That wasn’t a joke. Gonzo’s practicing his Human(?) Cannonball act again…
cluckcluckcluckCLUCKCLUCKCLUCKCLUCKCLUCK!!!
Howcum the italic version of т is m? Or is not everybody seeing this?
Here you go… more umlauts for everyone!*
ğ̈ř̈å̈ţ̈ů̈ĩ̈ŧ̈ø̈û̈ś̈ ṻм̈ł̈ǎ̈ű̈т̈ş̈
*requires browser with decent Unicode capability
Bug in vBulletin, I suspect.
It’s not precisely mock Swedish, but the link below has some very, very good mock Old English, which is close (Mock Old English-speakers spoke a language very closely related to Old Mock Swedish until the fifth century, when Mockanese marauders invaded England, bringing their language and their recipe for turtle soup). It’s from “Culture Made Stupid,” whose author apparently kindly lent permission for the site below to print an excerpt.
Floyd: Kermit! Kermit! Animal’s taken up bowling!
Kermit: Well, that’s a nice, safe hobby!
Floyd: You don’t understand! Animal bowls overhand!
It’s certainly not Swedish. Lots of it is gibberish, although there’s a certain amount of it that is perfectly understandable to anyone speaking English.
http://www.freedict.com/onldict/onldict.php
Results for ‘yes’
English Swedish
yes ja, jo
An Aussie comedian does a bit about this.
Since in Sweden he is supposedly called The Norwegian Chef, it would be funny for Swedes who go to Norway and intend to mock the Norwegians with a “bork bork bork!”, only to have the Norwegians think “wow… they really DO sound like that!”
Yes, but “ya” is not a word. “Ja” doesn’t really sound like “ya” would in english, either… 
I was actually in Sweden for work last year. I had youtube up and I was playing bits of the Muppet Show to my co-workers. They totally did not get The Muppet Show, and did not think that the Swedish Chef spoke anything remotely Swedish (they did not tell me of the Norwegian Chef, either). I think they actually thought less of American culture that day.
Good thing you didn’t show them an episode of Three’s Company, then…
IIRC, it was pointed out somewhere within the Season 1 Muppet Show DVD set that Jim Henson used to listen to Swedish instructional tapes in order to develop the Chef’s speaking style.
Last year my daughter was entertaining a friend from her school, and so I put on one or another of the first season episodes for them to watch. The girl, who was ten or eleven, looked at the screen in complete bewilderment and asked what it was that we were watching. “Oh, this was a show on TV when I was a kid,” I answered. “With the Muppets. You know, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo…” The girl stared at me quizzically. “Kermit the Frog? Who’s that?”
I was fully speechless for five minutes.
And, no, she wasn’t raised overseas or homeschooled or in some kind of strict household. But she’d never heard of Kermit the Frog.
That’s mostly because Sesame Street is The Elmo Show now. And also because we’re old, Kiz…oooooooold…
Actually, just as an illustration of HOW OLD we are (or at least I am)…
I was born in 1971. The Muppet Show premiered in 1976.
The Mickey Mouse Club premiered in 1955.
This is 2008.
1955 to 1976 is 21 years.
1976 to 2008 is 32 years!
I couldn’t have told ya who Cubby or Annette were when I was 10, and I was closer to the Mickey Mouse Club than your little guest is to the Muppet Show.
It’s a lower case Cyrillic letter, equivalent to the Latin T or t. And when italicised т becomes т – I think it also gets written like that in Cyrillic handwriting. I don’t understand why the Russians, Ukrainians, etc., are not confused.
In handwritten Cyrillic, the actual “m” letter has a little hook-like bump where it joins to the previous letter – and since that’s hard to see, a lot of Russians apparently add a bar over the t-that-looks-like-an-m to prevent confusion. I was required to handwrite Russian cursive for all assignments when I took courses in the language, so I got very used to putting in that bar. Over time, writing Russian cursive wreaks merry havoc with one’s English spelling – there are just enough symbols that look the same but stand for different sounds…
as a kid i thought the krillic “m” looked like the graphics for the tv show “that girl”. i would just put a half circle on the top, a side sweep, eyes, and mouth. all my books have “annamaria” drawings all over them. (from the name ann marie going russian.)
danish friends in college thought the swedish chef was a hoot and a half.
Danes laugh at everything that has to do with Sweden. We return the favour. It’s a complicated relationship. 