I have used the term “facebooksofting” in quite a bit of presentations lately. It reflects what you do when you relax with your laptop surfing around facebook for an hour or so. I learned it from my coworker Marius Arnesen. And he heard it the first time from some of his friends after they’d done a full day of show kiting snowkiting in the Norwegian mountains.
Sitting in the car on their way back to the hotel he was listening to these young people looking forward to do “some facebooksofting” when they returned. A couple of years ago and the same young people would have been looking forward to some relaxing in front of the TV. Times are changing.
A couple of weeks ago I was speaking at a conference in Stockholm and Mr. Antony Mayfield of Spannerworks liked the term and mention it in his article about Facebooksofting and Facebacklashing. I was about to leave a comment to clarify the Norwegian use of the word “soft”, but it turned into this article and a trackback to Mr. Mayfield.
We have a couple of Norwegian words that are identical to English words but meaning something else. Some of the classic ones are “boss” that in my Norwegian dialect means trash. And “odd” and “even”. They’re both quite usual male names in Norway. I guess it’s bound to amuse people if two Norwegian brothers named Odd and Even present themselves in the UK or the US. “Hello, my name is Odd and this is my brother Even”.
But using the term “softing”, relating to “soft” to describe relaxation is something we have borrowed from Sweden. And as far as I know it has been adopted from English.
I guess it is because relaxing is a “soft” activity? I really don’t know, but people from Denmark, Norway and Sweden are pretty clever watering out their own language with English words. In all kinds of strange ways.
eirikso 
“Soft” = “relax”? Is that some kind of very new slang? I’ve never heard of that before..
ads in the rss?
that actually feels pretty nice, considering that the google ones aren’t included it looked nice with a small movie ad
interesting article btw, just looking at the picture I thought you were talking about the use of slightly blurred screenshots to illustrate everything lately
🙂
“Odd Christian” is a fairly common double first name in Norway.
In English, it sounds like a peculiar religious movement.
Never heard the word “soft” in relation to “relaxing” in Norway.
adverb
1. in a relaxed manner; or without hardship; “just wanted to take it easy” (‘soft’ is nonstandard)
Oh, and do you mean snowkiting? It says showkiting in the article (Cannot wait for snow myself and yet another season of snowkiting!)
Yes. Snowkiting. Fixed it now. Thank you.
@Tor Erik:
Fantastic. There are actually 81 persons with “Odd Christian” as their surname in Norway.
@atle:
Haha. The use of blurred screen shots is called “illustrationsofting”. 🙂
And Trond: if you like snowkiting you should check out Mr. Arnesen’s full gallery:
http://anarkistix.smugmug.com/gallery/3246591
I don’t think I’ve heard that use of “softing” either – maybe it’s an Eastern Norwegian thing if it comes from Sweden? Or maybe I’m getting too old for slang 🙂
eirikso: Yeah, I know about it. Don’t have many photos myself of snowkiting, too busy actually doing it (when the conditions are there) than taking photos!
“Fantastic. There are actually 81 persons with Odd Christian as their surname in Norway.”
I’m sure you mean forename or first name? surname is “etternavn”… 🙂
You’re completely right!
“81 persons with Odd Christian as their first name”
Sorry about that.
When Norway hosted The Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer 1994, there were 26 broadcasting nations giving live pictures to 136 nations world wide. And who were two of the most central guys from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) to organize this tecnical event? Odd and Even, of course!
Fantastic. Fourteen days of bad jokes about those two names… 🙂
Even funnier when you know this was the first “digital” olympics. NRK bought about 140 Sony Digital Betacams for the event.
[…] Si am invatat un nou cuvant: facebooksofting […]
A friend om mine’s brother (Odd Henry) and his friend (Bård, pronounced bored) were travelling in the US, and when presenting themselves, Bård said:
– Hi I’m Bård, and this is Odd Henry.
[…] sånne snakk- og musikkprogrammer på radio, MTV, Facebook (mange har sikkert hørt om facebooksofting), tabloidaviser, Grosvold, […]
My name is Odd, and he’s Bent….
LOL!