"Whoever says typhoon should say hurricane"

I know I'm fighting headwinds, usually of hurricane force, as I try to reverse a linguistic trend that has been going on for many, many decades.

But I, and my colleagues here at Väderredaktionen, try as much as possible to at least teach our journalist colleagues in the house to use

no matter where in the world the phenomenon occurs.

Precisely for the reason that it becomes clearly easier for everyone then to understand that it is the same phenomenon that is referred to by different foreign words in different parts of the world.

The Swedish meteorological collective word for the weather phenomenon is tropical low pressure,

in English.

Here, too, it is often seen that the English

translated directly into

in Swedish, but why not use the Swedish term

that exists?

The weather phenomenon is named differently depending on wind speed:

- Tropical low pressure: Below 18 m / s (

in English)

- Tropical storm: 18–32 m / s (

in English)

- Tropical hurricane: 33 m / s or more

Tropical storms and tropical hurricanes are given their own names according to predetermined lists of names developed by WMO, the World Meteorological Organization.

It is a good way to keep track of the different storms that are going on at the same time.

Tropical low pressures differ in formation and way of life from our "ordinary" Swedish low pressures that move in the so-called westerly wind belt.

Therefore, you should always clarify and include

at least once in a TV feature or a news text, and then preferably the first time.

Then you can use shortened and smoother

or

depending on wind strength.

When the wind speed reaches 33 m / s or they are called in English different in different parts of the world:

- North America:

- Southeast Asia:

(which is derived from the Chinese

)

Most of the time,

, but in different parts of the world also expressions such as

and

.

The unfortunate thing here is that different more or less ill-considered translations into Swedish are used for the same phenomenon.

It confuses the viewer / reader / visitor and should therefore be avoided.

In older Swedish literature, the word

used for the Southeast Asian hurricanes, ie as a direct translation from the Chinese term

.

When English-language news texts then began to flow in over us, the straightforward translation of the

took over.

It's in my eyes extremely svengelskt, like as if we would say

instead of

as it is spelled

in English.

So I strongly claim that anyone who says

logically should also say

, but you never hear that word!

Tropical hurricanes, in turn, are partly classified into subgroups,

on a five-point scale after mean wind and

in two classes after mean wind, and in Australia,

on a five-point scale after village wind, which of course spins even more in translation. and the comparison mode.

There is also something else that adds to it in the translation from English to correct Swedish.

This mainly applies to the word

in the English

.

As I have previously thought about, the English

does not always mean

in Swedish, but is a broader term that is often best translated as

in Swedish.

The lower limit for wind strength in a

is, as I already mentioned, 18 m / s, which is not a storm strength at all, because it requires 25 m / s.

If the average wind in a

18–24 m / s, it should reasonably be called

or

in Swedish.

However, this usually resolves itself in the mass media, because if it does not blow storm strength in a

, it is rarely of news value.

In some parts of the world, even the demarcation between

and

not what we are used to.

Another thing that complicates is how the average wind is measured and calculated.

In North America, a 1-minute average value is used for the wind, while otherwise 10-minute values ​​are used.

In Sweden, a 10-minute average wind is used.

Village winds are the maximum value of individual gusts of wind, but there you have to be careful not to compare average winds from one storm with village winds from another.

All these sludge crawlers make it a bit of a jungle to compare different tropical storms because classification, measurement and calculation methods and naming differ.

Even the words you choose in Swedish can be tricky, but I fight hard to get as simple and uniform a name as possible:

is the collective name, where you then talk about

or

depending on wind strength.

How difficult should it be?