A couple of my favorite words.

When I lived in Germany someone told me that English has the largest number of words of any language, that it was hard to learn it becuase we have 5 words for every one of theirs. That to have a true handle on the language you would have to know the nuances between many of these words that would seemingly mean the same thing. English is a much larger langauge than Swedish as well. It is hard to count as I just learned from the internet but there are approximately a quarter of a million words give or take. I couldn't find any exact counts on either German or Swedish but I have heard there considerably less in both languages. Despite this I find that there are some words in both languages that are much more practical. In German there is my favorite word, "egal". It translates into "it doesn't matter" or "no problem". It is just so convenient. It is much shorter and much more concise than English. Very practical. In Swedish they have a word that is very typical not only to the language but to the whole culture. "Mysig" or cozy. I first learned about this world from a magazine here in Sweden that I have found to be invaluable. Not only is in English (which means it doesn't take me 12 hours to read one article) but it is like guidebook to understanding, living in, and learning about Sweden and Swedes. Southern Sweden (Skane), where we live to be exact. So "mysig" is a very pratical word as well. Not becuase it is concise like "egal" but rather becuase it can be used in so many instances. It can be used in colloqueal Swedish like a verb, adjective, noun, pre-fix etc. Yesterday I listened to a little presentation at Brynn's riding school and the teacher used the world no less than 12 times in a 20 min speech. Everything is "mysig" here. Mysig houses, mysig nights out. Mysig lighting, mysig dinners. Mysig clothing. At Brynn's riding school they were going to have a "mysig" overnighter with grilling, horse trail rides, and ghost stories before bed. As pointed out in this article, perhaps it is becuase it is so dark during the winter that this word makes so much sense here. The article mentioned that Sweden uses more candles than any other country in the world. Perhaps it is practical because Swedes tend to socialize in groups of people that they are very comfortable with (which makes it hard to break into socially speaking but that is a whole other post which I will save for later). Whatever the reason, I have now found that not only has "mysig" become part of my Swedish vocabulary but also my English one.