Montecore (19 page)
Authors: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Dads change languages.
Dads shrink a little.
I am resuming the rudder of the narrative in order to describe the next phase in our Swedish learning. It was acted in early spring 1987. Your mother had pointed out that perhaps it was not ingenious that your father taught me Swedish (and I him). She noted the likeness to the myth of “the blind leading the blind” and recommended us to cultivate the assistance of an outsider. Who did we select? Exactly. You.
Your father interrupted you in your games in the courtyard, called you in to the studio, and pronounced his desire:
“We need your assistance. Instead of spending your time with childish friends you shall be our guide into the Swedish language.
Daccurdo
?”
Your father explained that we were in need of explicit linguistic rules that define the structure of Swedish and you nodded your head and had a very difficult time concealing your glowing pride. The next day we initiated our lessons. When you reached the studio, which was empty as usual, you had prepared certain notes and together we parked ourselves at a table with the ambition of illuminating the dark cave that we can call the Swedish language.
During the following months you did your best to act grown-up and assist the formulating of our rules of grammar. Here you can write in the memories that detail for the reader that it was thanks to your father and Kadir that you were infected with the ambition of an author.
And you must admit
that Kadir actually has a point because it is in the formulating of the rules of grammar that you see Swedish from the outside in for the first time. And maybe this is where your linguistic curiosity is wakened? Dads who decide that there is a system to language and ask for your help and what is bigger than dads who ask sons for help? The whole spring you go directly to the studio after school. You help with grammar, practice pronunciation, and correct their texts with dictionaries. You do your best to make up simplified rules of grammar, which Dads collect in the black wax notebook. And you remember how strange it feels to know more than Dads for the first time in your life. The feeling intoxicates you, takes over, and maybe sometimes you correct mistakes that are really correct and maybe sometimes you make up rules that aren’t exactly right, but Dads continue to write in the wax notebook and Kadir continues to imitate your pronunciation and you have a power that you’ve never had before. Soon you feel how the language opens up, how the linguistic structures are everywhere, how you are always on the trail of the truth. You collect more and more rules with a huge amount of examples. Until the day when Dads suddenly take the notebook from you, hide it in the
mémoire
, and forbid you to continue collecting rules. Why? You don’t remember. But you remember that you keep going in your head because not even Dads can control the inside of your head and in there you build new systems and new structures for how Swedish is constructed. And just one time, right before Kadir returns home, you try to convince Dads that Swedish is actually a total Arab-hating language, and Dads, sighing, ask why, and you only have time to
give one example: What about the expression
pyramid scheme?
What’s more Arab-hating than that? And Dads whip around and the cuff on your ear burns your cheek red and Dads hiss:
You’re
Swedish, you goddamn bloody idiot!
Right now I’m sitting here behind my reception with the black wax notebook with our rules of grammar in front of me. Its exterior is worn, the shine is lost, and a brown coffee ring tattoos its first page. Still it is very grandiose to me in its nostalgic value. What fun we had when we together became each other’s astronauts in the universe of the Swedish language! Was our togetherness not delicious? Everyone received compensation: You practiced your tongue to say
r
and
s
(finally!!!). I prepared my hotelish CEO proficiency. Your father practiced his Swedish in order to be able to wait on photo customers in the right language. Do our rules of grammar justify their position in the book about your father? I believe so. Below I have translated the text from the booklet, approximately how we wrote it (spiced with a little extra metaphoricalness). And by the way, before I forget: If you persist in bringing up a certain cuff your father happened to delegate you I want to remind you of the truth. It was a “cuff” that we can sooner call a “pat softer than a sweater present on Christmas Eve.” And it was for your own sake, memorize that.
14.
Your father included three drawings in the letter. Here he is maximally generous … In actuality, your speech pattern was a long way from normalcy. And your drawings? Well, of course you know how they looked …
KHEMIRI’S (& KADIR’S) RULES OF GRAMMAR
Formulated While Waiting for Photo Customers, Spring 1987
INTRODUCTION
Swedish is the language of the Swedes. The Swedish mentality bears a great interest for different phenomena. This mentality is reflected in the Swedes’ language. This is vital. In order to understand the Swedes and their humor and their bizarre manner of discussing the weather and nodding forth their refusal we must understand Swedish. The mentality and the language are linked together, back and forth in the mirror of eternity that is symbolized by two mirrors put up facing each other in a sweaty changing room.
