things I have loved I'm allowed to keep ([info]yareach) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2005-01-18 23:46:00
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Current mood: geeky
Current music:Lullaby for Cain -- Sinéad O'Connor
Entry tags:humor, photos

Thought you guys might enjoy
They are renovating the tram stops in Zurich at the moment, to make all the curbs higher so that it's easier to get on the trams. Anyway, at the tram stop near the main station, they decided to put a "high step" warning on the curb to make sure people didn't trip. I guess they wanted to make sure everyone understood:

Pardon me if I totally mess up the languages: I tried my best!


edit: Danish, thank you! -- German -- Romansch


French -- English -- Greek


Uh... Romansch, again? -- Dutch


Arabic edit: Persian? -- uuhhhh... (I'm crap at Asian languages, forgive!) edit: ok, so, I've been told Traditional Chinese


Swahili (!) -- Turkish -- I'm a failure!!!! edit: and Simplified Chinese


Serbian -- This is the point at which I laughed aloud and people started thinking I was crazy. Not that they probably didn't think so before, what with my standing on the tram tracks, photographing the curb...


Spanish -- edit: Swedish, doh!


Italian -- Portuguese


Russian (!)


Finnish -- added: Czech


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:=Þ
[info]akasha_orsini
2005-01-18 10:46 pm UTC (link)
lmao. I can see why you were laughing. lmao

(Reply to this)

[info]dukesnorre
2005-01-18 10:46 pm UTC (link)
Not Norwegian-Danish. Also, the czech looks Swedish to me.

Dangit, no Norwegian. :( SO SAD.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-18 10:53 pm UTC
;) - [info]czas_na_zywiec, 2005-01-18 10:55 pm UTC

[info]ermenengilda
2005-01-18 10:49 pm UTC (link)
I suppose it doesn't really matter, but the language next to Spanish is definitely not Czech :-)
How readable does Egyptian appear, though ;-)

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]ex_stephmog743, 2005-01-18 11:09 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]z111, 2005-01-19 02:06 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]kaikias, 2005-01-19 08:23 am UTC

[info]squodge
2005-01-18 10:56 pm UTC (link)
That has GOT to be the funniest set of photos I've ever seen! GOOD WORK!

~ squodge ~

(Reply to this)

[info]tydaj
2005-01-18 10:59 pm UTC (link)
Nice!
I'm guessing the Asian ones are Chinese and Japanese, respectively. From what I can tell the Chinese like using a lot less characters to express things than their neighbours to the east.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]daemon_will, 2005-01-18 11:23 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]marzipan_sunday, 2005-01-19 04:47 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]dontbeakakke, 2005-01-19 05:25 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]marzipan_sunday, 2005-01-19 11:57 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]markusn, 2005-01-19 02:05 pm UTC

[info]yaymatt
2005-01-18 11:00 pm UTC (link)
i work for a swiss company.

they try to prepare for everything, to the point of overkill.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-18 11:10 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]yaymatt, 2005-01-18 11:16 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ex_req431, 2005-01-18 11:44 pm UTC

[info]nadyezhda
2005-01-18 11:02 pm UTC (link)
Your guess on the Russian is right.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-18 11:05 pm UTC

[info]shiro_no_wired
2005-01-18 11:10 pm UTC (link)
I think that "I'm a failure!!!!" is Japanese...
"uhhh" is Chinese, unless I'm much mistaken.

ermenengilda said wrote "How readable does Egyptian appear, though ;-)"
--It's like Japanese, with both phonetic and ideographic components. Read from the direction the characters (here quails) are facing. (ie left to right.) Read "r[e]w[e]d[e]w ħetem" Most vowels aren't written, so "e" is assumed.

(Reply to this)

[info]rosst
2005-01-18 11:11 pm UTC (link)
I actually don't think that's Arabic, because the first character (the one on the right, a p sound) isn't in traditional Arabic. It might just be a foreign word (palatun?), or it might be any number of other languages written in the Arabic alphabet.

