imomus | Turning heads (and torsos) in Malmo

Turning heads (and torsos) in Malmo

Newspaper Sydsvenskan has today published a little video report about Krets, the gallery in Malmo where I'll be performing a little action called Down With Fun! tonight. Click the picture to see the report, and if you're in Malmo come to the gallery to see the performance -- it's at Kristianstadsgatan 16 and starts at 7pm.

In the background of the report (which starts at 1min 30 and ends at 4mins 30) you can see drawings by Matt Furie, and tonight is really a finissage party for the end of his show at Krets. You can also hear the Swedish language (naturally) in the clip. It's currently spoken by nine million people worldwide, which makes it too small, apparently, to warrant a place in Google Translate.

You can tell Swedish is a minor language because absolutely everybody here speaks excellent English. Unlike in Germany, where English-language TV programmes are all dubbed into German, in Sweden they're subtitled, which allows Swedes to learn the kind of English spoken in bad comedy shows. (By the way, did you know that up to 90% of the 6000 languages that exist today will have died out by the end of this century?)

I must say this Swedish daily paper shows better taste in its choice of music than a British paper would -- the soundtrack to their report on Krets seems to be Maher Shalal Hash Baz covering "Georgie Girl". Okay, I'm off to see Calatrava's Turning Torso, out in the Malmo harbour.

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If you are looking for a cold nude bath, i can always recommend the bath house in Ribersborg, a stone's throw away from the tower. I never been there in the winter though.

Pity i am missing the show. I was really looking forward to it...

I am really into nude baths, but not cold ones! My torso turns... blue!

By the way, did you get an impression of Möllevången, the part of town which i guess you will be staying?

Tja, diglossi är ett rätt jobbigt problem för vissa svenskar, kan jag tänka mig. En del använder försvenskningar av engelska ord. Fast det är ungdomar som gör det mest mer eller mindre.

Eh, oops!

Well, diglossia is a quite srenuous problem for some swedes, I can imagine. Some use Swedificiations of english words. Though it is mostly teenagers who do that more or less.

I think I could understand 20% of that!

Do all Swedish people dance so lasciviously?

I would guess that most of us do, yes. Unless we are eay too drunk! Full like a kastrull! (Drunk like a saucepan!)

Hah, the dancing scenes in these videos are wonderful. Great cuts, and exceptional dancing. I feel like giving Sweden a call very pronto.

You bet mister ananas! There is a party in Sweden's pants and you're invited!

My biggest problem with young swedes talking english is that they tend to throw in the word "fuck" in every sentence when they can't find the right word...

That is only because they imitate native English speakers, who use "fuck" a lot. In fact, it's now by far the most common word in spoken English (articles like "the" don't count). But it's also very curious how some people, for example yourself, have some sort of aural blinkers and do not notice how native speakers talk, but get offended when foreigners imitate them. Have you ever listened to hiphop? An average Hollywood movie? Footballers?

And newer languages like Toki Pona are on the rise!

"did you know that up to 90% of the 6000 languages that exist today will have died out by the end of this century?"

That article said "might have", not will have. This reminds me of the "Redheads and Blonds are going extinct" article that was doing the rounds a few years ago (that was debunked).

I would be perfectly happy to see American English become the world's dominant language spoken by everyone as at least a second language.
I know it's really trendy to hate everything American, but if British colonialism and the widespread adoption of American culture worldwide has only one silver lining, it's the English language.

If it wasn't for the ubiquity of the English language in the world, the internet wouldnt be the global platform it is today. I think it's a really fantastic thing that this generation are growing up talking to and befriending people from all over the world because of it. Of course, there are many beautiful languages in the world, and for them to die out would be sad, but I would rather see one language dominate and create the possibility of global conversation. It's much more important for the world.

The English language also has the largest vocabulary in the world, with some 600,000 words, and that count is etimated to grow by 25,000 a year at this rate.

That said, I also think it's good for native English speakers to learn a foreign language, especially one that's very different to English. You'd be surprised how much a language effects your thought patterns and sometimes even restricts your thoughts. it's an enlightening experience.

"did you know that up to 90% of the 6000 languages that exist today will have died out by the end of this century?"

That article said "might have", not will have.
However, plenty of languages are dying out every day already, and 90% seems a pretty reasonable extrapolation. And with every language dies a history, a way of thinking, a way of perceiving the world - in fact, everything that cannot be readily translated into American English. (From your handle, I assume that you know some Japanese, but then you would also know that the "difficult to translate" part can be rather huge.)
My objection to American English would be that with the way of thinking that seems to come with American English, the human race will have died out by the end of the century.