Jonas—this is my decorative introduction with a poetic metaphor stolen from your father.
Who, then, are the Swedes? Let us describe them and relate their language to their mentality.
MNEMONIC RULE 1
Swedish is the language of loans. When in doubt about a Swedish word—choose the French equivalent. Or English. This saves a lot of time in the learning of vocabulary. Swedes are a people with quick influences from the world around them.
This was our initial linguistic rule. In the composition book we collectioned a monstrous quantity of correspondences between Swedish and French and English in order to effectively build our vocabularies. In double-column form with linked arrows are nouns like “chauffeur,” “avenue,” “premier,” “voyeur.” The adjectives include words like “maladroit,” “excellent,” “vital.” A particular
page has been dedicated to the verbs of quantity; there are “pronounce,” “terminate,” “disregard,” “march,” “respond,” “lodge.”
MNEMONIC RULE
2
One can also visualize Swedish as the language of melody—when in uncertainty, notice the nuance of intonation. Swedes love song and music. No people sings in choir more than Swedes. Incidentally, Pernilla has taken music classes. Swedes sing songs on holidays, birthdays, and before they drink alcohol. Someone who does something well has “struck the right note” and people who disagree are “out of tune.” Everything in Swedish is music.
This was our secondary rule, formulated in order to try to differentiate between words that in Swedish are confusing copies with only the vital difference of tone. We expose examples like “bass” (partly the guitarly, partly the fishly). The baby’s “mobile” is compared with a book“mobile” with the city of “Mobile.” The “Polish” (from Poland) compete with “polish” (for shoes). “To reject” is mirrored against “to be a reject.” It also says:
You can eat chili and be chilly
.
You can sit on a board and be bored
.
You can hit the brake and take a break
.
See also hail, fall, hit …
Your father and I carefully practiced the tones of pronunciation to the correct Swedish melody before we onwent to the next rule.
MNEMONIC RULE
3
Also, when the melody is exactly identical to us, the poetic ambiguity of Swedish can deceive. Be wary of the context!
Swedes are, for example, extremely amorous about payment to the government. Thus “the Treasury” takes one’s stately tax compulsion and “treasure” is a precious chest of riches.
Here many pages are dedicated to equivalent examples. At the end your father celebrates one of his Swedish favorite words: “drive.”
Oh, that magnificent word which in the form of symbols shows the poeticness of Swedish! By context, “drive” can bear three diagonally separated meanings. There is to “drive” something through, as in firmly advance a particular politic. There is to “drive” as in controlling a moving vehicle. There is also to “drive” someone up the wall in the aim of annoying.
And then, just when your father was done, you said:
“And then driving as in the meaning of driving snow!” and your father nodded happily and added it in the book.
MNEMONIC RULE
4
Swedes love music and particularly birds’ song! On the radio there are intermission birds, and the vitality of birds is mirrored in hundreds of Swedish expressions.
Here we noticed how you began to be more interested in our language discussions. The day after the formulating of that rule you came back to the studio with a long list of examples:
To “rule the roost” is to be the leader, and “pecking order” describes the ranking of colleagues. When something is “scarcer than hens’ teeth,” the rarity is very intensive. When one “wings” something, one is improvising. One is free as “a bird” and watches like “a hawk,” and to arrange a home is to
“nest.” To admit error is to “eat crow,” and the ideal saver of time is to “kill two birds with one stone.” The reddish spots of itchy disease on small children are called “chicken pox.” The coldness of skin is related to “goose bumps,” and one provokes by “ruffling feathers.” Information from a concealed source is from “a little bird,” cowards are named “chicken,” and an unlovely person is named an “ugly duckling.” And knowledge about the oldest art of love is of course related in “the birds and the bees.”
Jonas—I know that you collectioned even more examples but perhaps these are sufficient?
