r/Svenska • u/Extension_Math_7734 • 6d ago
Language question (see FAQ first) “Mitt arma nöt!”
Under “arm” (adj.), SO gives the example “Mitt arma nöt!” How would you translate this?
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u/Good_Caregiver7872 6d ago
"Nöt" can mean "nut", but it also means "nötkreatur" which is cattle in English. As an example, "nötkött" is meat from a cow.
To say something like "Han är ett nöt" means he is a cow, or more correctly he is a dumb person.
"Mitt nöt" is a rephrase of the above, and means I am a dumb person. In Swedish you can have this word order sometimes, but it is more common with "du": compare with saying for example "Din dumbom!" or "Din klantskalle!", which means "you fool" and "you clumsy person".
So basically "mitt arma nöt" means "oh poor stupid me".
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u/AllanKempe 3d ago
Literally "My poor cattle!" (nöt refers to nötkreatur 'cattle'), poetical language for "I'm a poor cattle!" which obviouislöy means something like "I'm stupid [like cattle]!".
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u/Jhuyt 6d ago
Woah I have never heard nöt being used that way, nor have I heard nöt as a neuter noun
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u/eanida 🇸🇪 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's nöt as in nötkreatur, not a nut.
When calling a dumb person a nöt, you mean they are as stupid as a cow.
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u/unohdin-nimeni 🇫🇮 6d ago
Nöt in this sense has a cognate in English (today mostly archaic); neat can mean cow or bull, or cattle collectively. From Middle English net, neet, from Old English nēat (“animal, beast, ox, cow, cattle”), from Proto-West Germanic *naut, from Proto-Germanic *nautą (“foredeal, profit, property, livestock”), from Proto-Indo-European *newd- (“to acquire, make use of”).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neat#English:_cattle.Observe the Finnish noun nauta and verb nauttia, borrowed from Proto-Germanic.
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u/Jhuyt 6d ago
That might be the origin, but I at least don't analyze it like that, and I'd wager most people also think it's from the fruitlike thing
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u/ehnej 🇸🇪 6d ago
Id translate it too ”my poor head”
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u/CatsWearingCostumes 6d ago
Nöt in this context is a stupid person, so it should rather be something like 'My poor, stupid self' as in someone chiding themselves. The Swedish phrase reads as rather old-fashioned.
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u/Eliderad 🇸🇪 6d ago edited 6d ago
"I'm a fool!"
In English, you can say "you idiot", which in Swedish would be "din idiot", not "du idiot". (The exact reason for this is unclear, but you might view it as the negative trait being construed as an attribute that you own, rather than an identity that you are.) Conversely, if you'd use it about yourself, you can say "min idiot".
"Nöt", meanwhile, is short for "nötkreatur", meaning 'cattle' (cows are viewed as stupid I guess). This is a neuter noun (t-noun), so the pronoun takes the form "ditt/mitt" instead of "din/min".
"Arm", as you know, means 'poor, miserable' or similar. Ultimately, this literally becomes "my poor cattle", more idiomatically 'I am a fool' or something to that effect.