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1. clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Wednesday, 03-Jan-2024 14:25:21 EST clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

   In business Swedish there is the expression to "take height for" something. This means that you aim higher than your original estimate, you add margin, to account for some more or less uncertain factor.

   Typical use might be e.g. "ok, this looks reasonable, but did you take height for compatibility issues?"

   This became widespread in the 00s and seems have come from business Danish, which in turn got it from seafaring Danish, where if you're rowing toward something you'll want to "take height for" the current and aim higher upstream than your destination to account for your own drift downstream.

   This and other etymologies were discussed in the latest episode of "Språket", including questioning several common-knowledge etymologies. E.g. "pain riche" isn't a fake French loanword in Swedish, it's a true loanword that survived longer in the borrowing language, while the French started saying "baguette" instead.

   sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/etymo… (Swedish audio, 30 min)

   1. lnxw48a1 (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Wednesday, 03-Jan-2024 20:21:46 EST lnxw48a1

      in reply to
      @clacke That brings to mind a question about Scandinavian languages. I've probably already asked this before (of you and of Thorwegian), but if I have, I forgot your answers.
      
      How close are most Scandinavian languages? Is there some degree of mutual intelligibility?