Question of the day.

   What’s a ridiculously fun word to say? 🙂 

   My answer: 

   Oh my flip! This is gonna be a long post, no matter how hard I try! 😀 There are so many fun words! And, which language are we talking about? Whenever I think about stuff like this, I always have extreme trouble thinking about just ONE word, even if one for each language that I have any  idea about. Because really, there are so many words that feel fun to say, and fun in all sorts of different ways. And English is particularly difficult because it has such insane amounts of words, which can not only sound fun but also be so weirdly specific in what they mean. Also, I suppose that when most people think of words that are either fun or beautiful, they think words that aren’t used that often, whereas for me, a fun word can be something that’s part of daily vocabulary, for example ever since I learned about the English word pillow, I really love it and I think it’s so cute. And I’ve already wrote of my love for the English word sleep. Both English and Swedish have such a weird quality to them that they have so many words that sound absolutely cute and that are in regular use and I really like it. In the past, I even used to do rankings of my favourite words for each language I knew – so then it was Polish, English and Swedish – because I wanted to keep them all in one place or something, so I’d do yearly rankings for that. But there are too many cool words, and also I finally realised that a ranking isn’t perhaps the best way for me to keep track of anything, because as my brain doesn’t really do numbers, it only made things more complicated when I had to think which word I like more and put them in such very specific order. 

   So, I think rather than sitting here for hours and thinking about my ABSOLUTE most favourite English word, I’ll just tell you about one that I learned about quite recently, and it’s jackanapes! Does anyone still even use it?! :O I mean spontaneously of course? I wonder if an average English native speaker even know what it means? I’m very curious, but if you don’t, I’ll tell you that from what I learned it’s a fancy word for someone who’s misbehaving, or being mischievous, or downright impertinent. I’m nnot sure though if it’s supposed to have more of an insult vibe or is used in a lighter, joking context. Being a Jackophile , I love how English has so many jac- words, and so many of them are slangy and quite funny or quirky. Like, apparently in Ireland people use “the jacks” to mean toilet! 😀 I love it! 

   I think I already wrote about it in some distant past on here that one of my very favourite Polish words is mózg (MOOZG, though actually when pronouncing it on its own like that the zg goes unvoiced so it’s practically MOOSK) which means brain. No other language I know has a word for brain that would be equally or more satisfying to say than this. I generally find the brain fascinating, I like the word mózg, so I end up using it a lot, just like I do in English, even when most people would rather use mind or soul or head or something like that. For example in Polish I usually wash my brain rather than hair, which some people find extremely funny. Back when I was in college/high school/whatchamacallit in your country, I once let my Math tutor in and she had something she wanted to tell my Mum straight away, but I told her that unfortunately, right now my Mum’s washing her brain (meaning hair of course) which at first really puzzled her, and then after a while she started laughing like she never heard a better joke. When I have a migraine or a normal headache I also say in Polish that my brain’s aching. The English brain sounds not very cool though, it has an odd texture and tastes like plastic. Swedish hjärna and Norwegian hjerne are cool and quite passable but nowhere near as cool as mózg, and the Welsh ymenydd is incredibly bland. 

   In Swedish, one of my many favourite words which I learned quite early on and fell in love with passionately is krimskrams, which means knick-knack. It’s so cute! I also really love the Polish equivalent which is bibelot. It almost sounds like Bibiel! 😀 I don’t care about the English word though, because while all these words clearly sound like what they mean – something that’s not very practically useful and just gathering dust, at least the Swedish and Polish words sound like these things hold some emotional value to the owner, while knick-knack doesn’t give such a vibe, at least not to me. – 

   In Welsh, I love pilipala, which is one of several Welsh words meaning butterfly, it’s extremely cute. And the Swedish equivalent, fjäril, is so stunning and has very distinct tangerine flavour to it! The English word is quite disgusting though. And I’m fairly neutral about the Polish equivalent – which is motyl – it sounds like motility or something like that. 😀 I don’t have any stronger feelings about the Norwegian sommerfugl when it comes to its sound, but it means summer bird so that’s quite nice. Also when it comes to Welsh, I love the word achafi for how expressive it is, it’s not a swearword or even close to that but it can be loaded with so much expression that it can almost feel like one at times. Honestly though, after so many years of Welsh learning, I’m not perfectly sure whether it’s actually a proper Welsh word, or more of a Wenglish invention, that is something that’s actually originated among Welsh people whose dominant language was English, because most often when I hear it it’s thrown into English. Anyways, it means yuck, and from what I’ve noticed it isn’t only used when something is yuck, but also when you disapprove or feel indignant of what someone’s doing or when something generally doesn’t go quite the way you’d like. 

