What
if I wrote an article about The New York
Times and decided to leave out the letters n, r and t and substitute some other letters in their places? It might
become the Few Yolk Limes. Or the Bew Yozk Ximes. Ix would be absuzd,
righx?
I
just read "Pommes de Terroir," a short article about the specialty potato industry in Sweden, in Sunday's New
York Times travel magazine. And would you believe it? The writer and
editors completely disregarded three letters of the Swedish alphabet!
They
just weren't there at all.
It's Spelled That Way for a
Reason
The
travel writer, Abby Aguirre, went to Skåne, one of Sweden's southern provinces,
and visited the municipality of Båstad. Båstad, because of the å in the first syllable, is pronounced almost like "BOO-stah." It's not spelled Bastad, as the Times would have it; Bastad
sounds more like a snooty British rendering of bastard.
According
to Båstad's website, there are different theories for how the town got its name.
Like many place names, it could derive from an early resident's name. Båstad
could be a shortened version Bootho's-sted (the place where Bootho lives). Or
perhaps Bodo's-sted. Both are
regional names going back at least to the ninth century; we know of them
because they appeared in a French chronicle identifying Norman/Viking men with
origins in Skåne. Another possibility is that the name is a shortened version
of båtställe (båt being the word for boat),
probably meaning some sort of boat passage or landing.
But in either case you can see how keeping the å rather
than an a in the first syllable of Båstad is absolutely key; spelled with
an a it has a completely different
pronunciation, one that would not link it to either of its possible origins. Thus,
one could say that changing the å to a not only sounds like a nasty insult,
but also robs the town of a bit of its meaning and history.
A rose by any other name...would be something else entirely
Continuing
on through the Times piece, the sjö in Rammsjö is a word that means sea
or lake. Sjo is meaningless and I'm
pretty sure it's unpronounceable as well.
Also, a trädgård is a garden. It is composed of
the elements träd (tree) and gård (yard). Tradgard means nothing in Swedish. (In English it might be
the name of some product advertised on late-night television, designed to
protect your trad, whatever that is.)
Väderö is an island, indicated by
the final element ö, the word for island. The first element, väder, means weather. Vader means
nothing (unless we're talking about Darth).
Moreover, the
name of the Cape on which the potatoes in question grow is, as it says on the sign
pictured on page 107 of the magazine, Bjäre,
not Bjare. Also, I believe the vodka
is named after Börje Karlsson, not Borje, and the potato dealer's name is Göran not Goran. (Not only does ö
sound completely different than o,
but it also renders the g soft and
thus is essential for intelligibility. I ask you: would Jennifer want you to call her Gonnifer?)
Finally,
there's no such thing as farsk
potatoes. They are färsk: fresh.
A language resonates with
the history, the logic and the character of its people
I mention
all of this not to be picky, and not to try to seem cooler-than-thou because I
know a little Swedish. I bring it up because I think it really matters.
I mean, come on! Man up, people!
They
may inconvenience your typesetter, but the three letters å, ä and ö comprise nearly 10% of the Swedish
alphabet. Ignoring them demonstrates a profound lack of respect for the Swedish
language and for language in general. I mean, did the folks who standardized
Swedish just go on a drinking binge one day and randomly decide to place dots
over some of their vowels just for the heck of it? Well...maybe.
But seriously, however it happened, the fact is that Swedish has 29 letters. They are all
necessary to differentiate the sounds of the language. A is different than å or ä. O
is different than ö. They look different, they sound
different and they have different effects on the consonants that surround them.
And the spelling of a word speaks to the word's composition, its meaning
and its origin.
What is a travel magazine
for, anyway?
Is
it ignorance, laziness, or does the New
York Times just not care about getting it right? Maybe it's just taking advantage of the good-naturedness of Swedes, of their willingness to extend themselves to understand us, even when we don't reciprocate. But in this global age, no one
– certainly not a publication that considers itself to be relevant to
people traveling overseas - can afford to display this sort of ignorance and disrespect.
Getting
the names right is an important part of showing respect and highlighting the
beauty and uniqueness of a place and a people. That, after all, is what a
travel magazine should be for.
