots of interviews with people using modern idiom-laden Swedish while describing some problem or issue in contemporary Swedish life you might not have known much about. Documentaries and Society, are good categories to look at on their podcast pages.
posted by Wylla at 8:09 AM on March 7

Random swedish idionomes.

Article about 1700th century cusswords.

List of old dialectal idionomes.

A collage of famous swedes cursing in sometimes inappropiate situations.

Don't worry: You'll learn swedish cussin' in no time. Have fun!
posted by Rabarberofficer at 8:38 AM on March 7

90% of the so-called swear words from svordom.se (linked above) are just nonsense expressions that people have submitted to the site. Swedes do not actually insult each other by saying "Salad Charlie!", "Breast dick!", "React!", "Gummi Bear!" or "You Jesuskiller!"
posted by martinrebas at 9:49 AM on March 7

Swedish idioms in painfully literal translation. (Some of the translations are rather over-literalized for comedy value, but it's a good resource.)
posted by pont at 8:22 AM on March 8