USAGE: CHAT/USAGE: RE: [CONLANG] They Have a Word for It!
| From: | And Rosta <a.rosta@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, August 4, 2001, 1:45 |
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John Cowan:
> J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>
> > My favourite 'untranslatable' Swedish word is _fika_, a verb,
> meaning roughly
> > "to chat with friends over a cup of coffee" (right, Daniel?). When I was an
> > exchange student in Sweden, we used _fika_ all the time, even when we were
> > speaking English ("You wanna go _fika_?"). Such a useful word.
>
> Wudda deprived Westerner. All New Yorkers know that the English for
> _fika_ is "shmooze".
In gentile Britain, shmoozing is the institutionalized socializing in
professional life: one attends a social gathering as part of one's
professional duties and one is required to shmooze - to engage in amiable
smalltalk with charm, typically with the aim of winning friends and
influencing people. I love to fika but I hate to shmooze.
--And.
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