Swear Words

One of the more interesting days I had at school in Norway was when The Good Teacher Inga taught us all the swear words. She said the times, they are a changin’, as what is considered a swear word now is completely different than when she was a kid (and she’s younger than me.)




Historically, the most awful words that would never be uttered in anyone’s home would have to do with the devil himself. Saying his name, calling “on” him, or mentioning hell, were strictly forbidden. They were considered dastardly words that make even the hearty, weak kneed. The Good Teacher Inga even blushed as she wrote them on the board. No respectable person would ever utter such things and I couldn’t even find them in the English/Norwegian dictionary (yet I found the American F word there.)



But now apparently, the effect of Satan’s name is starting to wear off slightly, and even though kids are still not allowed to utter it, the new generation has come up with even more repulsive swear words that have to do with “private parts.” Inga wouldn’t write those on the board, but I’m thinking they are similar to some English slang words.



Inga said it’s good we know some of the swear words just in case we hear our children saying them or if someone tries to teach them to us, so we will know just how socially unacceptable they are.



Kory laughs about the fact that the swear word that starts with “sh” in English, is just an ordinary word in Norway. Literally, it means something is soiled or dirty, but it’s also just a common expression that isn’t offensive. He said when they moved to America, his dad said that word at church while giving a testimony. He had to tell his dad afterwards that it was a swear word here, so it shouldn’t be used from the pulpit.



I had to try out my expanded vocabulary one day on Tobias, a neighbor boy that came over to visit our son. Tobias was 12 at the time and I asked him to verify if the word that sounds like “fawn” (the devil’s name), was really all that bad. His eyes opened wide. His jaw dropped. He stared at me in disbelief. After a few seconds he said with a shocked tone in his voice, “I’ve NEVER heard an adult say that word before!” Oops.

Competitiveness...

The day we got our first big test back in my Norwegian class, I was reminded of just how competitive I am. I did OK, but I didn’t get the top score. I struggled with putting the stupid verb in the second position for every sentence. I so want to say, “Can you do that?” rather than, “Can do you that?” It goes against every fiber in my being to make a sentence that sounds so ridiculous, but that’s how Norwegians talk so I’m the one that sounds like a fool when I speak with an English sentence structure.




When someone is talking to me in Norwegian (even now), I feel much like the dinosaur that gets its tail stepped on and it takes a complete minute for that information to travel to its brain before it can say, “OUCH.” Once someone says something, they need to stop and give me a minute to process all the words to see if I can figure out what they just said. But no, they just keep on talking and I’m lost in a blur of syllables that go up and down with such a sing-songy rhythmic pattern it could put a person to sleep. No one said it would be easy.



It killed me though because back in my school days, I was used to being the best student in class, but in Norway, not so much. There were young women in our class, fresh out of high school, so their brains were still in the soaking-it-up mode and they kicked my butt in terms of learning the language.



The student that did the best was from South America, and she’s sweet as pie but my nature is to not like her because she was better than me. My only consolation was that she has a horrible lisp, so I told myself no matter how much she knows this language, no one will ever be able to understand her speaking it. At least people understood me when I talked, even if my sentence structure was wrong.



The only good news that day was that I got a better score on the test than My Pal Vestina, and she was a most excellent student. So apparently the class was not so much about me learning or not learning the language, as much as it was about me being competitive and petty. Go figure. I still have a lot to learn.

Baby Money

In class one day we learned all the special words one would want to know if they are pregnant (gravid) in Norway. The reason they are so important is because they mean money. It’s hard to believe, but they actually pay women to have babies in Norway, and they keep paying for those babies until they are 16 years old – no matter how much money a person makes. The government pays the parents several hundred dollars every month until the baby is three years old, when the amount drops to about $200 a month until they are 16 years old. All “baby/child” money is tax free and is given for every child living in Norway, since the government acknowledges that it takes money to raise a child.




Norway is, I believe, the most progressive country in the world when it comes to maternity leave. All working women get one year’s maternity leave and 80% of their pay for that first year – and their jobs remain secure. If they chose to not go back to work after that first year, they can take another year off and keep their job, but they get no pay during the second year. The father of the baby also gets a 100% paid maternity leave for eight weeks sometime during the baby’s first year of life. (It’s been proposed to increase the father’s time off to five months, but I’m not sure if that has gone into effect yet.)



