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It's that time of year again where the good folks of Gavle, Sweden build a gigantic goat and the bad folks of Gavle try to burn it down. For five decades, Gavle has built a Gavlebocken, a large scale Yule Goat made out of straw. For decades Santa will be putting coal in their stocking for trying to destroy the gigantic goat. In its 52nd year, technology and goat protection methods have improved including fireproofing and a live web cam. Only 15 out of 51 goats built were not destroyed in years past. Let's hope this one survives.
[The linked story has incorrect spelling of the name of the town in Sweden and goat — it should be Gävle and Gävlebocken, respectively. --martyb]
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Gävle, Sweden Gears Up to Defend their Goat
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"If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
-- Paul White
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday December 25 2018, @10:53PM (20 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Funny) by NPC-131072 on Tuesday December 25 2018, @11:38PM
The Swedish government disappoint once again with their cultural insensitivity [urbandictionary.com]
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:59AM (18 children)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hawkwind on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:03AM (17 children)
Not sure this is an error, BBC also spells it that way https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42502375 [bbc.com]. We understand Gothenberg is not the city's real name, Copenhagen also isn't even close. Florence, italy, Vienna, Austira, the list goes on and on.
Don't get me wrong, the butchering of names by the English speaking world bugs me, but I suspect the ABC spelled it correctly from their perspective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @06:54AM
Sorry :(
I couldn't find the ä on my keyboard.
Maybe I'll just copy/paste in future.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday December 26 2018, @08:29AM (15 children)
Gothenberg is a particularly egregious misspelling actually; you meant Gothenburg. Geats Fort, not Geats Mountain. This is actually a /translation/ of the name - Gothen substituted for Göta, burg for borg, so those are cognate roots with the same meaning but we use the English form instead of the Swedish. Copenhagen, on the other hand, was borrowed directly from the Dutch. (Danish /Köpenhavn/ is pretty close in spelling but like with Gävle the two pricks change both the initial consonant and vowel in pronunciation - it's something like sherp-en-han.)
Both of these cities, like Florence (Firenze, worn down over centuries of use from Florentia) and Vienna (Wienne, if you must anglicize this is the best way to do it, the English spelling matches the actual pronunciation fairly closely) are places that English speakers have been visiting and talking about constantly for centuries - this is why we have these wierd old names for them that are centuries old - these are words that have been in common use the whole time. So, it does make some sense in those cases.
But in the case of Gävle none of this applies. It's never been a hot spot for English travellers, whether for business or pleasure. There's no tradition of using a different name in English for it, and "Gavle" is not an independent word with an independent history, it's just Gävle misspelled because someone couldn't find their pricks.
I understand the writers are Aussies and therefore working from a handicap, and I wasn't trying to be snarky pointing it out, but it's a fact. There just isn't any such place.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:33AM (7 children)
I can't tell if you're just Swedish, or Swedish and being a funny prick about the dots...
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:37PM (6 children)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prick
Particularly sense 3, "A dot or other diacritical mark used in writing; a point."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 27 2018, @12:59AM (1 child)
Huh, whadya know. Learned something new, cheers! I do note that's it's considered obsolete these days, and as far as I'm aware in both British and Australian English they're referred to simply as "dots".
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday December 28 2018, @03:12AM
Best I can tell, it should be translated 'non-bullshit.'
Only they don't even give me the courtesy of two pricks. And I really miss that. I can live with being archaïc but I will never ever be archaic. You can't even pronounce that with a straight face.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Friday December 28 2018, @02:07AM (3 children)
I'd always heard them referred to either as a diaeresis [wikipedia.org] or as an umlaut.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday December 28 2018, @03:05AM (2 children)
'Diæresis' is one of my favorite words. Just as /nephritis/ is neo-latin for 'inflamed kidneys', /diæresis/ is neo-greek for 'the two pricks.'
'Umlaut' is a different sort of a beast. The primary meaning of it is the sound shift, the compression of the two syllables ae or oe to a single umlaut vowel. In many languages, the umlaut is habitually referenced with the diæresis, and so they have become in common usage synonymous.
