Page 415

go with the purely English terms, e. g., luffa (=to loaf, from the German) and vigilans (=vigilantes, from the Spanish). Many of these borrowings are adapted to Swedish spelling, and so sidewalk becomes sajdoak, street becomes strit, fight becomes fajt, business becomes bissness, and housecleaning becomes husklining. But even more important is the influence that American English has upon the vocabulary that remains genuinely Swedish; when words are not borrowed bodily they often change the form of familiar Swedish words. Thus sängkammare (=bedroom) is abandoned for bäddrum, husållsgöromål (=housework) gives way to husarbete, kabeltelegram to kabelgram, brandsoldat (=fireman) to brandman, regnby (=rainstorm) to regnstorm, brekfort (=postcard) to postkort, and beställa (=order) to ordra. The Swedish-American no longer speaks of frihet; instead he uses fridom, an obvious offspring of freedom. His wife abandons the hattnål for the hattpinne. He acquires a hemadress (=home address) in place of his former bostadsadress. Instead of kyrkogård (=churchyard) he uses grafgård (=graveyard). For godståg (=goods-train) he substitutes frakttåg (=freight-train). In place of words with roots that are Teutonic he devises words with roots that have been taken into English from the Latin, the Greek or the French, e.g., investigera, krusad, minoritetsrapport, officerare, audiens, affår, exkursion, evangelist, hospital, liga (=league), residens, sympati.

This influence of American extends to grammar and syntax. The inflections of Swedish tend to fall off in the United States, as the inflections of German have fallen off among the Pennsylvania Germans. And the Americanized Swede gradually acquires a habit of putting his sentences together English-fashion. At home he would say Bröderna Anderson, just as the German would say Gebrūder Anderson, but in America he says Anderson Bröderna. In Sweden all over is öfverallt; in America, following the American construction, it becomes allt öfver. Mina vänner (=my friend) is Americanized into en vän af mina (=a friend of mine). Tid efter annan (literally, time after another) becomes från tid till tid (=from time to time). The American verb to take drags its Swedish relative, taga, into strange places, as in taga kallt (=to take cold), taga nöje i (=to take pleasure in), taga fördel af (=to take advantage of),

Contents -SUBJECT INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD