Author attacks the Queen's Swedish
Last week the press focused on the discrimination faced by immigrants when potential employers hear their foreign name or accent. This week, one immigrant's Swedish slip-ups earned her a very public language lesson.
The immigrant in question is Queen Silvia, and Thursday's Expressen carried a harsh attack on her linguistic ability by the author Björn Ranelid.
"She has never even formulated a metaphor," he complained, speaking at a seminar on justice.
Ranelid pointed out that thousands of immigrants in Sweden struggle alone with the language, and find it very hard to be accepted in Sweden if they don't speak it perfectly. Even when they crack the grammar, he said, many still don't get jobs.
In contrast, the queen, who moved to Sweden in 1976, "has had special lessons at [the royal theatre] Dramaten and personal speech therapists", according to Expressen.
"But her speech is full of grammatical errors," said Ranelid, citing the occasional failure to give an adjective its correct form - something The Local is certainly in no position to criticise.
"She is a bad example for everyone who is cleaning and toiling away," he said of the woman who grew up in Brazil and Germany and apparently already spoke six languages before she came to Sweden at the age of 32.
While Ranelid may have been trying do his bit for integration, he perhaps ought to have considered the fact that the queen's occasional slips probably do more for furthering the acceptance of immigrants in Sweden than perfect grammar ever would.
And nobody complained about her grammar or pronunciation on Wednesday when she opened a conference on Motor Neurone Disease, attended by some of the world's leading researchers. In her speech she referred to the popular TV presenter Ulla Carin-Lindquist, who died of the disease in March of this year.
"The disease was given a very clear face through Ulla Carin-Lindquist's open and brave fight," she said.
Meanwhile, another of the king´s friends caused the royal household minor embarassment this week when he locked himself in his house with "a lot of weapons" and had to be talked out by special police units.
Expressen reported that the 68 year old captain and former royal chamberlain refused to come out peacefully until the police referred to him by his title.
"You will call me baron, or else I'm not coming out," he said.
The man, who shares the king's interest in fast cars and is apparently in his hunting team, was taken by police to St Göran's hospital in Stockholm after they agreed to his demand.
A spokesman said they confiscated a shotgun and five rifles from the man.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=404&date=20040916&PHPSESSID=991d03e59bd0cae0809d2fe77ca6a8f9
A question to Swedes or people, who are very good in speaking swedish. How poor is Queen Silvia´s grammar really? I know that she has an accent (Even I can hear it...her swedish doesn´t sound as "round" or as "singing"-swedish is a very melodic language-as the swedish of native speakers) and I would say that´s just normal for woman, who has learned this language at that age (32), but I didn´t know before, that her use of grammar is bad as well. So I wonder, if it´s really that bad, or if this guy just wanted to provoke (???)