Talk:svengata
Add topicLatest comment: 6 years ago by Hekaheka in topic Etymology
Etymology
[edit]Is there a source to the etymology of this word. Because given the pronunciation, I would say that it is more likely to come from Swedish svänga with the same meaning. Or what do you say @Hekaheka? --Lundgren8 (t · c) 00:06, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
- @Lundgren8 Could be as well. The slang borrows from many sources. The music-related terms tend to come from English nowadays. I added Swedish as an alternative etymology. Svengata has more meanings, and I intend to add them later. One of the is "to be going", like in this example:
- Kuinka svengaa?
- How's it going? / What's up? / What's happening?
- Could you say Hur svänger det? or something similar in Swedish in the same context?
- @Hekaheka I’d say the Swedish word is identical in the musical meanings, and although music terms come from English nowadays, I would assume that svengata is from the swing era. It also means to sway back and forth, but it can’t mean ’how’s it going’ as in your example. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 00:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- This is speculation, but if we assume that svengata comes from the swing era, it probably entered Finnish through the Helsinki (Helsingfors) slang. Helsinki was much more Swedish-speaking then than now and it is likely that the Swedish speakers started to use svänga to refer to swinging in the music sense. The Finns could have picked the word from the Swedish-speakers. Helsinki slang is a careless mixture of Finnish grammar and Swedish, Russian, English and even Spanish loans plus invented words. --As an interesting by-path: you may be familiar with Meänkieli, also known as tornedalsfinska, which is spoken in Tornedalen. They have the word svingata and it must be older than swing-music [1]. --Hekaheka (talk) 04:07, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- ...and it must come from svinga. --Hekaheka (talk) 04:09, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- This is speculation, but if we assume that svengata comes from the swing era, it probably entered Finnish through the Helsinki (Helsingfors) slang. Helsinki was much more Swedish-speaking then than now and it is likely that the Swedish speakers started to use svänga to refer to swinging in the music sense. The Finns could have picked the word from the Swedish-speakers. Helsinki slang is a careless mixture of Finnish grammar and Swedish, Russian, English and even Spanish loans plus invented words. --As an interesting by-path: you may be familiar with Meänkieli, also known as tornedalsfinska, which is spoken in Tornedalen. They have the word svingata and it must be older than swing-music [1]. --Hekaheka (talk) 04:07, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
- @Hekaheka I’d say the Swedish word is identical in the musical meanings, and although music terms come from English nowadays, I would assume that svengata is from the swing era. It also means to sway back and forth, but it can’t mean ’how’s it going’ as in your example. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 00:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)