OT: Amazing wildlife story

[Duck on Wheels]

Duck, does that story say the black bear is in New Jersey? I used to speak some Swedish, so I was trying to see what I could read in Norwegian (answer: not much). I could pick up black bear, cat, and New Jersey. This did not require a year of study of the Swedish language at the University of Chicago. But that's what I have left.

Also, I can say, "Jag har glompt nesta alla mina Svenska". I wonder how much I paid for that.

But really, was it in NJ, USA?

If it's any comfort:
1) Swedish and Norwegian are not all that similar on the page. I can follow spoken Swedish, but reading it is a slog. With Danish it's the other way around. Looks almost exactly like Norwegian on the page, but sounds like it comes from Mars.
2) You got the gist of it right -- black bear, 7 kilo orange tabby tom cat named Jack, cat's back yard, bear chased up a tree, bear makes a run for it and gets chased up another tree, and yes -- New Jersey, USA.

[Lise]

I love it. Bear gets chased up two trees by the same cat. How will bear ever hold his head up again around the bear bar?

That phrase means "I've forgotten almost all my Swedish". I studied Swedish for a year in 1978 because I got a scholarship from the American Daughters of Sweden. I am 1/8th Swedish. The scholarship consisted of $500 and a cookbook. I am also 1/8th Danish (my Danish/Swedish grandmother). The Danes offered me neither moolah nor cookbook. I go with the loot. By the end of the year, we had read a detective novel in Swedish and discussed it in class, speaking only Swedish. Amazing. Is it all in there? If I woke up in Stockholm, would it come flooding back? Doubt it, but who knows. I think it's all been replaced with Spanish, the language I speak at work.

[Duck on Wheels]

Was that a Sjövall and Wahlöö crime novel? They're great!
I think it would come back if you spent some time in Stockholm. Maybe not "flooding" the moment you got off the plane in Arlanda, but trickling over a few days and weeks. It's there somewhere. It's just hiding behind the Spanish, like my French is hiding behind my Norwegian, but some of it came back when I had a weeklong conference in Paris.