One of the bigger stumbling blocks in my kids’ path to full mastery of English is the struggle to understand that it’s not always possible–or advisable, at any rate–to translate words or phrases directly from Swedish. All too often, doing so can render one unintelligible, or even worse, give the impression of startling rudeness.

I have a few pet “translations” that drive me up a wall when my kids make them. The one I hear most often, and which never fails to make me bristle, is “Mom, come.” In Swedish, it’s not rude in the slightest to say “Mamma kom” (and in fact, I often tell the kids to “kom” when I’m speaking Swedish to them), but in English it sounds to my ears like they’re calling a dog. It’s so depersonalizing, somehow.

Another is “vänta”, which means “wait.” It’s not unusual to hear just that one word in response to a request, in situations where native English speakers would say something like, “just a minute,” or “hold on a sec.” Again, in Swedish it doesn’t bother me at all, but when I ask one of my kids to empty the dishwasher or sweep the stairs and they tell me in English, “Wait,” I see red.

But however irksome I find these missteps, they’re not nearly so bad as the times I fail to read between the lines and ferret out what they really meant to say. Take, for instance, the time last summer that my mom asked Lydia if she wanted to go mini-golfing. It’s an activity they’d enjoyed together before, but Lydia’s keenness had waned somewhat. Even so, my mom was surprised and little hurt when the answer she got was, “That doesn’t do anything for me.”

I missed this exchange, which was probably just as well given how taken aback I was when I heard about it from my mom. I could not believe how rude my daughter had been, especially to her grandmother. We decided, though, that it wasn’t worth making an issue of and chalked it up to adolescence.

I had all but forgotten about the incident until my mom mentioned it in passing a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly–who can say why–a light bulb went off inside my head and I realized that we’d misunderstood. Lydia actually hadn’t said that. Or rather, she had, but she’d meant something entirely different. You see, in Swedish, “Det gör inget för mig” (literally translated “That doesn’t do anything for me”) means something more along the lines of “It doesn’t matter to me.” It indicates the absence of strong feelings about something, sort of “I can take it or leave it. Either way is fine.” Still not an enthusiastic response, but an entirely appropriate one and a far cry from the shocking rudeness of what she’d said in English.

I don’t quite know any way around this sort of problem, aside from reminding the kids again and again about what might be better ways to express themselves. I hope as they get older and their exposure to English gets a little wider than it is now that some of these things will self-correct. Until then, I suppose I might work on developing a thicker skin and less delicate sensibilities. No doubt both would serve me well.