do you wanna have a bad time?
Should we mention the fact that Sweden has loads of non-belivers?
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If it fits nicely into the current flow of the article, then sure. I don't see it as a fact that must be on there or which would necessarily merit its own section, however.
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
I'm not entirely on board with the military bit. Sure, it's Useful Notes, but this is still a site for media and depistion in the media, and the page is about a country that is pretty much forgotten on that department. Is is really necessary?
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I completely agree. I live in Sweden myself and was surprised about the details about the military (in fact, there's been a lot of disarming, leading to some discussions whether or not the nation's army is actually big enough to protect the darn thing). I thought we had a bigger reputation of being commies according to Fox News socialist.
And, seriously: "Sweden also hands out the various Nobel Prizes, which are like the Academy Awards for people too ugly to be allowed into Hollywood. "
It this supposed to be a joke?!
Edited by SpiritOfSahara
Well... yes. It seems pretty obvious that it's intended to be a joke.
This article doesn't exactly seem to take itself terribly seriously.
What's precedent ever done for us?
...Um, yeah, it does look very much like a joke.
Either way - this is supposed to be Useful Notes, while the information in it doesn't seem terribly useful. I vote for a complete or partial overhaul. Well, nobody's going to do it for me, so I might start tweaking some stuff these following days.
The section on the Polish language on Useful Notes/Poland made me want something similar for this page. I've created a bare-bones version so far. Any suggestions?
Swedish language.
What stumps most non-native speakers of Swedish is the "genders" of Swedish nouns. "Genders" in citation marks.
Swedish nouns are divided into two groups: en-nouns and ett-nouns.
En-nouns work like this:
[En] [katt] = [A] [cat]. [Katt][en] = [The] [cat]. [Katt][er] = [Cat][s]. An "en" before the noun in indefinite form and an "-en" tacked on at the end of the noun in definite form. Pluralized thusly: [the noun][a specific vowel][r].
While ett-nouns work like this: [Ett] [hus] = [A] [house]. [Hus][et] = [The] [house]. [Hus] = [Houses]. An "ett" before the noun in indefinite form and an "-et" tacked on at the end of the noun in definite form. Not pluralized.
There is no rule as to which group any given noun belongs to.
The Swedish alphabet is identical to the English, except with three extra letters:
Å å Ä ä Ö ö
De Svedish Accent is a bit off: we do have voiced vs voiceless consonants, e.g. /f/ vs /v/, /p/ vs /b/, but no voiced counterpart to s. More pertinently, with English, we have no equivalent of either the voiceless /θ/ (as in three) or voiced /ð/ (as in the) fricatives, or the voiced labial-velar approximant /w/ (as in Sweden). Substituting sounds closer to /t/ or /s/, /d/ and /v/, respectively, is quite typical for the older generation of Swedish politicians abroad, believing themselves to be able to do without interpreters!
I'd say our tonality tends to be a bit of a giveaway as well, if less pronounced than for Norwegian. That particular aspect is brilliantly lampooned by the Swedish Chef!