I am from Sweden

[Shadow.97]

Im from sweden, speak swedish and everything. I just selected swedish and it worked

Gosh, that's quite interesting! Whereabouts in Sweden do you come from? You know, it was at Ikea (which certainly you've heard of) that I bought all the furniture in my house. At the restaurant there they serve Swedish food. I relish a plate of Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, and I'm totally in love with lingonberry. Since the nearest store is now some 140 km away from me, I usually had to buy no less than 3 bottles of lingonberry. Let me see if you can answer this question for me because, as far as I know, you probably have never been to one of their stores. Those strange names they have for their products, are they simply the Swedish translation of the item, or do they mean something else?

As for Windows, when you say the language pack worked, did it turn your Windows into totally Swedish as opposed to simply adding the keyboard for the proper characters?

Thanks,

In Älmhult/Elmhult(not sure how to spell it as Ä/E sound similair in many cases) where the first store came, i live somewhat close to that, I live in Växjö. but haha, you should taste our homemady lingonberry(the ones thats muched added suggar etc) though i love the meatballs at ikea tastes awesome. But, when it comes to the translation part, sometimes its names and sometimes just random words or so to speak.. But keep in mind that i only know how it is in sweden, so i may be totally wrong with all this :] ______ as with the windows thing, i got OS on English, but keys at swedish. what i can remember i only bought my old chair at ikea ( rip my loved chair *sob*).  sorry for this weird text, im on my phone

[humbert]

As for Windows, when you say the language pack worked, did it turn your Windows into totally Swedish as opposed to simply adding the keyboard for the proper characters?

According to Bladeshark, when you download a language pack it will turn your Windows totally into the language you selected. If all you want is to add an additional keyboard, simply go to Control Panel -> Region & Languages -> Keyboard and select. You can toggle back and forth using Alt-LeftShift. I guess the only bad part is you'll have to memorize where on the keyboard the other characters are located.

In Älmhult/Elmhult(not sure how to spell it as Ä/E sound similair in many cases) where the first store came, i live somewhat close to that, I live in Växjö. but haha, you should taste our homemady lingonberry(the ones thats muched added suggar etc) though i love the meatballs at ikea tastes awesome. But, when it comes to the translation part, sometimes its names and sometimes just random words or so to speak.. But keep in mind that i only know how it is in sweden, so i may be totally wrong with all this :] ______ as with the windows thing, i got OS on English, but keys at swedish. what i can remember i only bought my old chair at ikea ( rip my loved chair *sob*).  sorry for this weird text, im on my phone

I found both cities on Google maps. For some reason, Gmaps only says "Älmhult" and they've left out the Elmhult. Be that as it may, the city is located south-west of where you are. I'm surprised Ikea would open their first store there, given the fact that they're bound to get more customers in a larger city, not to even mention the fact that it costs money to transport your purchases home unless you bring a truck or something. Now I "sort-of" understand where the strange names for their products come from - some are a Swedish translation, other are arbitrary.

I would absolutely love to taste your home made lingonberry plus any other Swedish food you might have around. As I explained, every time I go to their store, I make it a point to eat at their restaurant.

I know all about coming on the forum using your phone. Yesterday I had no access to a computer and I had to go that route. It's almost like having to use a microscope, not to even mention constantly amplifying the screen and scrolling back and forth.

Hëdjå (goodbye in Swedish),
Humbert (not sure if the umlat above the "e" is correct)

[Shadow.97]

Sorry im not going to quote that long message;) But, its "hejdå"= goodbye but when i go to my cottage on Öland(swedish island) we stop at ikea in Kalmar just to eat food.
But why it was located there in Älmhult was because it was Ingvars home town(founder).

And we dont use "umlats" on "E" Let me just write our keys (in order from left to right)
QWERTYUIOPÅ
ASDFGHJKLÖÄ
ZXCVBNM
Thats the only letters we use, no more no less. (Note we sometimes use like é on names, for example, Linnéa(Female name) showing that the e has to be prounounced with a long "e" otherwise it would sound mushy

OH and another note im kind of useless telling which direction of sweden is north south west east, as we paint sweden "up" but its really like / or \ (Placed like that to north)

[humbert]

Sorry im not going to quote that long message;) But, its "hejdå"= goodbye but when i go to my cottage on Öland(swedish island) we stop at ikea in Kalmar just to eat food.
But why it was located there in Älmhult was because it was Ingvars home town(founder).
And we dont use "umlats" on "E" Let me just write our keys (in order from left to right)
QWERTYUIOPÅ
ASDFGHJKLÖÄ
ZXCVBNM
Thats the only letters we use, no more no less. (Note we sometimes use like é on names, for example, Linnéa(Female name) showing that the e has to be prounounced with a long "e" otherwise it would sound mushy

Obviously you're right, the ë character is German, as is the word "umlat". I mistakenly believed it was used in Swedish too, but clearly that's not the case. On the Swedish keyboard you typed out for me, is there a "dead key" anywhere to enable the use of é? To give you an idea of what I mean, Spanish keyboards don't have accented letters on them, accents are put in via a key combination. We press the key to the right of P followed by e and get é. Do you have something similar in Swedish for that?

OH and another note im kind of useless telling which direction of sweden is north south west east, as we paint sweden "up" but its really like / or \ (Placed like that to north)

By South and West, I mean below and to the right on the map. 

