Posted on 09/04/2012 11:27:01 AM PDT by nickcarraway
If you’ve ever met a Swede, chances are you asked her the following question: “What do you think of [ABBA/Ikea/The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/socialized medicine/the Swedish Chef]?”
For Swedes, it’s the last of these questions—the one about the unintelligible, shotgun-wielding, and much beloved chaos Muppet—that is especially vexing.
I know this because it was one of the first questions I asked my Swedish wife when we were introduced. “I don’t see how it’s funny,” she responded in a tone that I took at the time to be an endearingly sarcastic deadpan, but would soon learn was actually an endearingly sincere deadpan.
The Swedish Chef does not speak any known language, and the fact that his nonsense words are so widely interpreted as Swedish-sounding is bewildering and annoying to Swedes.
“What has always struck me is that the Chef is probably based on a Norwegian sing-songish accent rather than a Swedish one,” Maaret Koskinen, a film studies professor at Stockholm University, wrote in an email when I asked her about the Swedish Chef’s cultural influence in Sweden.
Swedish and Norwegian share a common linguistic antecedent, and Swedes and Norwegians easily understand each other’s languages. The accents are quite different, however, and there are words that are exclusive to each dialect. The tongues are dissimilar enough for Swedes to be able to hear Norwegian in the Swedish Chef’s ramblings instead of Swedish.
“I think it sounds much more Norwegian,” Cecilia Browning, the general manager of Washington D.C.’s House of Sweden (the home of the Swedish Embassy), told me when I asked her about the accent.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
If you’ve never encountered the Swedish Chef before, I suppose you’ve never heard of Yogi Yorgesson.
Christmas 78’s - I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas - Yogi Yorgesson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4uW2PT-190
Yogi Yorgesson - Who Hid The Halibut On The Poop Deck?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRV03zQkBas
OK, you’ve got your priorities straight.
How about a Firefox Add-on to make any page sound like the chef? And no, I have not DL’ed and tried it.
Bork Bork Bork! 1.9
by Snert
The Swedish Chef travesty filter and URL blocker. View web pages or mail as spoken by the Swedish Chef like this...
“Zee Svedeesh Cheff trefesty feelter und URL blucker. Feeoo veb peges oor meeel es spukee by zee Svedeesh Cheff leeke-a thees.”
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bork-bork-bork/
Yes, I’ve heard of Yogi Yorgesson. His real name was Harry Stewart, though he was of Norwegian descent. Sort of a Scandinavian Stepin Fetchit.
Re: 14. Are those gummy fish and zucchinni? BORK, Bork, Bork?
SWEDISH FISH.
Gotta love a chef who considers firearms kitchen utensils.
And then there’s this little gem....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwGdHAHg0ig
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