"May I borrow your toilet?"
I read it in a book with Swenglish phrases (English phrases in a Swedish way).
That might be what a Swede say when he or she wants you use your bathroom.
No, we Swedes don't have any problem with mentioning the actual part of your bathroom that we want to use. We are not looking for a bath or a bed for a rest, we want to use the toilet.
And then the interesting word "borrow". In Sweden we borrow, though we don't intend to bring it with us home.
The funny thing is that we say borrow sometimes even if we don't intend to leave it back. Like my grandmother having a guest staying over night and the guest realizes that she forgot her toothbrush. My grandmother kindly said: "oh, you can borrow one of mine." An awkward silence filled the room until the guest, very uncomfortably, replied that she would prefer one of her own, unused.
Of course my grandmother was about to give her guest an unused to keep, not borrow.
3 comments:
Reminds me English class in school and our teacher said, “I found these pamphlets in the toilet” and ALL the students said, “Um, wouldn’t it be better to use the word bathroom perhaps?” but the teacher insisted that you should tell people you found things in the toilet.
Shelly
These typical strange sounding aspects of languages are so very funny in analyzing. Here in Holland we say often strange things too. When you are living in an apartment on the top floor and you say that you're going outside to the street you say: I'm going down with the elevator to go to the street. That's so obvious because going to the street means going down, not up with the elevator. The same: I'm going to lay down in bed a little to rest. Some foreign friends say: obvious you're going to your bed, you aren't going to lay down on the floor aren't you?
Yes, language is funny.
Swedes sit in a sofa, and in Finish you say you have the hat in your head.
Finding things in the toilet feels like it is found in the actual porcelain chair.
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