But in a language or in a mind that does not habitually equate the two, they might be seen as different things - one a matter of orthography, the other a matter of pronunciation.
In English, the diæresis was traditionally used for a purpose quite distinct from that of /umlaut/. It was used, in fact is still used, last I checked, per a minority of style guides at least, to indicate the exact *opposite* of an umlaut; that is to indicate when two vowels that might otherwise be expected to umlaut are still pronounced as two distinct syllables.
For example, naïve. Without the diæresis this should rhyme with knife, the pricks are used to remind us that this word still has two syllables.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday December 28 2018, @03:17AM (1 child)
Not exclusively those two combinations of syllables. U+E=Y is another. But the fundamental pattern, which is a pattern of pronunciation, is implied. Orthography comes only as a secondary level - if the umlaut is normally represented with the pricks in your language you associate them (and this is mostly the case, even in danish for example the o umlaut is not written that way but the a is so it still makes somewhat sense.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday December 30 2018, @02:32PM
Thank-you for that! Had seen it used in so many places, but there was something about your explanation that helped make it clear for me. In essence, the 'pricks' are the syntax, and the semantics depend on context and serve to indicate whether the adjacent vowels should be pronounced as one unit or separately!
It's comments like this that make my time spent on the site worthwhile! Thanks again!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:35PM (6 children)
Me thinks you must be Swedish, Copenhagen is København [wikipedia.org]. Or maybe you just find Danish spelling to be too crazy to take seriously.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:07PM (5 children)
{Ø, Ö, Œ} are different ways of writing an O+E digraph. The first is traditional in Danish, so strictly speaking I should have used it, but when Danes write Danish on an English typewriter or PC and can't find it they quickly fall back to just typing 'oe' just as Swedes do when they can't find ö and the same as Frenchmen (and the occasional literate Englishman) does when œ is unavailable. I tend to use the ö because my fingers find if most quickly, if it was for a real formal setting I might have changed it in edit.
So anyway as I see it köpenhavn, køpenhavn, kœpenhavn, or even koepenhavn are exactly the same spelling. And that's the Danish spelling.
The Swedish spelling is actually köpenhamn, with an m instead of a v.
But since you mentioned it being crazy, yes, I actually do find that glyph a bit crazy and tend to avoid it. It's just too close to a 0.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:07AM (4 children)
You missed to pick on the p vs b thing (which I'd best explain by Danish having quite the incomprehensible drawl to it, but maybe I'm just bitter about never having had an easy time understanding Danes).
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:28AM (3 children)
Yes, there's also an alternation between b and p and I completely overlooked it.
Mea culpa.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday December 27 2018, @02:38AM (2 children)
Hmm... I'd say that places you Stockholm or further north :P
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday December 29 2018, @02:26AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Saturday December 29 2018, @03:05AM
045{4,6}, men det var, som sagt, då :)
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday December 25 2018, @11:39PM (18 children)
I'm just waiting for the day when someone gets both the inspiration and the connections to use incendiary grenades on it. These days the fireproofing and exclusion zone are doing such a good job it's bound to up the arms race.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NPC-131072 on Tuesday December 25 2018, @11:44PM (14 children)
Hello fren, multiculturalism has your back [politico.eu]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
Don't I know it. The open borders together with gutted police force has made things go to shit. And yet the major parties keep pretending there's nothing wrong (and that they've done nothing wrong). And when the only party leader with common sense is the one of the supposedly far right extremist Sweden Democrats (SD), you know things have gotten out of hand. And still the regular parties are more concerned with keeping SD out than addressing the issues the country faces. Damn farce it is.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:45AM (1 child)
Same like the AfD in Germany - but there the MSM is programmed against them too. I don't know if that is the case in Sweden.
