A very off-topic mail about Chinese and Swedish

[Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr.]

Olaf Solstrand <olaf at andebyonline.com> wrote:

> DEAR Sigvald...
>
> 1. You're complaining that a Norwegian/Italian
> book published in Norway did have character
> translations in Greek and Arab, and not in
> Swedish and Finnish.

Correct! To me Swedish and Finnish character translations would have been
much more meaningful languages by that time - and they still are.


> My guess is that the Swedish and Finnish
> redactions had nothing to do with that at all,
> and that it is 100% WRONG blaming Swedes and
> Finns for this.

Maybe so, but in this list they have been the ones showing most interests
for the Chinese stuff - they just accidentally triggered some two and a half
decade old irritation. I did however *not* intend to offend anyone by this -
I am very sorry if I did.


> 2. Another guess of mine - this list was
> written by Italians, and the Norwegian names
> was added just so that we also could enjoy it.

Sound plausible - but I guess that the Norwegian redaction was free to call
their Swedish and Finnish colleagues in order to get their names as well. So
your argument, even though it's good, is IMO no excuse for the Norwegian
redaction to not provide the Swedish and the Finnish names - the Danish
names were there remember!


> 3. You are complaining about the contents of
> ONE specific book. I know for sure that other
> publications had these names in the
> Scandinavian languages.

Publications like:


> 4. You wrote:
>> Well let me just tell all Swedes this: for
>> Norwegian and I bet also Danish readers of
>> any age, Asian "rubble" is definitely *not*
>> as interesting as Swedish names!
>
> You can't say that - you haven't checked.

I wrote "I bet that..." not "I know for sure that...", I can see some
difference there...


> 6. You wrote to Christina:
>> Sorry, I didn't intend to be offensive.
>
> Really?? In your mail, you said that Swedes
> "should clean their own house before taking
> care of other people's business"

Oh, please - that was just some kind of a stupid joke in order to get the
reader's attention.

I can see now that I shouldn't have included those lines in the start of my
posting. Sorry for that!


> You called languages like Japanese and Arabic
> "rubble" that Norwegians can't understand
> "a shit out of".

No Olaf, I didn't call those languages "rubble" that comment was only about
the alphabets/signs used to write/print those languages.


> 7. You ended your letter with
>> Anyway, now in the internet-age we Norwegians,
>> Danes and everybody else can easily find any
>> Swedish Disney Character name we are looking
>> for, so you Swedes can feel free to concentrate
>> on Chinese or whatever Disney Character names
>> you like.
>
>....so why did you write this at all?

I ended my posting that way to show that it was not intended to be
offensive.

Sigvald :-)