Svågerpolitik.
There's something that's been nagging me lately. It started about a month ago as I was trying to get my coat out of the cloakroom at the student hang out in Skövde. (For a festivity I participated in with my brother who studies there.) Now as I was waiting for my turn, someone tried to get ahead of me using the "I know someone"-excuse. I said:
"Vad är det här för nepotism?" ("What kind of nepotism is this?")
It's practically a running gag that I use this word whenever someone as much as hints at wanting to curry favors this way. They didn't understood me so I clarified with the much more (in Swedish at least) easily understood word "svågerpolitik".
Svågerpolitik can be translated as nepotism or cronyism (at least according to tyda.se) and is a combination of the words "svåger" (=brother in law) and "politik" (=politics). I've heard the word several times as a kid and teenager, and I've been under the impression that this is one of the worst things to accuse anyone of in this socialist nightmare I call homecountry.
The people I spoke to, who are students at college level thought it was a local dialect from my hometown of Trollhättan. Okay none of use were really sober, (I would probably have come up with more indignant replies if I had been more sober) but I still found it really annoying. How can any native speaker of Swedish of adult age not know this word? I honestly didn't get it. Sure I sometimes exhibit a extreme vocabulary at least in Swedish to the point that I'm almost a joke of it. Probably doesn't help that I read a lot of books as a kid/teenager and preferred books that were published at least several decades ago (I love the smell of old books) and have a general interest in languages overall. Hence why I often try and figure out words if I don't know them to begin with, and due to often being right I've gotten a bit overconfident to the point of foolish about it.
But svågerpolitik is still to me a word that is obvious one should know. It's not to the point that I can't understand speaking relative good Swedish without knowing it, just to the point that college students should know this. And to compound it, the other day, another college student (classmate of mine even) who like me also seems to be less fresh out of high school than most of the youngsters. And he had never heard the word either. And he thought it was an example of the language evolving that less people knew it. ...
I sincerely disagree that language evolution works like that.
And it hit me a moment ago that what's really bothering me about this, is the word in question:
Svågerpolitik. Brother-in-law-politics. To use your connections to get favors. To get a job not because of your merits, but because your uncle plays golf with your new boss. It's a prefectly simple word, that can't with any real probability be misunderstood when given a context. And it describes something that should not be accepted in what most people would call democracy. Either these people have never been given a context (AKA never/extremely seldom read anything that has anything to do with politics/news/etc) or when given a context it's never been touched upon as a negative thing (AKA reading articles about it happening without anyone in the article saying "This is svågerpolitik").
College students. The democratically and liberally aware generation. Or so they say.
Be frightened. I know I am.
"Vad är det här för nepotism?" ("What kind of nepotism is this?")
It's practically a running gag that I use this word whenever someone as much as hints at wanting to curry favors this way. They didn't understood me so I clarified with the much more (in Swedish at least) easily understood word "svågerpolitik".
Svågerpolitik can be translated as nepotism or cronyism (at least according to tyda.se) and is a combination of the words "svåger" (=brother in law) and "politik" (=politics). I've heard the word several times as a kid and teenager, and I've been under the impression that this is one of the worst things to accuse anyone of in this socialist nightmare I call homecountry.
The people I spoke to, who are students at college level thought it was a local dialect from my hometown of Trollhättan. Okay none of use were really sober, (I would probably have come up with more indignant replies if I had been more sober) but I still found it really annoying. How can any native speaker of Swedish of adult age not know this word? I honestly didn't get it. Sure I sometimes exhibit a extreme vocabulary at least in Swedish to the point that I'm almost a joke of it. Probably doesn't help that I read a lot of books as a kid/teenager and preferred books that were published at least several decades ago (I love the smell of old books) and have a general interest in languages overall. Hence why I often try and figure out words if I don't know them to begin with, and due to often being right I've gotten a bit overconfident to the point of foolish about it.
But svågerpolitik is still to me a word that is obvious one should know. It's not to the point that I can't understand speaking relative good Swedish without knowing it, just to the point that college students should know this. And to compound it, the other day, another college student (classmate of mine even) who like me also seems to be less fresh out of high school than most of the youngsters. And he had never heard the word either. And he thought it was an example of the language evolving that less people knew it. ...
I sincerely disagree that language evolution works like that.
And it hit me a moment ago that what's really bothering me about this, is the word in question:
Svågerpolitik. Brother-in-law-politics. To use your connections to get favors. To get a job not because of your merits, but because your uncle plays golf with your new boss. It's a prefectly simple word, that can't with any real probability be misunderstood when given a context. And it describes something that should not be accepted in what most people would call democracy. Either these people have never been given a context (AKA never/extremely seldom read anything that has anything to do with politics/news/etc) or when given a context it's never been touched upon as a negative thing (AKA reading articles about it happening without anyone in the article saying "This is svågerpolitik").
College students. The democratically and liberally aware generation. Or so they say.
Be frightened. I know I am.