hos vs hus

[kareina]

Some things take longer to notice than others. I learned fairly quickly after moving to Sweden that the word "hus" means both "house" and "building" in Swedish--they don't distinguish if the building is residential or not. I have also been hearing them use the what I thought was the same word as part of a phrase that meant, so I assumed "at _X__'s house", and, since I was already ok with the word applying to many different types of buildings (even though it sounds much like our word "house"), it didn't worry me that sometimes the context clearly didn't actually include their house, but just meant with them.

It turns out that, actually, it is my hearing that is an issue (again!), and when someone says what sounded to me like "hus ___X___", they were actually saying "hos ___X___", and hos = at or with (or in or among, or about, depending on context). Oops. Funny that it has taken me 3.5 years living in Sweden to realize this, and then only because I tried to use the phrase myself in writing, and it got edited. It had to be in writing to figure out my mistake though--if I had used the phrase in speech they would have just assumed it was my bad accent that was the issue, and not realized that I was trying to say a different word than is meant to be there...

Comments

[stitchwhich.livejournal.com]

That is the sort of problem that could happen even in one's own native language, once one moves to someplace where there is a different accent. Although I think it is cool, how you figured it out.