Sick of English

Varecilla-Zoster. Have you ever heard of it?

Well in plain English it’s called Chickenpox, and my two kids have just had it. Tom looked like a bottle of tomato ketchup had just exploded all over him and his little sister kept running after him with a pen trying to join up all the dots.

Incidently, have you ever wondered how Chickenpox got its name?

Thankfully it has nothing to do with the H5N1 bird flu virus, but it also has nothing to do with chickens either. It is believed the name derived from the rather odd observation that the red spots look like chickpeas on the skin.

This was not something that immediately sprang to my mind when I looked at my sick spotty kids.

In fact their spots looked far more like small water-filled boils. Which is why the Swedish term for Chicken Pox – Vattkoppor (watery boils) - is considerably more descriptively accurate.

Indeed Swedes don’t muck about when it comes to describing medical conditions. They tell it like it is, rather than us English, who prefer to give things rather more complicated and convoluted titles.

Take urinvägsinfektion (urinal ‘way’ infection) for example. We call that Cystitus, which is more reminiscent of a Roman Emperor than an excruciatingly painful bladder complaint.

What about the remarkably straight forward Swedish lunginflammation (lung inflammation), known in English as the impossible-to-spell pneumonia.

Can anyone guess what hjärnblödning (brain bleeding) describes? Why yes, it’s a stroke – an English word that makes this sometimes fatal medical condition sound almost rather pleasant.

It all goes to prove you feel much better if you’re sick in Swedish. At least you know what’s wrong with you.