Stewart's
Corner
Spørsmål angående engelsk
kan stilles til språkrådgiver Stewart Clark, Studieavdelingen,
e-post: stewart.clark@adm.ntnu.no,
tlf. 73 59 52 45 eller faks: 73 59 52 37
To many young people, house has become the name associated
with extended partying, hypnotic lights and music and a life style.
House party however also has another traditional meaning
- a group of people staying in a country house for a few days.
In parliament in London, the House (capitalized ) means
either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. In the USA,
the same term usually means the House of Representatives.
House (Norw. hus) is a dwelling or a structure in which
people live. A house can be detached (Norw. enebolig)
or semi-detached in BE, duplex in AE (Norw. tomannsbolig),
or terraced (Norw. rekkehus): «You can sell a house,
but not a home». House is more widely used in BE,
than in AE where home is common.
Home (Norw. hjem) can be any kind of building: a flat,
a log cabin or even a hotel. However, it is not the building but
the associations that are important as home makes people
think of warmth and security. Consequently, estate agents talk
about homes for sale, even though this is illogical. A
house is saleable, a home is not.
Finally, what is House style? This is the preferred way
a company or institution presents its written information and
corporate visual image. The Oxford University Press, for example,
uses -ize and -ization in many words in BE where more conservative
alternatives (as favoured by Word) use -ise and -isation. This
is a characteristic of OUP house style.
fight, battle, struggle, strides, match
If one is concerned with physical conflict, here are some alternatives:
Fight (Norw. kamp, krangel) means a limited combat between
two boxers or aircraft or more widespread, like the fight for
survival, the fight against poverty.
Battle (Norw. slag, kamp) can mean major military actions
like the Battle of Britain and minor struggles: «I cannot
fight all your battles with your teachers».
Struggle (Norw. kamp) means a variety of different minor
battles: «The struggle for independence from Britain».
Strides is a word to treat with care as the Norw. term
«strides» is a false friend and is far away from the
English term strides. Suitable translations of Norw. strides include
quarrel, dispute and, if it is a minor matter, a quibble. In English,
stride refers to a way of walking, or a step towards progress:
«A big stride towards peace». In
BE slang, strides can also mean trousers (here only in
the plural). If you want to refer the basic cause of a dispute
(Norw. stridseple) a good translation is bone of contention.
Then there is «match» as another translation of the
Norw. kamp:
Match can mean a sporting event: «The TV programmes
collided and there was both a football match and a top tennis
match». In tennis, the results are based on the game, the
set and the match order.
Enlightening Norwenglish
An old lady was given the job of parking attendant in the north
of Norway. The story goes that she scared away all the foreign
tourists by her version of the prices:
«One time NOK 20, three time NOK 50».
Three Norwegians were in a small English town and stopped a taxi.
Two got in the back, Olav, the third one, opened the front door
to the astonishment of the driver. When he realized he had opened
the door on the wrong side, Olav explained to the driver «I
am sorry, in my country the rat is on the other side».
Dagbladet had an article about the actor Russel Crowe who mentioned
that he liked to sit as near to an emergency exit as possible
when travelling by plane. His explanation was that this made it
easy for him «to piss off» if something happened.
This slang expression for «escape» was reported in
Dagbladet in June 2000 as «så jeg kunne pisse vekk
når jeg vil».
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