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Nice multilingual signs... | ||
Tags: Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 14 15 August 2009 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you have pictures of any interesting multilingual signs, please share them!
This sign from Finland is interesting because it includes not only Finnish and Swedish, (the official languages of Finland) but also Russian from neighbouring country. The old fashioned Swedish spelling is interesting too. Either the sign is very old or someone looked up the word "floor" in an old dictionary. " DO NOT SPIT ON THE FLOOR! " 
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| eoinda Tetraglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5948 days ago 101 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Spanish, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 14 16 August 2009 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Haha, funny. I don't have any pictures myself but I would love seeing a few.
Do you know if the Finnish and Russian is modern or not? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 3 of 14 16 August 2009 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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eoinda, I don't know about the Finnish but the Russian is modern.
Come to think of it, the sign HAS to be old. Despite the rumours about wild Finns I hardly think regular Finns would consider spitting on the floor indoors in modern times. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5697 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 14 16 August 2009 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Non calpestare le aiuola!
I did read this text at Bolsena in Italy: Don't destruct with your feet the flower-beds! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 14 17 August 2009 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
With the Finnish you can't tell. It is completely according to modern usage, but afaia it would not have been any different a century or two ago, when I gather such signs existed in "real life". Apart from the contents, the old swedish spelling gives the text away as being from about a hundred years back or more, though the sign itself may be newer of course.
(Sorry, can't resist:) It might be intended for visiting Swedes ;o). Edited by Hencke on 17 August 2009 at 5:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 7 of 14 17 August 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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To clarify Hencke's comment I must explain that we gave up trying to civilise that country a couple of hundred years ago, and did just about manage to spread our language to Finland, to the great joy of all Finns, before we got kicked out! ;-) It's still fairly primitive there, but I hear they managed to put together a mobile phone or two since then.... Oh and develop Linux... Oh, and get a very good Icehockey team too...
-------------------------------------- The mystery about the sign above is that I don't know anything about it because I saw it completely by chance. The only heading was "Finland". No explanation about the context was given. The sign looks quite new, and I thought it was aimed at visiting Russian tourists. I thought for a sec that Finland might possibly not have adopted the "new" Swedish spelling. But now I'm thinking that the sign must be either a joke or a reproduction of an old sign. Finland was ruled by Russia for a short time maybe it's from that period. However I was under the impression that Russia left Finland more or less completely alone. Certainly not trying to impose Russian on people via public signs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 14 17 August 2009 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And luckily so. A healthy dose of primitiveness is the salt of life. Too much sophistication just tends to give you a headache :o).
I have actually seen such a sign once, as part of the setting in a play performed by an amateur theatre group. The play involved a colourful character who surreptitiously spat on the floor at one point in the play, seeing his chance when noone was watching and then hastily covered it up by stamping with his foot on the spot, shooting guilty glances in the direction of the other people present, to see if he had been discovered or not. It was quite funny, but I think that sign was only in Swedish, and definitely with the old spelling "golfvet".
As I understand it it varied a lot during the hundred plus years that Finland was a grand-duchy under Czarist Russia. In any case, the young student Eugen Schauman who shot the Russian governor Bobrikov is still celebrated as a national hero by many, and this act was considered to have paved the way for independence later. Edited by Hencke on 17 August 2009 at 10:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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