March 30th, 2008
No Ordinary Fish
(447 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)
Loading ...Thanks to everyone for the translation help! This little piece of Norwegian is thanks to Kristian, who has his own webcomic. I also got the following Swedish from Björn: “Fiskarna är högljudda idag, Bengt”.
I’ve noticed that only a small percentage of you guys are using the ratings feature. For those who haven’t noticed it, you can give feedback on every strip with the little star widget that appears below the title. I use these ratings to figure judge how successful a particular strip has been. So, if you want to help shape the direction of the site, click on those stars!
March 31st, 2008 at 3:05 am
I’ve always wondered how the magical creatures in Disney movies and other movies of that type always know that the person who finds them speaks English. This seems like a much more realistic situation. Great comic! I love the confused look on the fisherman’s face in the second panel.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:31 am
Well hmmm, it kinda loses something when you have to go find out what it says, and what the hell is up with that bjorn link it keeps opening like a bajillion pages…..
March 31st, 2008 at 4:41 am
Hahaha, that’s awesome.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:13 am
The joke comes across just fine without bothering to look up a translation (I have not, and have no idea what it means).
Having a magical fish begging to give wishes in a language that is not understood is quite funny.
Of course, it may be even funnier if I knew what the translation was.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:23 am
you doubled the http:// on that myspace link there.
also, yeah. it’s less fun when you have no idea what’s being said and are too lazy to find a translation.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:27 am
Sorry - i fixed the link. I had mangled it in wordpress.
You don’t technically have to know what he’s saying for the joke to work. In fact, that’s kind of the point
March 31st, 2008 at 10:02 am
Good laugh
March 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
He says something like that “the fish is very noisy, Jens”
Jens is a common nordic name xD.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
It’s going into my “Favorite SCBP” list.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Hahaha, nice comic.
Also, Bjorn is gewd! :O
March 31st, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I like it. Great joke, and your art is improving greatly as well.
April 1st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Silly, noisy fish.
I think if a fish talked–even if I didn’t understand it–I’d probably let it go anyhow. If a fish can talk, then it knows it’s going to die!
(Or keep it as a pet).
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 am
Well, if someone wants a literal translation, I can proudly say my time in the North wasn’t completely wasted:
(In dialect):
The fish are fucking noisy today, Jens.
Fesk = fish, -en = the, e = am/is/are, jævlig = devilly (equivalent to fucking (adj) in English as far as intensity is concerned), høy = high, lydt = adverb form of sound (sounding?) (therefore høy lydt = high sounding or noisy), i dag = literally in day, meaning today.
In one of the common written forms it would have been:
Fisken er jævlig høy lydt i dag, Jens.
Another funny bit is that the vast majority of Norwegians speak English, or at least know enough to know it’s being spoken to them
Step in if I’m wrong anywhere, heh. Good stuff. It really made me trip out for a second, wondering if I’d switched pages by accident and was reading a Norwegian comic
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:04 am
I like the fish’s goatee thingy
April 20th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Your Norsk checks out AHF as does your statement saying that most Norwegians speak English. They’re actually taught it as a second language from quite a young age, although you’re more likely to find that younger people speak it better and more frequently than the older generation. From my experience living in the country, teens can speak English quite well, but are sometimes shy and embarrassed when confronted with a native English speaker. They tend to fully understand what you’re saying but are sometimes too afraid to answer back in English for fear that they’ll mess it up. Anyhoo, you can definitely get by in Norway being an English speaker. There’s always someone on hand who can speak English. As far as the word jævlig is concerned, I’ve heard it used (by youth, I found that many adults don’t swear) although the youth I encountered were more likely to insert colorful swear words in English.
On an interesting note, there are many many regional dialects spoken in the country, with two ‘official’ written forms, Nynorsk which translates to ‘New Norwegian” and Bokmål which translates to ‘book language(or Riksmål which translates to ‘language of the kingdom.) 90% of the country uses Bokmål, however the government requires many publications to also be written in Nynorsk. I’ve found, when it comes to speaking, most people use Bokmål with a good smattering of their own local dialect, such as was the case when I was living in Oppdal where Oppdaling is the dialect. Being immersed in the culture is a great way to learn the language but as I found out quickly, one has to be careful when using dialect in other areas. Even in areas as close as ‘just over the mountain’ I would get confused looks using the term vatten when asking for water instead of vann.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Well done actually looking up a real language! I saw an SNL skit yesterday which involved a guy reading the news to ZImbabweans, and he just talked jibberish and smacked his lips a bit. I mean it was pre-Internet, so it would have taken a bit more effort to look up a couple of lines of a foreign language than it would now, but still… (Ironically, according to Wikipedia the news in Zimbabwe is mostly transmitted in English anyway)
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:56 am
The language a dialect of norwegian from the northern part of norway, and the fish with the goatee is codfish. Most fishermen in Norway which fish codfish come from northern norway.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
LOL, I got so suprised when suddenly there were norwegian words, feel so proud xD My grandma talks just like that guy, have to show this to her some day
Love this comic 
June 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am
I understood the norwegian text fine even though I’m Swedish. But our languages are pretty similar. That sentence would be this in Swedish: “Fisken är jävligt högljudd idag, Jens”
June 25th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Unfortunately, being Scandinavian myself, the joke was lost on me until I read the comments. I did not occur to me that the fisherman could not understand the fish.