How shabby are you?

Normally, you wouldn’t ask that to another person, right? Even if you are thinking it, you cannot say someone is shabby, and it is not polite to ask about their shabbiness either. But suppose that someone did walk up to you and asked exactly that!?

That actually happened to me, here in Stockholm, not too long ago. I was minding my own business and probably doing something particularly useful for society when I was asked by a Swede how ‘gammal’ I was. Now, being a Dutchee, I at once understood what the Swede meant! We have this word in Dutch too:  ‘gammel‘(if you’re a Swede, pronounce the ‘g’ as in ‘stadion’ (not the ‘sj’ version), if you’re not a Swede nor a Dutch person, please don’t try to pronounce it, you will end up with a sore throat).

Gammel, all Dutch people know, means shabby. Imagine an old and deteriorated bridge that you wouldn’t cross even if Bill Gates’ fortune was open for grabs at the end of it. The kind of bridge that only Indiana-Jones look-a-likes would even consider crossing. Such a stale construction would qualify as ‘gammel’ in Dutch. We’d say it is a ‘gammele brug’ or gammal bro in Swedish.

So you can imagine the surprise, if not agitation, I felt when being asked about how shabby I was. I mean, I might not dress to the latest fashions and all, but that doesn’t mean you can just call me moldy, shabby or a complete wreck (the last word – wreck - does apply to me right after waking up in the morning before having  my coffee, but that is a different matter altogether. You shouldn’t talk to me at all on such occasions, let alone ask questions…) ! I too have a sense of dignity, pride and being called a ramshackle does damage it…

Gammal, of course, means something else in Swedish and the Swede in question was merely asking a polite question. Swedish gammal means ‘old’, and if a Swede ask how ‘gammal’ you are, well… it’s quite obvious, isn’t it? Apart from the fact that you ought not ask a lady about her age, there was nothing wrong with the question. The word originates from the Old Norse term ‘gamall’, which can be traced all the way back to Proto-Germanic ancient (‘gammel’) people who called both old and weak things ‘gamalaz’. The origin seems to account for both meanings, but still, the difference in current languages can be quite … confusing.

Take, for once, Stockholm’s Gamla Stan. Now, I wouldn’t be comfortable at all living in a shabby old wrecked town-centre. On the other hand, living in the ‘old part of the city’ doesn’t seem to be too bad, provided that certain renovations have taken place. Another example: I wouldhesitate tocross a gammale bro (bridge).

However, I learnt to respond to such gammal-related issues by murmuring something about my age and to just cross gammal bridges, despite their initial promise of being shabby and ramshackle. If someone enquires after my Swedish shabbiness, I politely state ’23, and how shabby are you?’