Saturday, April 14, 2007

"Fika"

Fika: fee-kah - verb, fika, fikade, fikat. Practised by a large part of the population, though especially by young people and particularly students. Commonly practised at cafés, but can also take place in a kitchen/living room, or on a blanket. Includes drinking (coffee is often involved, but can easily be replaced by tea, orange juice, soda, smoothie, hot chocolate, or even water), sometimes eating (baguettes are common, as are croissants, muffins, scones, and various cakes), but most importantly, chatting. The occurrence of drink and food may vary, but the chatting remains consistent - a person skilled at fika may be able to pass around three or four hours of time in one spell. Sometimes, cigarettes may also play a part, but after the banning of smoking inside this is mainly during summer when the outdoor cafés are open and picnics are possible.

Seriously, the English language needs a word for "fika". Unbelieveable that such an important phenomenon doesn't have its own word - my dictionary defines it as "having coffee", but coffee really doesn't need to be involved.
Logan, invent one!

3 comments:

Logan said...

We don't have a definite word for that because it isn't practiced enough to warrant needing one. In other words, "That's YO' shit." ;-)

My dictionary says the same. We'd have to go term-trendy to really translate it. I don't even know where to start. Neo-picnicking? Sweding it up? ;-) Or we could go lazy and just call it "having a fick", but something tells me the subtle vowel in that might end up causing a little confusion...

Kat said...

Well, in that case you shoud start practising it. It's completely ecessary part of life, you just dont know it! :P

Hmm. "Grab a fick." I like that. Although yes, the vowel might cause trouble.

Gustav said...

Det krävs en svensk för ett sådant ord! Jag har det här nämligen som jag uppfann alldeles nyss - phica. Hoppas inte ordet är upptaget bara... ;-)