The English language also has the largest vocabulary in the world, with some 600,000 words, and that count is estimated to grow by 25,000 a year at this rate.
This is something you often see repeated, but that I very much doubt has any basis in fact whatsoever. Once you get beyond the core vocabulary of 40,000 words or so, the rest is mostly technical terminology, which is essentially the same in all European languages, for instance, and would account for virtually the whole 25,000 word per year increase. And again, if you speak Japanese, have you noticed how often Japanese seems to have two (or three or four) words for something when there is only one word in English? However, I have never seen any figure for the number of "words" in Japanese, because for one thing it's quite difficult to define what a "word" is!

"However, plenty of languages are dying out every day already, and 90% seems a pretty reasonable extrapolation." ()

I'm not a linguist, so it would be foolhardy of me to say what is and isnt a "pretty reasonable extrapolation" in this instance, since I have no idea how a linguist would go about comming to that conclusion. I was pointing out that the article said "could be up to 90%" not "will be 90%". I also pointed out that certain scientists came to the conclusion blonds and redheads would die out by such and such a date, and this was later debunked.

"And with every language dies a history, a way of thinking, a way of perceiving the world" ()

Ways of thinking and communicating die all the time, nothing lasts forever. An English person born 500 years ago was a part of a completely different era to me, spoke differently to me, but we're both English. English might be ubiquitous but its certainly not stagnant; new ways of thinking and speaking can be created within a language by the power of the individual. Such is the importance of art. With death comes birth.

"My objection to American English would be that with the way of thinking that seems to come with American English, the human race will have died out by the end of the century."

Honestly, I find that comment intellectually lazy. Why dont you just write "FUCK BUSH" in captal letters and get it over with.

"This is something you often see repeated, but that I very much doubt has any basis in fact whatsoever."

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (OED2) includes over 600,000 definitions. This is a fact.

Also, it says on this russian site (http://www.hello-online.ru/knowhow.php?comid=70):

"According to linguistic surveys, those native speakers of English in Great Britain who had 16 years of education used about 5000 words in speech and up to 10,000 in writing. 60,000 words is considered to be the maximum any individual uses. The English language has the largest vocabulary; it contains about 500,000 words and another 300,000 technical terms."

So here, you see they've seperated technical terms.

"And again, if you speak Japanese, have you noticed how often Japanese seems to have two (or three or four) words for something when there is only one word in English?"

Honestly I havent.

For example, in English, you can say "Dolphin" and it means a marine mammal. In Japanese they call it a "pig of the sea". And in English, we can say "calipygian" where as in Japanese they would combine kanji to create a compound meaning "beautiful buttock person". Japanese takes "words" and adds them together to make a concept. You can do this in English too, but we do have more "single" words that express ideas.

--The English language also has the largest vocabulary in the world

are you sure ? whenever i compare it to another language i find english has less words to express nuances of things

What languages do you speak? And give me some examples please.

Have you ever, perchance, looked at a thesaurus?

aaaaaaaaaargh bat furries!

I remember you posting that!

Animal penises are indeed strange and wonderful.

ha! that upper image reminds me of this album cover:

http://www.bluesnaggletooth12.com/goodies/foxtrot.jpg

here's the turning torso all tarkovskian last year

The Swedes do seem to be far ahead of the curve as far as cool goes. All the über-hip Swedish indie/electro bands that get played in trendy shops/bars/clubs in, say, London appear to be the most mainstream hand-me-downs, and far beneath the average Swedish hipster's concern.

Sometimes I have the suspicion that, sometime during the 1980s or so, Sweden embarked on a conscious and deliberate programme of massive investment in Gross National Cool. Hence, Swedes studied up on everything from krautrock to C86 to vintage American fashion, founded indie labels, clubs and institutions like Musikbyrån, embarking on a campaign of exposing their population to music with a lot of underground cachet (hence Maher Shalal Hash Baz in daily papers) and basically sent their best, brightest and hippest to study and take off the coolest trends (and underground proto-trends) from around the world, not too unlike the way in which the Japanese started off by making knockoffs of American products after WW2 before surpassing the originals. We still see evidence of the imitation phase (take, for example, in the Sarah-esque twee pop sound of Labrador Records bands, Jens Lekman's retro-styled croon, The Knife's electro-styled Cyndi Lauperisms or the thrift-shop Americana for sale at H&M). That's just the things we see outside of Sweden; the things just hip enough to show up British haircut "indie" as the dated and tedious genre it is without exposing the entire crown jewels of Swedish cool.

