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Mind your language

Non-existent phrases

23 April 2015

1:00 PM

23 April 2015

1:00 PM

‘Ten Norwegian phrases that don’t exist in English but should,’ said the headline. So I had a little look, as the writer on the internet, one Kenneth Haug, intended. Here’s one. Takk for maten. Should it exist in English? It means: ‘Thanks for the food.’

English, being a cousin of Norwegian, also used to employ meat to mean food, and we still run into the archaic sense in such contexts as the Bible.

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