# Swedish: inside joke



## qiaozhehui

Hey everyone. Is there a Swedish equivalent for "inside joke"?

I was with a group of Swedish friends the other day when I made a joke that only one of them laughed at (because it was an inside joke between the two of us).

I wanted to explain to the others by saying something like...

"Sorry, it's an inside joke between me and Matilda. It would take too long to explain."

...but I wasn't quite sure if "inside joke" could be translated directly from English-- and if so, what word to use for _inside_.


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## Plopp

"Sorry, it's an *inside joke* between me and Matilda. It would take too long to explain."
would be something like 
'Ledsen, men det är ett *internt skämt* mellan mig och Matilda. Det skulle ta för lång tid att förklara.'


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## qiaozhehui

Ahh, yes, an _internal_ joke... I figured it would be something like that.

Thanks Plopp!


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## Sepia

Didn't they understand "inside joke" untranslated? Danes normally would.


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## qiaozhehui

Yeah, I'm sure they would've understood it (or any other English word for that matter!). It was more of the fact that I realized I didn't know how to say it in Swedish and couldn't find it in the dictionary.


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## Sepia

qiaozhehui said:


> Yeah, I'm sure they would've understood it (or any other English word for that matter!). It was more of the fact that I realized I didn't know how to say it in Swedish and couldn't find it in the dictionary.



Yeah, I understand - but don't forget that speakers of the Scandinavian languages represent relatively small cultural groups - and the majority of those people speak English very well. So there are lots of things that simply are not translated - people use the expression like they have picked them up from Englsh.


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## Plopp

A Swede would have understood 'inside joke' but it's not one of those English expressions we use without translating into Swedish.


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## hanne

I wouldn't use "inside joke" in Danish either. Probably "intern joke" (with "intern" in Danish - the word "joke" has caught on more than it deserves), or "insider joke" but that's less likely.
"Vits" would be the Danish equivalent for joke, and there's absolutely *no* good reason for not using it. But I'd probably still say "joke". I should go and stand in the corner now...


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## Alxmrphi

hanne said:


> I should go and stand in the corner now...



Yes you should!  There is a growing tend to borrow from English and it ruins the authenticity of the original language and makes it seem very cheap and dependant!
You can come out of the corner when you've learnt your lesson I've put the hat on the chair for you!


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## jonquiliser

Plopp said:


> A Swede would have understood 'inside joke' but it's not one of those English expressions we use without translating into Swedish.



This is only half true, I think. I usually hear "insiderskämt" rather than either _internt skämt_ (very rare) or _inside joke_ (medium rare ) - half-translated, sort of.


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## Plopp

I can imagine someone saying 'insiderskämt' but personally, I have never heard anyone say it. 
I think the Danes are more likely to use the english expressions, even pronounced in English!, than the Swedes and we use a lot of english words! (I speak Danish, though not as well as Swedish.) Words like dk/en *computer* - sw *dator*, dk *tjekke*, en *check* - sw *kolla*, dk *burger/børger,* en *hamburger* - sw *hamburgare* (pronounced in Swedish) are good examples.


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## jonquiliser

Yes, I suppose the words used for _inside joke_ vary from place to place and group to group. What I hear around me is usually _insiderskämt_, as I said.

Curious, what you say about Swedish in contrast to Danish; I always have the impression that we (Swedish-speakers) throw in a lot of English words unaltered when we speak - but it's also true that many words are incorporated and 'swedified'.


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## Plopp

Yes, we do throw in a lot of english words and expressions, but my impression is that the Danes are even worse!  We, the Swedes, alter and 'swedify', as you put it, more to make it fit, which gives us a kind of 'hybrid words'; English vocabular with swedish grammar, pronunciation and spelling. There are a lot of good examples, one of my favourites are the word 'blinkers' - I don't know if it's exactly the same word in English is used in English, but it's the orange lamps on the car, used to signal a turn. The word we use in Swedish is pure English and plural, but since we don't have -s in plural, many Swedes perceive this as singular, which lead them to put on a Swedish plural ending -ar, resulting in the word 'blinkersar' or even hypercorrect 'blinkisar'.


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## hanne

I have the same impression as plopp that we do it more often than you do - I'd say it's because we're geographically closer, though geography isn't really important these days - and English doesn't come from the continent either...

I can also come up with a couple of examples of the opposite though: lunch and diska (and probably more if I think a bit longer )

And btw, "børger"  No way! Neither in pronounciation nor in spelling.


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## Plopp

I'm sorry, Hanne but that's how my cousins pronounce it. They are in their 40's now and they have lived in Copenhagen all their lives.


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## hanne

Eww, they say it and mean it? My mum says it like that when she's joking (in a "making fun of the fact that we don't have a Danish word"-kind of way).


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## solregn

I would use the compound word _internskämt _personnally.


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## Plopp

Hanne, yes, I'm sorry but they even correct me if I say anything else!  How do you pronounce 'burger'?
Solregn, interesting! We have now got three different to say inside joke in Swedish; 'insiderskämt, internt skämt, internskämt'. I wonder if the repartition of the words reflect on regional dialect or sociolect, or if it's pure chance which word we choose?


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## Wilma_Sweden

Plopp said:


> We have now got three different to say inside joke in Swedish; 'insiderskämt, internt skämt, internskämt'. I wonder if the repartition of the words reflect on regional dialect or sociolect, or if it's pure chance which word we choose?


Personally, I've always used internt skämt, and I can't say I've ever heard anyone say the other two, particularly not insiderskämt. I'll sniff around the net later to see what can be found.

*Edit*: in the newspaper text corpus, the two-word construction is more common than the compound (internskämt), and insiderskämt is non-existent.

On Google, internskämt is as common as internt skämt, (around 12 000 hits), while there were only 500 hits for insiderskämt.

Internskämt is not present in the major dictionaries, only in Wikipedia and tyda.se (user-created online dictionary). 

It also occurred to me that internskämt is, at least *in theory*, ambiguous: apart from intern as an adjective (internal), we also have intern as a noun (=prison inmate), so internskämt could in fact be understood as an inmate joke as well. I'm not saying that anyone would use it as such, but it is possible. Swedish compounding rules are pretty free, and new compounds make it into dictionaries every year if they get used in enough numbers to merit a dictionary entry.

My conclusion is that you may call it what you like, but I'll stick to the two-word construction at least in (formal) writing.

/Wilma


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## hanne

Plopp said:


> Hanne, yes, I'm sorry but they even correct me if I say anything else!  How do you pronounce 'burger'?


Like in English basically. Slightly modified to work in a Danish sentence with tone/melody/whatever perhaps, but the sound of the -u- is still the same.
When we adopt English words we usually pretty much stick to the English-sounding pronounciation as well as the spelling. (e.g. computer is pronounced with -pju- like in English)


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## cocuyo

Basically, of course. I love the way Danish people usually pronounce R when speaking English ;-)


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## jonquiliser

Wilma_Sweden said:


> *Edit*: in the newspaper text corpus, the two-word construction is more common than the compound (internskämt), and insiderskämt is non-existent.
> 
> On Google, internskämt is as common as internt skämt, (around 12 000 hits), while there were only 500 hits for insiderskämt.



Får väl bara konstatera då att jag hör till en försvinnande liten minoritet .


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