Although I promised that the Z post would be the last, I cannot refrain from bonus posts based on the final letters of the Swedish alphabet. I promise solemnly that I won't continue with Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew or Futhark, although it is tempting.
Å is for ångest,
which in Swedish means ”anxiety” or ”anguish” and is
sometimes referred to with its German equivalent ”Angst”. For
some reason, English-speaking people, who are generally hostile
toward all things alien, love German philosophical terms such as Angst or
Dasein. I think it is just translators being lazy.
Anxiety is omnipresent in
young adult literature because being an adolescent is one huge
uncertainty. Too late to go back to childhood, but not quite adult
yet. Although apparently there is a new kind of literature now, NewAdult (NA) literature which, as far as I can see, is devoid of
anxiety.
2 comments:
How do you pronounce this word?
Tsk tsk... the idea that adolescence is riddled with ångest is something we have recently manufactured. All periods of life have their own anxieties, we should stop petending teenagers are 'special' in this way. See Kokkola 2013 for details.
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