#östen

[squeezemylemon]

"Ågren" - Cornelis Vreeswijk and Östen Warnerbring

"Miss Squeeze's ABC February" Day 26/28

"Ågren" is Swedish slang for a hangover, so this is a quite beautiful song about the morning after the night before. When trying to find a word to use in the translation I landed on "Vesalgia", which is an English slang term for a hangover.

The rhymes in the translation are far from perfect, but I hope the translated text can be of some use anyway.

[ukfrislandembassy]

OK, let me expand a little on my point about conlangs and theory. See, morphology in particular does get the short stick (as I intimated in my previous post), and I think that's a shame (not that I'm biased), but it's partly because it's a shame that the kinds of complexity we see in natural language don't come up anywhere near as often as they should.

See, there's actually very little consensus among linguists about what makes a language 'complex'. I tend to follow the heuristics of Östen Dahl in The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity (2004), where he takes a minimum description length approach; the more rules required to give a complete description of a language, the more complex it is. He then goes on to divide that into 'richness', which in effect refers to the size of the lexicon but also to number of e.g. inflectional categories expressed; and 'structural complexity', which is how many different operations you need to encapsulate the relationship between the forms found (note that this is about description only, not making assumptions as to the mental grammar or anything). As implied by the terminology, the former per the discussion of the book isn't strictly 'complexity' per se, so freeing us to talk about languages being 'rich' in the former and 'complex' in the latter.

Now here's the thing, conlangs in my experience only tend to be rich, not actually complex. You'll have loads of categories, like a long list of TAM forms, but if they're all agglutinative affixes your system isn't really complex per this typology. My (admittedly somewhat anecdotal) impression though is that it's just as common for languages to be complex but not especially rich than vice-versa, if not more so.

That's how you get languages like Nuer, where nouns only have three cases and singular-plural contrast, yet these categories are expressed in a myriad different ways. Neither Skolt Sámi nor Chichimec verbs inflect for all that much either. Jê languages don't inflect their verbs for much, but the category they do express (finiteness) has all kinds of strategies to mark it. Welsh nouns only really inflect for number, but there's oodles of forms (including some singulatives). Heck, all of English's irregular verbs are good example of this kind of thing really, there's really a lot of this kind of thing going on when you actually start looking.

Now I do agree, as people have noted in the comments to that post, this kind of stuff is in some ways a bit less straightforward than regular morphology, but I honestly think it's a lot more rewarding. And this is not to say that there are no conlangs that do this kind of thing (Ronc Tyu and to some extent the Rompian family as a whole are good examples I would say, especially if we can get the Akana Project wiki working again...), I just with there were more I suppose.

[positivexpectedvalue]

Shelf designed by Uno and Östen Kristiansson for Luxus

[paganplaces]

Kung Östens grav

Kung Östens grav (English: King Östen’s Grave) is a passage grave located within a roughly 1.0-meter-high round mound. It is situated on the island of Hisingen, Sweden.

Read more at: https://paganplaces.com/places/kung-ostens-grav/

[no-gays-in-russia]

Melodifestivalen final tops: 2003

10. TKO (Knock You Out)- Bubbles: who leaked the tape of my best friends and I putting on a show for our moms in the early 2010s?

9. Bye Bye- Barbados: if there is two things I like about Barbados, that’s that they sing in Swedish, and Magnus Carlsson. This song has neither.

8. Genom Eld Och Vatten- Sarek: I know this is a big fan favourite, but it just sounds really chaotic to me. I will be honest- I could find positive things about it, but it sounds so cacophonous that I cannot focus on anything else. 

7. Crazy In Love- Jill Johnson: honestly this song is not even that bad, it’s quite solid and was clearly written by someone who knows what they’re doing, and it’s enjoyable too... But you know when there are certain things that make you so angry for no reason at all? Like, they just make your blood fucking boil? This is it. 