   Also, now that we’re talking about fun-sounding words, after I’ve mentioned one of my first loves in the Swedish language, and after having read Ashley Leia’s post about the versatility of the word fuck not long ago, I am reminded of another of my early infatuations in the Swedish language, namely, the word knulla, or, more exactly, knullar, which is the present tense of this amazing-sounding verb, as that was the form in which I heard it for the first time, being about 10-11 years old and totally unaware of it. I had just started learning Swedish not long ago, and, just like I did before I started learning, I loved to watch Swedish movies just to hear the language. I am not and never was a movie person, and I hardly focused on the actual movie, it’s plot line and all that, I just listened to the language, relished it and tried to understand as much as I could. And one day my Dad told me there’d be a Swedish movie on the telly in the evening, and we watched it together. I have no idea what movie it was and don’t remember what was going on in it at all. I only remember that it was something quite old, historical I think, and there was a dude who was yelling at what I think was a young woman/girl, and he used this word, and it sparked my attention right away, ‘cause it sounded so lovely and the more I thought about it, the more I loved it. “Knullar…” I was so excited about this new word that for the rest of this movie, I couldn’t focus on anything else. Then I went upstairs to enjoy and savour this new found word in the privacy of my room. I wonder, if any Swede would have seen me then, sitting on my desk, happily swinging my legs and stimming/“sensorisming” away with my fingers while repeating the word “knullar” to myself, what would they have thought of me. 😀 Thousands of different ideas went through my brain as I thought what this lovely, cute-sounding word could mean. To the tactile synaesthetic bit of my brain, it looked like a very flimsy-looking, small flower with very gentle, small, kind of velvety leaves. But it sounded like kötbullar (meatballs) and tasted like grilled cheese to the gustatory synaesthetic bit of my brain, so I figured it could be some kind of dish. I knew it probably wasn’t that for real, but I really liked the idea. Bulle (plural bullar) is bun, kötbulle (plural kötbullar) is meatball, so knulle could be some kind of cheesy ball or something. You could have some food place called Knullar, Bullar & Kötbullar, I thought. LOL if only I knew…! 😂 And then I entertained myself with thinking about what exactly these knullar could be, what they’d be made of other than cheese and how they would taste.

   Every time I had my Swedish lesson, my tutor would give me time where I could ask him all sorts of Swedish questions, be it about language or culture or whatever, that was unrelated to the topic of the lesson itself. So during our first lesson after my knullar discovery, I happily asked him about this beautiful word, and was very surprised with his odd reaction. First he went totally quiet for what felt like ages, so I wondered if perhaps he doesn’t know what it is but doesn’t want to show his ignorance, but that didn’t make sense as it had happened before that he wouldn’t know something I asked him about and had no problem admitting that. So I wondered maybe I didn’t get that word right and the guy in the movie actually said something else. But it felt kind of awkward. Finally he asked me in what still felt a rather odd way, where I came across this word, so obviously I told him in a movie, and then he calmly explained to me what the word knullar, or rather knulla, as that’s the infinitive form of this word, means, namely that it means to fuck. Now that was quite a surprise! Now that I’ve known this for years it’s normal to me but then I remember being really shocked because it totally didn’t sound to me like what it meant. And while I still think it sounds quite endearing, after I learned that, it lost a lot of its initial appeal. As far as I’m aware and from what I’ve noticed, it’s only used in the sexual context, you wouldn’t use the word knulla to mean fuck as in “fuck you” or anything like that. At least I’ve only heard it used in this one context and I’m pretty sure it’s considered quite vulgar and heavy. But once I managed to get over the shock and accept the truth, I did have a good laugh at it. 

   And, speaking more interlinguistically, I think the word mishmash, which as far as I know exists in many different languages, is very fun to say. Speaking of mish- words I alsoo like the English mishap, and I seriously used to think it’s pronounced MEE-shap. But I like it still, even though it’s not. 

   What’s such word(s) for you? In any language(s)? 🙂