5 ms·

i did read the very short page, but still, not being a swede, i suppose i just don't get it.

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
You don’t need any knowledge of the Swedish language. It is explained on the Wikipedia page. “Att tiga” means to keep quiet. One would say “Han/hon tiger” to mean “He/she is keeping quiet”. The word “tiger” in Swedish is also how they say the animal. That’s why it has a double meaning. It’s literally the first sentence of the second paragraph on the page. > In Swedish, the word svensk can mean both the adjective "Swedish" and the noun "Swede" while tiger can mean either the noun for the animal or the present tense of the verb tiga ("to keep silent", or more colloquially to "keep one's mouth shut"), giving the poster the double meaning "a Swedish tiger" or "a Swede keeps silent".
- mmhsieh 7y ago
  yeah, i do get that, but maybe my mind processes it a bit differently. in my mind, tigers = roaring, aggressiveness. that just overcomes the psychological effect of the wordplay for me.
abbe98 7y ago
"tiger" in Swedish means both tiger and "being quiet".
- mmhsieh 7y ago
  thanks all for the clarifications. the only point i was making was that for some, the brain can be confused by seemingly contradictory imagery when the goal was to convey some wordplay. this might be lost on me because no such wordplay exists in any language i am familiar with.
  - phamilton 7y ago
    Contranyms (homophones with opposite meanings) exist in English. A potential (contrived) example in English would be to use the notion of a strike in baseball as a covert communication for a worker strike. I could imagine signs and stickers made with an umpire making the strike hand gesture. That's not completely contradictory, but maybe a self defense guide might use that imagery for instructing someone to strike an assailant. And there, a strike in baseball is literally missing the ball, or failing to strike the ball. So very opposite.
    - mmhsieh 7y ago
      i was not aware of such a concept; it is interesting. i was thinking back in wwii, if they had a "hush puppies" campaign in lieu of loose lips etc. - it probably would have been mis-processed in my mind as well. puppies = yapping. any other message would be swamped by the puppy noise. my mind goes to the tangible, physical and spatial first, and the abstract/symbolic second.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mmhsieh 7y ago
ps, "fox" was a reference to the ylvis music video from 2014 or so. i thought perhaps in the scandinavian cultures foxes were associated with being quiet. universally, they are associated with being cautious and discreet. anyways, i would have been a bad propaganda writer for sweden in the 1940s. it would have been overrun with nazis within weeks if i were in charge of things.

You don’t need any knowledge of the Swedish language. It is explained on the Wikipedia page. “Att tiga” means to keep quiet. One would say “Han/hon tiger” to mean “He/she is keeping quiet”. The word “tiger” in Swedish is also how they say the animal. That’s why it has a double meaning. It’s literally the first sentence of the second paragraph on the page. > In Swedish, the word svensk can mean both the adjective "Swedish" and the noun "Swede" while tiger can mean either the noun for the animal or the present tense of the verb tiga ("to keep silent", or more colloquially to "keep one's mouth shut"), giving the poster the double meaning "a Swedish tiger" or "a Swede keeps silent".

mmhsieh 7y ago
yeah, i do get that, but maybe my mind processes it a bit differently. in my mind, tigers = roaring, aggressiveness. that just overcomes the psychological effect of the wordplay for me.

abbe98 7y ago

"tiger" in Swedish means both tiger and "being quiet".

mmhsieh 7y ago
thanks all for the clarifications. the only point i was making was that for some, the brain can be confused by seemingly contradictory imagery when the goal was to convey some wordplay. this might be lost on me because no such wordplay exists in any language i am familiar with.
- phamilton 7y ago
  Contranyms (homophones with opposite meanings) exist in English. A potential (contrived) example in English would be to use the notion of a strike in baseball as a covert communication for a worker strike. I could imagine signs and stickers made with an umpire making the strike hand gesture. That's not completely contradictory, but maybe a self defense guide might use that imagery for instructing someone to strike an assailant. And there, a strike in baseball is literally missing the ball, or failing to strike the ball. So very opposite.
  - mmhsieh 7y ago
    i was not aware of such a concept; it is interesting. i was thinking back in wwii, if they had a "hush puppies" campaign in lieu of loose lips etc. - it probably would have been mis-processed in my mind as well. puppies = yapping. any other message would be swamped by the puppy noise. my mind goes to the tangible, physical and spatial first, and the abstract/symbolic second.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mmhsieh 7y ago

ps, "fox" was a reference to the ylvis music video from 2014 or so. i thought perhaps in the scandinavian cultures foxes were associated with being quiet. universally, they are associated with being cautious and discreet. anyways, i would have been a bad propaganda writer for sweden in the 1940s. it would have been overrun with nazis within weeks if i were in charge of things.