Talking about complicating things beyond reason! There is a Swedish custom – and I believe this has pervaded all Northern countries in Europe – to differentiate parents of your mother (adequately named ‘grandparents’ in English) from parents of your father (coincidentally also called ‘grandparents in English). For a near completely egalitarian* society such as Sweden I think this distinction is rather discriminating, but apart from that – and even worse – very confusing.
Let me explain this to all ignorant non-Scandinavian dumb-asses – please do not take offence, I actually count myself as part of this group. Here goes:
You have – in theory at least – one mother and one father. One mor and one far, in Swedish. This does not mean, mind you, that the far (father) has to be far in the English sense though, he is a far whether he is far away or close by. But let’s not complicate things beyond necessity. Just assume, for now, that you are in possession of a mor and a far (one of each).
As the more perceptant of you might already have come to realize, each of these has his/her own set of mors and fars (in Swedish, talking about multiple fathers is not actually ‘fars’ but fäder. Please ignore the resemblance to the German word for feathers, because this has nothing to do with it). Where were we? Oh yes, your mor’s mor and far and your far’s mor and far. Well, in order to make things more complicated – which does seem to be the national sport here in Sweden – than absolutely necessary, Swedish has invented different words for the four types of grandparents you can have. By now, you will probably have guessed how it works, but let’s state the obvious, just in case.
- Mormor: The mother of your mother
- Morfar: The father of your mother
- Farfar: The father of your father
- Farmor: The mother of your father
If you pronounce it correctly, all four words sound a little bit like mumbling or grumbling, so on that behalf the words seem very well suited for their topic: elderly people.
But apart from that, the sequence might strike you – as it did me – a bit arbitrary. So let’s get some structure into that, shall we? The last murmur-word actually refers to the person you’re talking about. So if I am talking about my morfar, it is my grandfather I am referring to. Similarly, if I am talking about farmor – not the regular farmer in the field, but my very special farmor – I am talking about my grandmother from my father’s side – the mom of my dad.
Got that?
Right, easy as squeezing lemons, right?
Or is it?
Because sometimes babies come in such a rapid sequence that elderly people do not get the time to properly end their lives before the next generation is born. In such situations, the term ‘great-grandparents’ comes on stage. This is where it gets really ridiculous. My advice, though, is to wait with children until the older generation has had its time…
- Great grand-fathers: Farfars far (for the dad of your farfar) and morfars far (dad of your morfar)
- Great grand-mothers: farfars mor (mom of your farfar) and morfars mor (mom of your morfar)
If you haven’t tried this already, please try it now. Pronounce it, try to put names to your morfar, farfar, farmor and mormor, and if you have them, your farfars far, morfars far, farfars mor and morfars mor. Give it a go, see how it feels?
If you are anything like me – in love with clarity and effective languages – you’ll probably agree that this is, indeed, absolutely preposterous. If you’re a poet, or an artist, you’ll probably think it is amazingly beautiful, but then again, you’re a poet so what can I do?
Now if you think you’re there, think again, because the same discrimination is applied to nephews and nieces. Nephews can be either brorsons or systersons (as you might have guessed, bror stands for brother, syster stands for sister and son – miraculously – means son). Nieces can be brorsdotter or systerdotter (dotter of course being daughter). Uncles are farbrors (brothers of your father) or morbrors (brothers/bothers of your mother) and aunts are farsyster or morsyster. BUT if you think you’re starting to see a regularity here, be aware, because Swedes usually call aunts faster or moster. I do not think that aunts from your father's side are per se faster, although I do think that thorough studies have not been done on this topic yet...
For your own good, I will not go into the terminology for inlaws. I will instead give you the Swedish word for ‘outlaws’ which is – fortunately for us – just one word: fredlös (which means ‘free-less’ if directly translated). Now isn’t that nice, clear and effective?
With that endeth the lesson of today.
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