Swedish for Putin. Most popular punctuation mark. Too much chocolate - whether Marabou or Cloetta we do not know.
Swedish for Putin
When big decisions are made at the powerful fortified complex of Moscow Kremlin, it sometimes happens in Swedish, according to Russian chief of staff Sergei Ivanov. On Vladimir Putin’s way home from a trip to Stockholm, Ivanov told Russian media that he and his boss like to use different languages when talking to each other: ”The President is good at German, and I know English. Swedish is somewhere in between. He may say something in Swedish, and I answer in the same language… He loves languages and linguistics.” Ivanov has previously told news agency TT that he knows ”only a little” Swedish, after having studied it at the university in Saint Petersburg. And Putin was, as a young man, stationed for a long time in what was then East Germany. Where he picked up Swedish is not clear.
Most popular punctuation mark
Swedish author Torgny Lindgren has a special thing for periods, as in the end of a sentence, but he also likes the semicolon, though he doesn’t feel he knows how to use it. And according to the highly entertaining Swedish magazine Språk (which means language), the semicolon is a favorite among Swedes in general. At least the Swedes who read that magazine: 25% favored the semicolon among all punctuation marks, 21% preferred the dash, 13% the period, 12% the comma, 12% the ellipsis, 7% the exclamation mark, 5% the question mark, 3% the colon, and 3% the parenthesis.
Too much chocolate - whether Marabou or Cloetta we do not know
Perhaps his cravings got the best of him. A 53-year old man is now in prison and will stay there for a month and a half after he was caught stealing 68 bars of chocolate from a grocery store in Halmstad, and tried to run past the cashier, according to radio P4 Halland.
”Bagar Bengtsson här i stan han har bakat en krokan.” Did you know Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks a little Swedish? How much is not clear, perhaps he’s only had a look at Lennart Hellsing’s popular ABC-book, perhaps he knows more than that.
In a small poll by the magazine Språk, the semicolon turned out to be the most popular punctuation mark among the readers. Semicolons are followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter is the first letter of a proper noun like the word I or Paris. Modern style guides recommend no space before them, and one space after. Modern style guides also typically recommend placing semicolons outside ending quotation marks, although this was not always the case.
Torgny Lindgren, the Swedish author, has to use all punctuation marks, but has a special thing for periods and the semicolon. Photo: Jarvin Jarle Vines
