On Tumblr, BLÅHAJ gained an association with the LGBTQ+ and transgender community in particular, which is reflected in multiple memes posted on both Tumblr and Reddit in the late 2010s (examples shown below, left and right). For example, on September 6th, 2021, Twitter user @TheWerelizard tweeted an official advertisement by IKEA in which BLÅHAJ was used to express support for LGBTQ+.
Edit: wow, all that time I read it as “Blajah” instead of “Blahaj”…
I honestly had no idea since I simply didn’t look into it, just liked the memes. I get the downvote, I just didn’t mean anything negative by my comment.
Tbh I don’t know why people say Blahaj instead of Blaahaj. The second is the “correct” way to differentiate Å and A if you don’t have diacritics. I would think it would be spelled “AO” instead since it’s literally just an A with a lowercase O on top, like how German vowel letters with umlauts (Ä Ö Ü Ÿ) are spelled with an E at the end (AE OE UE YE) when you don’t have diacritics available (since umlauts originated as a lowercase E above a letter). Or like how in Spanish the “correct” way to write Ñ without diacritics is to stick an N at the end like “NN”.* But who knows what goes on in the minds of Swedish people… I’m pretty sure most of them don’t even know that you’re allegedly supposed to write “Å” as “AA”.
*fun fact: the tilde was previously a lowercase “N” above a letter used in Latin & post-Latin Romance languages to replace a following nasal “n/m” after any letter (e.g. Latin “Manu” -> “Mãu” -> Portuguese “Mão”, Latin “Rationes” -> Portuguese/Galician “Razões”/“Rações”/“Rasões”, Latin “annus” -> Spanish “anno” -> Spanish “año”) but it has been reduced to only the letters Ñ in Spanish and Ã/Õ in Portuguese
like how German vowel letters with umlauts (Ä Ö Ü Ÿ) are spelled with an E at the end (AE OE UE YE)
There’s no Ypsilon Umlaut, in fact y basically only occurs in loanwords nowadays, it was used instead of i quite a bit in previous spelling versions and names are conservative, thus those stuck around (Bayern, Mayer, etc).
Then there’s the ß which by now at least has a capital version but the Duden still didn’t get around to changing the replacement form from ss to sz.
You also occasionally see ë ï those aren’t Umlauts but French-style diaresis, signifying that the vowel combination they’re in isn’t a diphthong. Alëuten, Piëch, Zitrön.
Wait, so this is a trans instance? I was here for the memes and didn’t think too much about the rest of it
I dont know if knowyourmeme is the appropriate source for this, but there you are
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/ikea-blahaj-shark
Edit: wow, all that time I read it as “Blajah” instead of “Blahaj”…
I honestly had no idea since I simply didn’t look into it, just liked the memes. I get the downvote, I just didn’t mean anything negative by my comment.
They’re blue, white, and pink, which are also the colors on the trans pride flag. Also doesn’t hurt that they’re cute and cuddly.
Worse: It’s pronounced [ˈbloːˌhaj] because Swedes are silly.
I mean, it’s spelled with å, not a
It’s still pronounced o, though. Why is the right pronunciation hiding on top of the a? Is it afraid to come down?
it’s shy 👉👈
So it’s Finnish?
Tbh I don’t know why people say Blahaj instead of Blaahaj. The second is the “correct” way to differentiate Å and A if you don’t have diacritics. I would think it would be spelled “AO” instead since it’s literally just an A with a lowercase O on top, like how German vowel letters with umlauts (Ä Ö Ü Ÿ) are spelled with an E at the end (AE OE UE YE) when you don’t have diacritics available (since umlauts originated as a lowercase E above a letter). Or like how in Spanish the “correct” way to write Ñ without diacritics is to stick an N at the end like “NN”.* But who knows what goes on in the minds of Swedish people… I’m pretty sure most of them don’t even know that you’re allegedly supposed to write “Å” as “AA”.
*fun fact: the tilde was previously a lowercase “N” above a letter used in Latin & post-Latin Romance languages to replace a following nasal “n/m” after any letter (e.g. Latin “Manu” -> “Mãu” -> Portuguese “Mão”, Latin “Rationes” -> Portuguese/Galician “Razões”/“Rações”/“Rasões”, Latin “annus” -> Spanish “anno” -> Spanish “año”) but it has been reduced to only the letters Ñ in Spanish and Ã/Õ in Portuguese
There’s no Ypsilon Umlaut, in fact y basically only occurs in loanwords nowadays, it was used instead of i quite a bit in previous spelling versions and names are conservative, thus those stuck around (Bayern, Mayer, etc).
Then there’s the ß which by now at least has a capital version but the Duden still didn’t get around to changing the replacement form from ss to sz.
You also occasionally see ë ï those aren’t Umlauts but French-style diaresis, signifying that the vowel combination they’re in isn’t a diphthong. Alëuten, Piëch, Zitrön.
English dropping all diacretics, then getting confused about the pronunciation (who could’ve seen this coming?)