Almost every Swede speaks English well. If, on a trip to Stockholm, you ask a question to a random Swede in American-accented Swedish, most Swedes will curtly answer in perfect English and remain a little frosty and miffed with you because you inadvertantly insulted them by not assuming from the very start that they speak English. Swedes take pride in their internationalism and multi-linguistic proficiency. Thus, there’s delicious payback in a moment like the one below where the Swedish BP executive, well educated and obviously fluent in English (and probably a handful of other useful languages as well) stumbles into a two word comic usage gaffe, which, though correct English, is very funny to American ears:
Each time I hear Mr. Svanberg say “small people” with his luxurious, reindeer-inflected, globalist intonation it makes me think of “småbyxor,” or small pants, the Swedish word for underpants. At least BP isn’t calling us intimate apparel. He came close, but instead we’re small people, not small pants.
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