If a woman was not working prior to giving birth, the government makes a nice one-time deposit into her bank account to help with the expenses of raising the baby – to the tune of 90,000 kroner (more than $15,000 – tax free.) And because of their socialized medical system, all medical expenses associated with having that baby are paid for by the government.



We went around the room that day and everyone in class told about the birthing and maternity leave policies in their home country. Everyone (except me) was from a country where the medical expenses are free or miniscule and several countries had many months of paid maternity leave.



I was embarrassed to talk about the policies in America and how we have none of the above and that I had the privilege of paying over eight thousand dollars to the hospital just to give birth. The gasps were audible. But I choose to believe you get what you pay for, and I now have a boy worth every cent (and then some).

Secrets

The Good Teacher Inga spent a great deal of time being a cheerleader to half of our Norwegian class who were getting homesick and tired of how hard it was to learn Norwegian. Inga validated their feelings by telling us all that it’s very hard to move to another country even if you know the language because she lived six years in Ireland and was fluent in English but still had a horrible time adjusting. She was so good for us. The Good Teacher always cheered us on and told us all we are doing great – even the ones that couldn’t speak a word of Norwegian.




One day Inga mixed things up a bit and had us change our usual conversation partners. She put me with the little old Russian lady, Valentina, that didn’t speak much of anything. What a hoot that woman was. By looking at her, she looked old enough to be my mother, but she’s only five years my elder. (Life must have been hard in Russia.) She told me that day (through using her Russian/Norwegian dictionary – and me translating what she said using my Norwegian/English dictionary), that she used to live way up north on the Norwegian/Russian border.



We were supposed to talk about the weather in our home countries that day, so she said (also using a lot of hand motions and drawing pictures on paper for clarification), that in the winter, that far north, they would get up and turn on the radio and hear, “Today will be five minutes long,” and the next day, “Today will be ten minutes long.” That’s how long the sun would show itself on the horizon. And during those winter months, the whole town would go outside and wait to see that little crack of light (no matter what the weather) and they’d whoop and holler and have a great old time because the sun hadn’t left them for good.



I asked Valentina what she did for a living up there and she also told me that for seven years she was a General in the Russian army (I didn’t see that one coming). Then she made hand motions like little boys do when they shoot pretend guns and she made all the sound effects that go with it. I got the sense she’s actually shot people. She then looked up the word that meant “secret” and I’m not sure if she meant I was supposed to keep that bit of news a secret, or if she worked for the secret service agency within the army. I guess her secret is out now.

Work Laws

The work days in Norway seem so much shorter than in America, but that’s probably because most everyone lives within just a few minutes of where they work and there is no real commute time factored in. Norway intentionally spreads the industries out in every little nook and cranny of the country. One little village will have a hot dog factory, another is the home of the “Grandiosa,” Norway’s favorite frozen pizza. If all the jobs were located in the big cities, then everyone would live in the city, and that’s just not the Norwegian way of life.




Norwegians work seven and a half hours a day with most shifts starting around eight and ending by four, including the half hour lunch break. An hour for lunch would be unnecessary in Norway because no one goes out to eat (it’s too expensive). There are rush “moments” (not “hours”) in the town where we lived in Norway.



The government in Norway demands that all working people take three weeks off every summer, and it all has to be in one chunk – they can’t parcel it out. They figure it takes that long to unwind from their jobs and be refreshed again for another year. They also get two other weeks off during the year whenever they want, and they get the week between Christmas and New Years and several Holy Days free. Norwegians have a lot of time off from work. It’s amazing they get anything done.



The law in Norway also says that no one is allowed to work more than ten hours a week of overtime – ever. And in one calendar year, it is not allowed to work more than 200 hours of total overtime. Imagine that. (Microsoft would have big problems operating in Norway.) But after the financial crisis that happened a while ago – they may need to re-think that law. Norway had over 33 million US dollars (168 million Norwegian kroner) of their citizen’s retirement fund invested in Washington Mutual stock (it made big headlines in Norway when that bank fell). Perhaps if some of Norway’s top financial advisors had put in a few extra hours at the office that year – they might have seen that one coming.