Re: Swedish sambos

Brian M. Scott skreiv:

On Tue, 2 Sep 2008 19:51:45 -0700 (PDT),
<Craoibhin66@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in <news:302def27-523d-4d27-9a73-9209d6f030d4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

On Sep 3, 3:42 am, retrosorter <hrich...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I was in Sweden recently and a Swedish friend referred to his common-law wife as "sambo." I asked him what the term meant and he said that it refered to someone you live with to whom you are not officially married. Does this term have a large currency?

Of course. It is a regular word. Sam- = co-, related to samman,
tillsammans "together". Bo = to live (in a place).

And the Norwegian counterpart is <samboer>.

To be precise, <samboer> is Bokmål. Nynorsk has <sambuar>.

The Danish term is <samlever>. It's widely used and understood, but not with quite the same currency in colloquial speech as its Norwegian and Swedish counterparts. A Danish would rather introduce you to his <kæreste> (or so it seems to me). I wonder if this has to do with the choice of verb. Both <bo> and <leve> translates to English 'live', but in different meanings. <bo> is locational ('jeg bor i Norge' "I live in Norway") and 'leve' is existencial ('så lenge jeg lever' "as long as I live"). Accordingly, <samboer> can be understood as "flat mate" and <samlever> as "life mate". It takes more commitment to think of oneself as the latter.

--
Trond Engen
- been there, done that
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
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