This is topic Swedish words in Speaker for the dead and sequels in forum Discussions About Orson Scott Card at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Swede (Member # 7560) on :
 
I noticed when reading the Speaker that Card is using several swedish words as names, such as framling, varelse, utlanning and also Plikt, Syfte along with others. One word however, I am reasonably sure is not swedish; raman/ramen.
Does anyone have an idea were it comes from?
(It could of course be a product of OSC imagination, but if not,it would be fun to know)
 

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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
All the words came from a Swedish dictionary. If I weren't on the road, I'd check to find it. I may have adapted it, however, for English speakers - so it might have been based on a word that is somewhat different and harder for Americans to pronounce <grin>.

then again, i might have taken it from a completely different source and forgot that I did. But my memory is that, since Valentine was coining the words while living on a Nordic-founded colony (where she found the man she married) she would use a future version of Swedish as her source for all the terms.
 

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Posted by WntrMute (Member # 7556) on :
 
I always figured it was a shout-out to an inexpensive, filling, yet nutritionally void oriental noodle processed food product -- eternally the favorite of college students and starving artists.
 

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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
Oddly enough, I had never heard of Ramen noodles when I chose the word "raman" to represent one degree of foreignness/alienness. And I anglicized the word by making the plural "ramen" by analogy with man/men. That's not how it would have been done in Swedish (and for all i know, the Swedish original was probably an adjective without a noun form).
 

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Posted by Swede (Member # 7560) on :
 
I do not recognize raman, noodles or not. But that hardly matters. OSC, you have done a good job matching character with name. I especielly like Jakt (=hunt) and Plikt (=duty). But I can not but wonder why Swedish people would call their planet Trondheim, which is a city in Norway. If not the scandinavians have finally realized that they can cooperate

[ March 17, 2005, 04:30 AM: Message edited by: Swede ]
 

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Posted by Swede (Member # 7560) on :
 
Talk about not noticing! Ramen is a Swedish word that means either "the frame" or "the paw" (a bear´s paw). The translations taken from a Swedish-English dictionary. The "unchanged" form is ram. (I have no idea what the grammatic term is in English). These are actually quite common words, I don´t know how I could not notice this before!

[ March 17, 2005, 07:34 AM: Message edited by: Swede ]
 

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Posted by AntiCool (Member # 7386) on :
 
That blows my mind that somebody that went to college would not be familiar with ramen noodles. Are ramen noodles a relatively recent arrival to the US?
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
I remember them showing up as common, cheap, and popular about 15-20 years ago, I think. They existed before then, I'm sure, but not as dorm food.

Remember, OSC is age-challenged.
 

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Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
 

quote:

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Remember, OSC is age-challenged.

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Oh, I don't know. I think he's done an acceptable job of attaining an advanced age.

Edit: But even if he hasn't, that was still a pretty sweet piece of assonance.

[ March 18, 2005, 11:06 AM: Message edited by: Verily the Younger ]
 

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Posted by AntiCool (Member # 7386) on :
 
>.<
 

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Posted by ramen (Member # 13375) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Swede:
Talk about not noticing! Ramen is a Swedish word that means either "the frame" or "the paw" (a bear´s paw). The translations taken from a Swedish-English dictionary. The "unchanged" form is ram. (I have no idea what the grammatic term is in English). These are actually quite common words, I don´t know how I could not notice this before!

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