False Friend of the Day

[muckefuck]

LOG "smiled" (Swedish); LOG "lied" (German)
What I Read: "Kyrkoherden log."
What I Understood: "The parson lied[*]."
What It Means: "The parson smiled."

[*] When I realised "lied" didn't fit the context, I went with "laughed" instead and was satisfied with that until I actually got around to looking the verb up.

Last month I stopped in front of the Swedish American Museum on Clark Street to check out their sale books. There wasn't a wide range of titles in Swedish and the number I felt myself likely to tackle was smaller still. For a dollar I picked up När hela socknen brann ("When the whole parish burned"), a young adult book ("en bok för alla UNGDOMAR") featuring a 13 year-old protagonist with the same given name as me and set in Värmland during the invasion of Norwegian Governor-General Hannibal Sehested. (Yeah, didn't say anything to me either.) To be honest, it's been tougher going than I expected. I find it surprising (and more than a little frustrating) that I can still run across short simple sentences where I don't recognise a single content word.

Comments

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

I believe Sehested was indeed Governor-General of Norway, but was himself Danish, not Norwegian.