[Shadow.97]

Obviously you're right, the ë character is German, as is the word "umlat". I mistakenly believed it was used in Swedish too, but clearly that's not the case. On the Swedish keyboard you typed out for me, is there a "dead key" anywhere to enable the use of é? To give you an idea of what I mean, Spanish keyboards don't have accented letters on them, accents are put in via a key combination. We press the key to the right of P followed by e and get é. Do you have something similar in Swedish for that?

We press ´ (To the left of Backspace) then the letter ex E, and for ` its shift and ´
But you can always use ALT and press on numkeys to get letters and such.

[humbert]

We press ´ (To the left of Backspace) then the letter ex E, and for ` its shift and ´
But you can always use ALT and press on numkeys to get letters and such.

That's interesting. Let me ask you - you're using an English version of Windows with a Swedish keyboard and an English character set, or what? And of course, Alt-Numkeys is pretty much universal. In unicode, for example Alt-0229 comes back as å.

One more thing. I was looking up on Google translate some of the words used by Ikea for their merchandise. I'm going to ask about just one. My sofa is called "Ektorp", but the translator comes back with the English word "collector". Do you suppose this is just a word they picked out of the dictionary to call the sofa, or does it have another meaning?

[Shadow.97]

Well, Ektorp (Ek, i think is oak?) and torp(is like a cottage of some kind
I use swedish caracter set.

[humbert]

Well, Ektorp (Ek, i think is oak?) and torp(is like a cottage of some kind
I use swedish caracter set.

I honestly don't have a clue of where Ikea gets those names for their merchandise. Even your translation doesn't match the one from Google. Other furniture I've bought there are labeled "stornäs", "malm", "engan" and "tullsta". I even went as far as to visit their web site in another tab just to be sure the spelling was correct. Do these words mean anything to you, or are they just made up? Just curious, that's all.

Using a Swedish character set for English is OK given the fact that English has no characters above 127 on the Ascii character table, i.e., it uses no characters that have accents, tildes, double-dots, etc. I believe it should use them given that vowels have different pronunciations on different words, and there are even words that have different meanings according to their pronunciation. Yet that language has no written method of differentiating any of that. Who knows, maybe it's because modern English is not much more than a wierd mixture of French and dialects of Old English, which were used there before the Normandy invasion of 1066.

[Shadow.97]

Well, Ektorp (Ek, i think is oak?) and torp(is like a cottage of some kind
I use swedish caracter set.

I honestly don't have a clue of where Ikea gets those names for their merchandise. Even your translation doesn't match the one from Google. Other furniture I've bought there are labeled "stornäs", "malm", "engan" and "tullsta". I even went as far as to visit their web site in another tab just to be sure the spelling was correct. Do these words mean anything to you, or are they just made up? Just curious, that's all.

Using a Swedish character set for English is OK given the fact that English has no characters above 127 on the Ascii character table, i.e., it uses no characters that have accents, tildes, double-dots, etc. I believe it should use them given that vowels have different pronunciations on different words, and there are even words that have different meanings according to their pronunciation. Yet that language has no written method of differentiating any of that. Who knows, maybe it's because modern English is not much more than a wierd mixture of French and dialects of Old English, which were used there before the Normandy invasion of 1066.

Yes, actually they do. Stornäs, i think thats an area on the map(Dont ask me where, i dont know more than that). Malm, it is like, iron, gold, and all kinds of minerals collected with one name. Engan, well i have nooo clue about that one(Just came up with something, as Ä is said as E sometimes, it could mean Ängan, which sounds alont link "äng" with an(would be wrongly "bent" word.)could mean like a big area of grass with flowers and such. -> http://cdn01.dayviews.com/27/_u5/_u2/_u8/_u7/_u9/u528797/19062_1209992953.jpg<- . And tullsta(Just me guessing) Tull= toll, and "sta", is often used instead of "stad" which means City, with my accent, i dont say "stad" with D, i only say "sta"(few exceptions may apply).
My accent is "Småländska" if that even interests you .
And yes, they could mean real words as they have "swedish grammar" applied to them.

[humbert]

Yes, actually they do. Stornäs, i think thats an area on the map(Dont ask me where, i dont know more than that). Malm, it is like, iron, gold, and all kinds of minerals collected with one name. Engan, well i have nooo clue about that one(Just came up with something, as Ä is said as E sometimes, it could mean Ängan, which sounds alont link "äng" with an(would be wrongly "bent" word.)could mean like a big area of grass with flowers and such. -> http://cdn01.dayviews.com/27/_u5/_u2/_u8/_u7/_u9/u528797/19062_1209992953.jpg<- . And tullsta(Just me guessing) Tull= toll, and "sta", is often used instead of "stad" which means City, with my accent, i dont say "stad" with D, i only say "sta"(few exceptions may apply).

I think I know what Ikea's doing. They're simply naming their furniture not after what it really is, but simply giving them a nice name that will sell. They only thing is, they're now worldwide and the names are all in Swedish. Incidentally, in every Ikea store I've been to, the golden Nordic cross with the blue field flies high on a flagpole.

My accent is "Småländska" if that even interests you

Your accent? Do you mean the way you speak or what? If so, do Swedes speak in slightly different accents depending upon their region?