If you’ve ever tried to learn a second (or even third) language, you know how easy it is to make mistakes…when a word looks almost identical to your own language. One tends to take it for granted that they mean the same thing and perhaps doesn’t even bother to look them up. «False friends» I believe they’re called.
When I first started chatting on the internet for example…there were two words like that — I took it for granted that they meant what I thought they meant and I often found the conversations very strange! In my case the words were «ignorant» and «eventually». I thought ‘ignorant’ had to do with ignoring somebody or something and ‘eventually’ I thought meant maybe/perhaps.
In any event…In order for the story I’m going to tell here to make any sense there is one word I have to explain..otherwise it doesn’t get any funny.
The English word «COOK» sounds like/reminds one of the Swedish words KOKA which means BOIL. To actually cook is a completely different word.
An old co-worker of mine back in Sweden had worked in St. Paul, Minnesota as a young girl. She worked as a so called ‘au pair’ or nanny…in a nice family where she took care of the kids and the household while the couple was both working.
With Thanksgiving coming up they told her, before they left for work, to cook the turkey. She looked at the turkey in the fridge…it was huge..and she had a really hard time finding a pot that was large enough for this enormous bird.
Finally she took the biggest pot she could find but still had to wrestle the turkey into it… the legs of it were still sticking up…she poured water over it and cooked it. In her mind.. when they told her to cook the turkey..she thought KOKA = boil the turkey!!! She managed to make some kind of sauce to go with it and it was all done when the couple got back home.
When they sat down to eat the husband said: «So…here we have a great example of Swedish cooking…! First you boil the h3ll out of it and then you pour cream sauce on it?!?! Grrrrr… »
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