okay, but *technically*...

In Chile I lived with one of the Language Arts teachers--who was teaching Shakespeare in the original Spanish--and when I asked what she taught, she included the word ortografía. I could readily translate this into "orthography," which neatly illustrates the pitfalls of translation, because I didn't know what that meant. We eventually worked our way around to something like "making sure the word has the right letters," so I got to explain that it would be an unusual native English speaker--certainly the rarest kind of American--who would hear "orthography" and know what it meant.

The approximation we found was "spelling," but it actually means "the list of mistakes you pay your professional editor to tell you about." English is justly notorious for this (though there are far worse possibilities), but I finally noticed the lyrics to this Swedish Christmas song I keep listening to (only because I didn't grow up with it, can't understand the words, and the music is thoroughly European and yet also thoroughly unfamiliar).

(See here if you're wondering what instrument the lead singer is playing.)

1. I Österland, där en stjärna uppgick, ovanligen hon månde brinna. Tre vise män efter Guds allvisa skick Gud sände det barnet att finna. Från Midians land kom de löpare tre, Som ville den nyfödde kungen se. De offrade håvor och ära. De offrade rökelse mirham och guld. Det heliga barnet var oss så huld. Jesum, vår frälsare kära!

2. När konung Herodes fick höra det tal, att en konung var födder till världen, fick han i sitt hjärta bekymmer och kval och trakta därefter att mörda. Men Josef tog barnet och Marie hand Och flydde sen in i Egyptie land Ur fattigdom, köld och elände. De offrade håvor och ära. De offrade rökelse mirham och guld. Det heliga barnet var oss så huld. Jesum, vår frälsare kära!

You know if Anna, a gifted multi-linguist if ever there was one, raises her eyebrows, you're onto something good. It's okay up until the spot where skick is pronounced "fweek," and even the phrasing of ville den, but then kungen comes out as "kohni[n]gen" and De offrade håvor och ära is "dom offrwaduh hovor oh-waara" where that "rw" is a sort of French thing, and it can't really be healthy to stick that many consonants into your sinuses, can it?

There's a lot there to find familiar! You suspect that Österland is probably not Austria (Österreich). Just take Gud and guld on their face, since your friends don't know pre-Conquest Germanic any better than you do. Tre can be our trusty Indo-European "three," and if you watch enough BBC and squint hard enough, barnet looks like the Scottish bairn. I don't know the origin of the word, but it's a song about the Three Magi bringing gifts, and I know Bach wrote a suite called L'offrande Musicale (English "offer," Spanish oferta) so offrade seems clear enough. Okay, fine, just look at Google Translate.

What I really want is to pack a violin and spending a year learning folk songs in Scandinavia.