{"id":520,"date":"2013-06-21T00:33:55","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=520"},"modified":"2013-06-21T00:33:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:33:55","slug":"hellere-ramme-ved-siden-af-end-slet-ikke-at-ramme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?p=520","title":{"rendered":"“Hellere ramme ved siden af end slet ikke at ramme…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of this posting is one of those untranslatable sayings that makes it fun to study languages and ponder their subtle differences. The simple English word “to miss”, like in “I missed the target” or “I missed the deadline”, does not<\/strong> exist in Danish! Danes either “don’t hit the target” or “hit next to it” or “hit past it”:<\/p>\n

English ==> Danish:
\nI missed the target ==> Jeg ramte ved siden af m\u00e5let (~I hit next to the target)
\nI missed the target ==> Jeg ramte forbi m\u00e5let (~I hit past the target)
\nI missed the target ==> Jeg ramte ikke m\u00e5let (~I didn’t hit\u00a0the target)<\/p>\n

Thus the popular\u00a0Danish saying in the title is really a piece of nonsense that says “it’s better to miss the target by hitting next to it than not to hit it at all”. Danes use it congenially\u00a0as meaning “Better luck next time!”. Of course, one could also put on a pseudo-cultural hat on and “deduce” that, just like Eskimos and native Greenlanders have about 20 different words for “Snow”, so it is also that Danes have at least 3 different degrees of “Missing a target”…. I don’t know what it says about the Danes if it were so… Along those lines, knowing the Danish weather, one would think that it really would be more useful for Danes to have about 20 words for “Rain”. They do. In essence there’s only word for rain (“regn”), but because of the Danish love of compound words you can get a lot of mileage out of that:<\/p>\n

English==>Danish:
\nRain ==> Regn
\nDrizzle==> Finregn
\nHeavy rain==> Styrtregn
\nVery heavy rain ==> Skybrud (~broken clouds \ud83d\ude42 )
\nand efter\u00e5rsregn<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0for\u00e5rsregn<\/span><\/a> \u00a0 gaveregn<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 hel\u00e5rsregn<\/span><\/a> \u00a0 kugleregn<\/span><\/a> \u00a0 slagregn<\/span><\/a> \u00a0 sm\u00e5regn<\/span><\/a> \u00a0 sommerregn<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 st\u00f8vregn<\/span><\/a> \u00a0 vinterregn<\/span><\/a>…etc…<\/span><\/p>\n

A symmetrical problem occurs when trying to translate the popular English saying “Hit or miss”, like in “In June the weather in London can be hit or miss”, into Danish. You basically can’t do it literally, because in Danish “hit or miss” would become “hit or don’t hit”, which really doesn’t sound like anything worth saying.\u00a0Instead we have the Danish version of it, which mimics the rhythm with two made-up words: “hip som hap”.<\/p>\n

\"hit-or-miss-7103-scg-7103-003-600x600\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"has-anyone-seen-dane-dane-missing-nazi-skinhead-hitler-cartm-demotivational-poster-1236530265\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this posting is one of those untranslatable sayings that makes it fun to study languages and ponder their subtle differences. The simple English word “to miss”, like in “I missed the target” or “I missed the deadline”, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny","category-no-equivalent","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}