MNEMONIC RULE
5
For that matter—let us reformulate; not only birds are vital for the Swedish mentality.
ALL
of nature is constantly present for them. They are alone in the celebrated Everyman’s Right. Nature is
EVERYTHING
for them.
Here you began to spend more and more time with our rules. You began to read dictionaries and snickered yourself through your father’s old Swedish-French gems. Then you formulated this rule and presented us examples in quantity. Your father was impressed and encouraged you. Initially. Which in turn only seemed to feed your hunger rather than to satisfy it.
A “happy camper” is someone very content. When two people are extremely similar they are “two peas in a pod.” An evil person is “a bad apple,” and one who is silent at a party is a “wallflower.” Life is compared with “a bowl of cherries,” and a bad thing is “the pits.” The Swede’s ideal is “down to earth,” people are the “grass roots,” a mysterious person is a “hard nut to crack.”
Nature is always near in the phase of reproduction as well. The beautiful woman is called “a chick.” She is stroked on her bosom, or her “melons.” Soon her “bush” is moistened. She is fertilized by the man’s “wood” when he sows his “wild oats.” Together the woman and the man then carry out the act called “a roll in the hay.”
These phrases wakened great humor in the three of us. The space for this rule ends here, but a few pages ahead the enumeration of nature continues …
For that matter—let us not forget the Swedes’ names. What can trace the influence of nature better than the last names of celebrities? There is the pianist Lars Roos, like a rose; and the pop star Lasse Berghagen, “mountain pasture”; the author Astrid Lindgren, “linden branch”; and the skier Gunde Svan, “swan.” There’s the architect Asplund, “aspen grove”; the director Bergman, “man from the mountain”; the skier Stenmark, “stony land.” The journalist Lagercrantz, “laurel wreath,” and the politicians Palme, “palm tree,” and Björck, “birch.” And last but not least: Magnus “Här-en-stam”—“Here a log.” The Swedish nature is near to us everywhere! Sometimes also in first names! What other people name themselves Stig (“path”) or Björn (“bear”) or
[X]
.
Here I cannot really decipher the handwriting. We continue with …
MNEMONIC RULE
6
Hmm … My son says: Of course
NATURE
is vital, but is it not
IN PARTICULAR
the forest that the Swedes idolize the most? The forest and in particular the trees. Swedes are the Forest People! Sweden is the Land of Trees!
Here you began to be entirely too overactivated in your collection of linguistic examples. One can see more and more often that your fingers have taken the pen and themselves written in wordish examples.
Among other things, it reads:
Everything on a tree can become a new word in Swedish. The frequent customer of a bank can go to a “branch,” and we are “rooting” for the studio to succeed. A Swede removes his body and “leaves,” a perplexed person (or a political speech) is “stumped,” someone in love “pines.” To redecorate is to “spruce up,” and a complicated situation is “sticky.” Comedy is “slapstick,” a policeman has a “nightstick,” a child plays with a “pogo stick,” and you light a candle with a “matchstick.” The ideal of life is often to “turn over a new leaf.” When a Swede is on the wrong track he is “barking up the wrong tree.” Oof, my fingers are getting tired.
… you had actually written that in the notebook …
You can also “go out on a limb” and “put down roots.” To snore is to “saw logs;” to go insane is to be “barking mad.” If someone is scared they “shake like a leaf.” One is poor because “money doesn’t grow on trees.”
When we had written this I hacked my throat and coughed a few loud times … Your father ignored me.
And what can be better proof of the Swedes’ tree fixation than this: Their capital city is called
STOCK
holm! And their economic currency is called “
CROWNS”!
(The stock bears up the tree, and the crown, of course, sways above.)
Then follows a section that we can exclude because it is crossed out. In it you wanted to convince us that Swedes are the Alcohol People. Under the lines one can decipher “the ideal is to be ‘in high spirits’ or ‘drunk with joy’ or ‘intoxicated by life,’ ” and farther down, “a Swede who doesn’t express feelings ‘bottles them up,’ something small is ‘pint-sized,’ and …”). Then your father seems to have stopped you in the middle of this rule and taken the pen back.