You'll hear the epithet "neo-Nazi" thrown about whenever the AfD is mentioned in international media. But at least their official platform is similar to what Merkel's party, the CDU, used to stand for in the 1980s. Yeah, probably every Nazi is currently attracted to the AfD, just like every KKK member probably votes Republican. But it doesn't make the party "neo-Nazi", nor the concerns of the people voting for them irrational.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:28AM
Yeah that sounds quite similar. SD has historically been known as the neo-nazi party, though they've cleaned up their act considerably since. Their policy platform isn't too dissimilar to that of the Moderates ("Moderaterna"), albeit with a more pronounced "we have to put our citizens before those of the world" slant. Which honestly, should be common sense. That's the priority I expect *every* country to have.
Now that's not to say there aren't still some rotten eggs [twitter.com] in the party still. I couldn't find any good English write-ups of the whole story, but they guy seems to be an ass-hat at best.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RandomFactor on Wednesday December 26 2018, @01:24AM (4 children)
Grenades bad.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @02:24AM (3 children)
Try a classic like the #76 [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:59AM (2 children)
Speaking of classics, I think defense next year should include an alligator filled moat. That would be some awesome.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:29AM (1 child)
Not sure they alligators would agrees in with that in the freezing temperatures though. In principle I fully agree though!
(Score: 3, Funny) by RandomFactor on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:24PM
pfftpt, the burning goat should keep things warm :-p
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @06:58AM (4 children)
That is really sad.
How is Sweden going to fix this problem?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @07:11AM (1 child)
Pick an minority or create a grouping that seem to involved to some degree, then denigrate and oppress them. That'll fix the problem. Extra points if you can create a media circus to blame them and direct as much fear and hate towards them as you can. That way you can set up an 'us vs them' mentality in the population.
That's the best way to deal with these problems. Nothing can go wrong with this approach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @07:29AM
If this continues muslims will be the majority in these places.
What then?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:39AM
From the looks of it, by having the supposed adults bicker for over three months [telegraph.co.uk] over who gets
the mantle of responsibilityto bask in their own sunshine while neglecting the needs of the country and its citizens.(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @04:08PM
good thing those guns are illegal. that should make the swedish sleep better at night or more likely to send their teen daughter to the store for bread.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @07:25AM
It looks like their best bet for a working police is to shoot people at the border.
Seriously.
Why are hundreds of thousands of young men flooding into other countries instead of staying in their own to fight for their freedom?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:07AM
I'd like to see it destroyed with style. Steal or recreate the T-Rex robot from Jurassic Park, and send it in to dismember the goat.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday December 26 2018, @07:04AM
They've already tried flaming arrows. Reading the description:
I'll bet that wouldn't stop a drone carrying a load of petrol.
Just saying...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @07:05AM
Just tell ISIL about it. They love blowing this kind of thing up
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday December 26 2018, @01:02AM (6 children)
So naturally, wanting to know more, I visited goat.se. For some reason, it's not what I expected...
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @02:16AM (5 children)
Funnily enough, that particular site is perfectly safe, despite what the URL looks like.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday December 26 2018, @04:09AM (4 children)
Appears to be a rustic goat farm/diary/store of some kind best I can tell.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:29AM (2 children)
Blissfully unaware of the goatse legend...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @04:02PM (1 child)
We Can Fix That
}O{
(Score: 4, Funny) by RandomFactor on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:28PM
Three characters.
I can't believe he could make me cringe using just THREE CHARACTERS.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 27 2018, @04:45AM
Looks like a pleasant mother and child scene involving goats instead of people.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @02:29AM
Or the whole town quakes [thelocal.se]. New approach to taking out the goat I guess!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 26 2018, @06:45AM (5 children)
They're supposed to EAT the damned goats, then give birth to them the next morning. You don't just burn them, and leave the remains behind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:07AM (4 children)
This guy knows how to ritual cannibalize!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:48AM (3 children)
This guy knows how to read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanngrisnir_and_Tanngnj%C3%B3str [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @10:18AM
Never try to teach a educate a moron; it wastes your time, and it annoys the moron.
(Score: 4, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:42AM (1 child)
That lameness is all Loki's fault. It's always Loki's bloody fault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @04:11PM
Don't worry, he's really dead this time.