I think there's something in that, but it's also a question of the kind of cool we're talking about. In the Anglo world we think cool has to be tied up with a certain aggression -- with what Inglehart calls "survival" values. That's evident in our admiration for Hobbsian hip hop or the NME's recent Cool List, topped by a tattooed guy who'd "invented punk rock... again!"

In that world, Hash Maher Shalal Baz isn't cool. But in Sweden or Japan it is. They have a different attitude, cool is gentler, kinder, softer, more twee. And it's interesting that if you look at Inglehart's map of cultural values (google it, I can't link right now), Japan and Sweden are very close to each other. They're both about the most secular-rational and the most self-expressive nations in the world, in other words the least traditional and survival-oriented nations. That's what makes me, personally, feel very much at home here. In a sense, these nations are secure, liberal, secular. Our conceptions of "cool" overlap.

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.com/statistics/some_findings.html

Highly flawed

According to Richard Florida's creativity index, Sweden is the world’s most creative country and receives the highest marks for tolerance...

Richard Florida's a dink. Sweden's the most tolerant country, except when it comes to Muslims ... blacks ... freedom of expression, etc. etc. etc. Basically, anyone who isn't Swedish or at least non-Muslim European and has views that aren't suspect by the national culture or government.

I think Europe's been basking in the lack of critical eye for far too long; now that they're a competitive political and economic body, I think it's time to stop the "Europe is Awesome and Everything Right / America is Awful" non-dialogue going on for the past decade or two.

The 'Sweden and Japan' thing could be cut the 'right wing' way, as well as the 'left wing' way.

Left wing cut says: Sweden and Japan are more relaxed because of a mix of fresh air, simplicity of style, closeness to nature, something quasi-religious but we're not too sure.

Right wing cut says: Stay aloof or insular, nation-as-extended-family, and the citizens never feel "Oh no, there isn't enough to go round." Even if there isn't, it's all between 'us' anyway.

The '90%' gone idea reminds me of this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/also_in_the_news/7097647.stm#html). Two brothers in Mexico are the only speakers of an "ancient" language, and the brothers are fighting, putting danger into the language being used in the future.

It is cute to compartmentalize and blog about a topic such as a nation of people having a grasp on the entirety of what we here think is a shared cool. Comparing it to other nations in the east we long to greater understand as "cool" people from the west. Sweden is far from a bastion of coolness, it is a sub-arctic place of arrested development for its youth if that is cool then I am missing the point of life. It is failing, it is a place where its citizens gather and study for their coolness by having a lot of time in darkness to read on what is going on in the "cool" worlds in London and New York and elsewhere in magazines and sad forums deep within the crypts of the web. Sweden much like Japan is a nation where the standard of living as far as youth having funding to share outwardly their social/cultural place in the world of trends is easy because money is not hard to come by. It is a beautiful place, but it is a place that allows for an easy path to fall directly into this line of thinking about life. That something like knowing what to wear and who is drawing the best pen and pencil art on myspace. It is a bummer. It is a far cry from the generation of Swedish parents that came out of the 60s and thought that their social democracy would affect a greater change on the world. Hooray for cool pants and cool music especially when you can go anywhere in the world and say, "are those cool pants swedish?".

There is and old colloquialism that it would be nice to see change at some point during this generation of cool.

Instead of,

"Great minds think alike."

Let us be the generation of,

"Great minds think."

yr just shooting yr mouth off

What?

Guns don't kill people, words kill people. Shooting your mouth [off].

language = danger.

I was averring what I believed to be your meaning, if only emblematic, of, "putting danger into the language".

"putting danger into the language being used in the future"...if these dudes communicate (talk), there'll be trouble. Language = Danger.

mouth = gun

Check the stats for female Swedish aid workers married to White African Tobacco, Coffee and Cocao plantation owners whom all happen to be Presbytarians. Your Torso might be more that red!

i was so sorry to miss the show but i was holding my annual glogg party! argh. i hope it went well and i am sure anna and cindy and co. do a good job. thanks for the maher shout out!

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Turning heads (and torsos) in Malmo

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*FAP FAP FAP*

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Sweden and Gross National Cool

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Sweden and Cool?

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Malmo's Georgie Girls!

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