47 Comments
How would you actually pronounce "nötköttet"? I always hear something like, " notshotet" :)
Any English speakers here ever use the word "neat" for cattle? It's the cognate of "nöt" but I've only ever encountered it in etymological dictionaries.
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I've only ever heard it in the context of "neatsfoot oil", which is made from the shin bones and feet, but not the hooves, of cattle. My dad swears by it for conditioning leather baseball gloves. :)
Ha, same here. Neatsfoot, most used by traditional cattle-raisers I would guess.
'Neat' is occasionally a useful word to know if you're solving English cryptic crosswords. That's the only place I've encountered it.
No, I don't use exactly use it every day. All the same -- when learning the Swedish word for "beef" -- knowing that "neat" is an old English word for "cattle" is ...kinda neat :)
Fun fact: the Finnish equivalent of SPAM is often colloquially called Nötkötti due to the quite dominant positioning of the Swedish name of the product (which iirc translates to something bland like "pork and beef product") on the label.
No, because mince is "köttfärs", meaning minced meat of any kind. Nötkött is beef, which is about the origin of the meat (i.e. what animal it was).
Varsågod!
The word -färs kan also be mixed with meat origin. So nötfärs is minced meat from cow, while fläskfärs is minced pork etc.
Since kott is translated to English as "meat", can it be said that not is translated as "cow", to arrive at "cow meat"?
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I know what you mean. However, if I understand correctly, the Swedes do not regard 'ö' as 'o + dieresis (umlaut dots)', but rather as a separate letter in its own right.
I guess cow meat would work, veal is kalvkött if I’m not mistaken. (My meat vocabulary isn’t huge).
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Why do we call things like chicken and fish by their animal names, but can't do it for mammals (cow=beef, pig=pork, calf=veal, deer=venison, etc.)? Are we too squeamish to admit what we're eating?
As far as modern English goes, it has to do with the different languages that the poor and rich spoke in feudal England. The lower class (Saxons) referred to them as animals, as they were the ones raising the livestock. The upper class Norman rulers used the French terms to refer to them ... although by that point the animal was a food product. And, since the Saxons couldn't really afford to eat cow/pig/lamb/etc., they didn't generally refer to them as food with the English terms.
Interestingly, chicken (and fish I presume) were cheap enough to be eaten by all classes, so the English term was used in both cases.
At least that's what the common thinking is.
It sure is convenient for modern English speakers to be able to disassociate themselves from where their food came from, though.
Nötkött means, very literally, cattle-meat. "Nöt" is an old word, rarely used anymore, referring to livestock.
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it sounds like its saying "Not shiotet"...i cant say this around english speaking people, they always look at me funny when i say shiot for meat, it sounds like the dung word
Does the ö sound vary, depending on whether it is followed by a single or a double consonant? In "Nököttet, " for example, the first ö sounds like "ə" (schwa sound) while the second ö sounds like there is more "o" mixed into the schwa.
Yes - it's either a long or a short vowel. You'll encounter them in the lesson notes. :)
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After you click on the topic circle, you are presented a list of lessons for that topic. At the bottom of that lessons page you may see Lesson Notes. Not all lesson pages have them, usually only the grammar (as opposed to vocabulary) lessons, and then not all of those.
In addition, I need to add that - unfortunately and annoyingly - lesson notes are not available for all (any?) mobile apps.
It sounds like "net shet ut" to me. The letter ö always sounds like eh to me, except when it sounds like an oh sound, like in björn. Still trying to get a handle on that sound.
Confused? Answer would be appreciared. What decides whether a word will get "et" or "en" at the end?
That depends on the word's gender. My info post for beginners has an explanation on them here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/26420394/Answers-to-some-common-questions-on-grammar-that-beginners-have
