"Reciept for antibiotics" -- sometimes I make really  English      Swedish
ridiculous mistakes in English, but it's easy with    receipt      kvitto
'false friends' like this. This has of course         prescription recept
nothing to do with ferrets, but this very brief       wrist        ankel
language lession can be used to show that when my     ankle        vrist
ancestors conquered the British Isles a millenium     FERRET       ILLER
ago, they did not bring any ferrets. (Just like you   swine        svin
can show they knew about glass, but didn't use it     dog,hound    hund
for windows.)                                         cat          katt
                                                      glass        glas
This certainly means the Vikings never had ferrets,   window       f[oe]nster
and if they brought any home from the places          wolf         varg,ulv
they visited, they weren't successful up north.       elk          [ae]lg
I'll try to find out the earliest mention of ferrets  rat          r[ao]tta
in Sweden.                                            weasel       vessla
                                                      bird,fowl    f[ao]gel
(I also take the occasion to apologize for my         fish         fisk
sometimes incorrect use of terms, we've chosen to     house        hus
use the same terms for ferrets as for dogs, so        pen          penna
"puppie", "bitch", "bark" is exactly what I think in  knife        kniv
Swedish, and then mistakenly translate...)            ship         skepp
--
 Urban Fredriksson  [log in to unmask]
 
[Someone accidentally sent me email in Swedish intended for someone else.
Surprised the heck out of them when I managed to translate it because
many of the words were sorta similar to English or other languages I have
some (vague) familiarity with.  But I must remember wrist<=>ankel and
ankle<=>vrist ;-)
 
Actually, the Vikings didn't conquer the British Isles a millenia
ago.  The French (Normans) did.  The Vikings were just one of several
groups of invaders from about 100AD thru 800AD.  And not the most
successful either - the Saxons (Germanic) had a longer lasting effect -
at least in the south.
 
I would presume that Viking exposure to ferrets would date back to
about those days in central Europe and (what is now) Russia.  "Ferret"
is listed as Middle English (~1150-1400AD) possibly derived from
an Old French (<1400AD) word.  Probably in turn derived from the
Latin "Furo"...  Just read a very interesting book about an emmisary
from an Egyptian King (!) visiting "Russ" in the company of Vikings
around 300AD.  The book's interest was that some early Viking mythology
*might* indicate that they had contact with the last remnants of Neanderthal
man, and this Egyptian's account seems to verify it.  Fascinating...]
 
[Posted in FML issue 0392]