6. Aqua Playa- Afro-Dite: this is really good- they’re always charismatic and so entertaining to watch, perfect vocals and amazing harmonies, catchy and fun song. The issue is that this came directly the year after they won with Never Let It Go- and damn, that song is AMAZING. It’s inevitable to compare the two and it’s inevitable that this one will lose. 

5. Maria- Östen Med Resten: when I tell you I am obsessed with this? They sing in Spanish and Swedish, are dressed like mariachi, and have this incredibly fun song that has absolutely no reason to exist but to be entertaining? Bye this is everything I love about Melodifestivalen. 

4. Hela Världen För Mig- Sanna Nielsen: I never cared for this until I actually sat down and took some time to listen to the whole song and actually focus on it. Nice, very optimistic sounding ballad, definitely sounds like something out of a Disney movie. I always found it a bit basic and repetitive, and thought that despite the nice melody and good structure it doesn’t really have anything setting it apart- but I’ve started thinking Sanna’s stunning vocals almost (almost) make up for it. Her crystalline voice and clean technique fit a song like this perfectly, and her runs and variations actually add something interesting and captivating to it. 

3. Let Your Spirit Fly- Pernilla Wahlgren & Jan Johansen: I find this song very similar to Hela Världen För Mig, in the sense that with the simple and positive lyrics, clean vocals and sweet melody it feels like something you could find in a Disney movie. I think what makes me like this one a bit better is mostly the fact that it is a duet- I think duets, especially male-female, are almost always a winning choice because having two people singing instead of one is the simplest way to introduce variation and prevent the song from being plain and boring. Here, in particular, the contrast between Pernilla’s light and soft voice, and Jan’s more low and raspy one, works really well in making the song dynamic. 

2. Give Me Your Love- Fame: I don’t know what to tell you other than this is a bop. 

1. Not A Sinner Nor A Saint- Alcazar: I-C-O-N-I-C. No bye this is perfect and the fact that it didn’t win makes me absolutely LIVID. First of all, so iconic that Magnus Carlsson just ditched his former band and competed straight against them, coming in third while they got last? Shit that only happens in Sweden and that’s why I love this country. Brilliant structure with the piano intro and soft harmonised vocals, then more upbeat instrumental intro, I love the alternation in the verses with Andreas’s part/Magnus’s part/Tess and Annika’s part. If I have one complaint, it would be that I wish Tess and Annika harmonised their part, like they did in later concerts after Lina replaced Annika- with them both singing the melody it sounds a little flat. But this song is so well-written and exciting, with overall great vocals and harmony, amazing structure and it is just so iconic, 10/10 should have gone to Eurovision. 

[idontlikelipstick]

Glass table lamp by Uno and Östen Kristiansson for Luxus Vittsjo. Sweden, 1970

[iwillruletheuniverse]

Mum likes Östen Warnerbring and she didn’t have this before. Thomas loved banana💖

[d1tr]

wenn nicht mit rap, dann eben nicht

felix brummer (kraftklub)

[squeezemylemon]

"Underbar, så underbar" - Östen Warnerbring

"Miss Squeeze's ABC February" Day 21/28

Östen Warnerbring was known as "Östen med rösten" ("Östen with the voice"), he had such a beautiful voice with a warm timbre to it.

(Translation will be posted a little later.)

[1allicia]

Have a short gif of östen nooding (it was for training 😑but damn mouse its so hard 😢)

[stingdragon]

Belly massage.

[eurovisionart]

🇸🇪 Östen Warnerbring - Som En Dröm

[designobjectory]

Pair of Rare Hunting Chairs 204 by Uno & Östen Kristiansson for Luxus, Sweden

Pair of rare lounge chairs model 204 by Uno & O¨sten Kristiansson for Luxus, Sweden. The hunting chair was designed by Uno and O¨sten Kristiansson in 1954 and belongs at the top of Swedish design history. The chair features a frame in oak and a leather seat.

[fashioninpaper]

SWEDISH PAPER DOLL

Östen Warnerbring was a popular Swedish singer in the 1950s and 1960s. He represented his country in the 1967 Eurovision competition.