s Thoughts from the Physics Chick: Learning Swedish, part 4 (“Bork, bork, bork!”)

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Learning Swedish, part 4 (“Bork, bork, bork!”)

Scottro was kind enough to inform me that while “Bork, bork, bork!” is not standard Swedish, it’s a valid regional variant. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to determine the standard Swedish cognate (historical comparative linguistics training notwithstanding), which means I don’t know what The Swedish Chef is actually saying. I’ve narrowed the choices down to a few possibilities:

borg n. - castle (“Castle, castle, castle!”)

borr n. - drill; gimlet (“Drill, drill, drill!”)

bort adv. - away (“Away, away, away!”)

burk n. - pot; jar; tin; can (“Pot, pot, pot!”)

ork n. - strength (“Strength, strength, strength!”)

Pick your favorite.

3 Comments:

At June 03, 2007 2:54 PM, Blogger JB said...

"Pot! Pot! Pot!" seems most likely. The sound of "bork" is most similar (in my opinion) to "burk" and it seems most likely that a chef would be talking about a pot. Plus he often says that as he's shoving things into his big ole stock pot.

 
At June 03, 2007 4:09 PM, Blogger JB said...

Ok, I'm watching the Swedish Chef right now and it seems to vary. Sometimes it sounds like he must be saying "Burk, Burk, Burk," but other times it sounds like "borr" or "borg."

Maybe it's some compound word that combines "ork" and "burk" a strong pot?

 
At June 04, 2007 3:34 AM, Blogger Saule Cogneur said...

I would have thought "bort." Maybe it's a combination, "Away! castle pot drill!!"

 

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