SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: vovve

If you're raising bilingual children in Sweden, this may very well be one of the first words as soon as they start to get a sense of the world around them.

Swedish word of the day: vovve
A dog is a 'hund' in Swedish, but it can also be a 'vovve'. Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

While a Swedish dog is usually known as a hund, the word vovve – or vovvar in plural – is commonly used as a more diminutive word in speech directed at children (or by owners talking to their dogs).

Vovve, which the Swedish Academy dates back to 1867, is a form of onomatopoeia – words that imitate the sounds they describe – and comes from the word vov-vov, which is the sound the dog makes in Swedish.

You can compare this to for example “woof” in English or “bau” in Italian.

Vovve also appears in the Swedish phrase villa, volvo, vovve, which refers to three adulting criteria that show you have become a sensible, successful grown-up: a house (not too flashy – the word villa in Swedish simply refers to any kind of detached house), a car and a dog.

But why do animals sound different in different languages? As you can probably guess, it is not that the animals are multilingual, it is that we perceive the sounds in different ways depending on our own language.

There is even one theory attributed to German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (although this is contested) which suggests that animal sounds contributed to the birth of human language – when our ancestors started imitating those sounds they heard in their natural environment.

Other Swedish animal noises include kuckeliku, nöff and gnägg. Ten points if you can guess which animals they are associated with, otherwise here’s a cheat sheet.

Examples

Titta, vilken söt liten vovve

Look, what a cute little dog

Duktig vovve

Good dog

Har du kommit ihåg att mata vovvarna?

Have you remembered to feed the dogs?

Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order in English or German. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it.

It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon USAmazon UKBokus or Adlibris.

Member comments

  1. There is an old English music hall song that goes, (chorus),

    Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow (bow-wow).
    Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow (bow-wow).
    I’ve got a little cat,
    and I’m very fond of that,
    but I’d rather have a bow-wow-wow.

    That bow-wow corresponds to the Swedish vovve.

    /Kurt

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: shit

Before you get offended by this potty-mouthed word of the day, we should probably tell you that this English swear word is a lot milder in Swedish.

Swedish word of the day: shit

The word shit in Swedish is, as you may have guessed, a loanword from English. It has its roots in Middle English schit and scythe, meaning “dung”, which in turn originated in a Proto-Indo-European word meaning to split, divide or separate.

There are a number of words in other European languages which have the same root, like schijt in Dutch, Scheiße in German, skidt in Danish, skit/skitt in Norwegian and the Swedish word skit.

So, why does Swedish have two words for shit? Essentially, they’re used (and pronounced) in different ways.

Shit, pronounced similarly to the English word but in a Swedish accent, is essentially only used as an exclamation, whether that’s for something good or bad, and most adults in Sweden wouldn’t bat an eyelid if they heard a small child saying it. 

  • Don’t miss any of The Local’s Swedish words and expressions of the day by downloading our app (available on Apple and Android) and then selecting the Swedish Word of the Day in your Notification options via the User button

It normally indicates some sort of surprise or shock, similar to “wow” or “oh my god” in English. You might also hear it in the phrase shit pommes frites, which literally translates as “shit, French fries!” which a Swedish speaker might use to express surprise: shit pommes frites, har du fått en ny mobil?! (“shit French fries, have you got a new phone?!”)

If you accidentally bumped into someone in a queue, for example, you could say shit, förlåt (shit, sorry), and if you came to some sort of realisation, you could say oj shit! (oh shit!). In general, saying shit would be acceptable even in professional situations with Swedes.

Skit, on the other hand, is pronounced with the sort of whooshing sj or sk-sound at the beginning, kind of like the word wheat, but with a whistle at the start.

It’s used in Swedish in broadly the same ways you’d use shit in English, both in the sense of actual faeces (as a noun and a verb) but also as a vulgar way to describe some sort of undesirable material or thing: jag har tröttnat på den här skiten (I’m tired of this shit) or ta bort din skit från bordet (take your shit off the table).

You may also have come across it in the term skit samma (the milder variant would be strunt samma), which can be translated as “never mind” or “forget it”, or skit också if something unfortunate happens (skit också, jag missade bussen – damn it, I missed the bus).

You can also describe something as being skit, use it in phrases like jag förstår inte ett skit (I don’t understand shit) and as an intensifier: han bankade skiten ur honom (he beat the shit out of him).

In contrast to shit, skit is generally considered less acceptable to use in a professional situation… although you will probably still hear children say it.

Example sentences:

Oj shit, spelar du in det här? 

Oh shit, are you recording this?

Ska vi inte åka snart? Shit, ja, klockan är redan 12!

Shouldn’t we leave soon? Shit, yeah, it’s already 12 o’clock!

Villa, Volvo, Vovve: The Local’s Word Guide to Swedish Life, written by The Local’s journalists, is available to order. Head to lysforlag.com/vvv to read more about it. It is also possible to buy your copy from Amazon USAmazon UKBokus or Adlibris.

SHOW COMMENTS