And yes, that's Chinese and Japanese, respectively.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]ex_req431, 2005-01-18 11:44 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]trixieleitz, 2005-01-19 12:16 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]mad_pig, 2005-01-19 06:25 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 01:17 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]markusn, 2005-01-19 02:11 pm UTC

[info]vampiresetsuna
2005-01-18 11:14 pm UTC (link)
The third one with the swahili and terkish is japanese. At least, the kanji are japanese. Amusingly it says step caution, and not very politely! Nothing about high in there. ^__~

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]bookly, 2005-01-18 11:26 pm UTC
Three things.
[info]the_cowch
2005-01-18 11:23 pm UTC (link)
That's pretty awesome.

Does modern Egyptian even still use hieroglyphics?

They forgot Korean!

(Reply to this)(Thread)
Re: Three things. - [info]ex_req431, 2005-01-18 11:45 pm UTC
Re: Three things. - [info]tysaroe, 2005-01-19 12:32 am UTC
Re: Three things. - [info]the_cowch, 2005-01-19 12:33 am UTC
Re: Three things. - [info]tysaroe, 2005-01-19 12:38 am UTC
Re: Three things. - [info]the_cowch, 2005-01-19 12:39 am UTC
Re: Three things. - [info]genarti, 2005-01-19 11:35 am UTC

[info]decemberjuliet
2005-01-18 11:26 pm UTC (link)
They certainly did prepare! The hieroglyphics had me laughing :)

(Reply to this)

[info]misworded
2005-01-18 11:50 pm UTC (link)
I'm pretty sure the first one is Norwegian, not Danish.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 01:48 pm UTC

[info]timwi
2005-01-18 11:52 pm UTC (link)
"Ngazi ndefu" is indeed Swahili. Also, both of the phrases that you designated as Romansch appear to be Romansch — as we know, there are at least three major dialects of Romansch all with their own official orthography. "s-chalin ot" appears to be the Graubünden dialect (Grisons?).

I'm disappointed there's no Esperanto.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 01:45 pm UTC

[info]chocopoptart
2005-01-18 11:53 pm UTC (link)
Whoa.. that's great! ..Yeah no korean up there :( 통탄스러운 잔인한 사건! j/k :P

Highly amusing.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 01:20 pm UTC

[info]targaff
2005-01-19 12:06 am UTC (link)
I swear, renovating tram stops in Zurich is a full-time hobby of the city, I think. They were doing that along the main street just a couple of years ago when I visited a few times.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 01:24 pm UTC

[info]intercat
2005-01-19 12:36 am UTC (link)
this totally made my day. :)

(Reply to this)

[info]icarus_suraki
2005-01-19 12:47 am UTC (link)
O i miss Zurich so much now!
And the trams too.
This really just made my day. :)

(Reply to this)

[info]paperstar
2005-01-19 12:49 am UTC (link)
What, no Hebrew? :: laughs ::

(Reply to this)

[info]yadfothgildloc
2005-01-19 01:20 am UTC (link)
I'll second the "mah, ein ivrit?" and add a "cur non in latina est?"

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 01:21 pm UTC

[info]arclight
2005-01-19 03:01 am UTC (link)
Das ist prima!!!

(Reply to this)

[info]the_gypsy_queen
2005-01-19 04:25 am UTC (link)
escalón alto - Spanish (above the Swedish one)

This is pretty cool!

(Reply to this)

[info]tungol
2005-01-19 04:57 am UTC (link)
Hah! The hieroglyphics make it great! Someone must have been having fun there - surely they didn't actually expect hieroglyphics to be widely read.

(Reply to this)

[info]dadi
2005-01-19 09:01 am UTC (link)
great post :) thank you!!

(Reply to this)

[info]dnlr
2005-01-19 05:58 pm UTC (link)
Where's Quechua and Manx? :P

(Reply to this)(Thread)
(no subject) - [info]yareach, 2005-01-19 06:05 pm UTC

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