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SWEDISH WORD OF THE DAY

Swedish word of the day: björntjänst

Today we look at one of those words whose meaning is very hard to guess without being told.

Swedish word of the day: björntjänst
Warning: Many native Swedish speakers use this word in the wrong context. Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

Björntjänst can be broken down into two words you might know fairly early on in your Swedish-learning journey.

Björn means “bear”, and the word has existed in almost the exact same form for centuries, probably coming from an older word for “brown”.

Then we have tjänst, which means “service” and is used in a wide variety of contexts: a company or an app might offer various tjänster, kundtjänst is “customer services”, and a tjänsteman (literally “service man”) is a category of professionals, which originally meant providing services rather than products but these days usually refers to professions requiring tertiary education.

So what on earth could björntjänst mean?

It comes from a 17th-century fairy tale, The Bear and the Gardener by Jean de La Fontaine (the story itself probably has even older origins).

In the story, a gardener befriends a bear, and entrusts the animal with several tasks including keeping flies away from the gardener while he takes his nap (tupplur). All is going well until one especially persistent fly appears, and the bear tries to crush it using a paving stone, killing the fly, but also the gardener. Hoppsan (oops), as the Swedes would say.

In the Swedish translation, the final line of this slightly bleak story is: Även om mo­­tivet är ädelt, vill man helst slippa en björntjänst! (Even if the motive is never so lofty, it’s always best to avoid a bear-service).

So a björntjänst is a well-meaning action that has negative or even disastrous consequences. There’s an equivalent term in Russian (medvezhya usluga) and German (der Bärendienst) and the French expression le pavé de l’ours (the bear’s paving stone) refers to the same thing.

However, many Swedes aren’t aware of this backstory, so you might hear björntjänst used in different contexts today.

For example, it might be used in the sense of “a disservice” without the implication that the motives were good (in Swedish a more accurate translation would be otjänst), or it may even be misused to mean something like “a big favour” by people who think the word björn is being used for emphasis.

One example of the latter came in 2015, when a municipal council put up posters advising residents to gör både dig och miljön en björntjänst (literally: do both yourself and the environment a favour that backfires) while trying to advertise electric bikes and hybrid cars. You could even say that by creating these posters, the council did themselves a björntjänst.

Example sentences

En björntjänst gör ju ingen glad.

A well-intended disservice obviously makes no one happy (a line from the Swedish version of Jungle Book song The Bare Necessities).

Om du pratar engelska med nyanlända som vill lära sig svenska, så gör du dem en björntjänst.

If you speak English with new arrivals who want to learn Swedish, it’s a well-intended action with negative consequences.

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

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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.

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