Speak-ay English?

[Kali]

I told her immediately it was out of stock.... she acted like she didn't understand me and said "sorry, no speak English" and started to talk to her friends in front of me in Spanish.

Yeah, because god knows the word "no" would be completely incomprehensible for a Spanish speaker, right?

Some people don't even TRY to be convincing with their bullshit.

[Chromatix]

Drawing on my knowledge of French, English and German I would guess:

ei = the. It's a small word at the start of a sentence, it must be 'the' or 'an'.
koske = kiosk
linja = from the French 'linge', laundry, linens
autoja = auto, car, vehicle

Good try, but... very wrong. You did get the "auto" bit, sort of.

"Ei" is "no", or a general negation operator. Finnish doesn't have particles like "the" or "to" at all.
"Koske" means "forbidden".

"Ei koske", taken as a phrase is "Not forbidden", and in context, means "This restriction doesn't apply to..."

"Linja" is actually "line", so you don't have to resort to French to get it.
"Linja-auto" means "bus", and "-ja" is the plural form.

So the full phrase means "Except for buses", below some restriction sign such as "No Entry" or "No Right Turn".

As an aside, "kiosk" is "kioski", and the "grillikioski" is quite popular in cities here. There is also a fairly ubituitous "R-Kioski" chain of newsagents.

[Chromatix]

For some reason, bus lanes aren't especially common in Finland, but they are marked with icons rather than just words. Tram-only lanes are more common, at least in this city.

Another very odd rule is that mopeds are allowed on most cycle paths - except the ones with "Mopoille sallittu" on them.

Generally Finnish road signs conform to European standards, which are not massively different from British ones.

[Chromatix]

There's an equivalent sign in the UK. ;-)

If you plan to get your driving licence there, go ahead and buy the Highway Code booklet. Pretty much everything you need to know for the theory test is in them, including all the road signs.

[cloudy.thoughts]

Has anyone mentioned this sign that was put up in Wales (where dual English/Welsh signs are common).



Try guessing what the welsh actually says before reading this article...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7702913.stm

[Carolaaine]

Montreal will always be my home, but I sure don't miss the rest of my province!

For laughs, I used to ask people to define 'Gabarit'. It's a good thing none of my pals drove tall vehicles -- even the ones with French as a mother tongue were never quite sure and would have ended up taking out a low bridge or something!

Road signs are funny, though. Because of the fact that all the 'Merge In Turn' signs I saw when I first moved here were on bendy roads, I gave my husband a headache as he tried to explain to me that it doesn't mean 'merge as you are taking the turn' but 'merge one after the other, taking turns'.

I do love the 'NO WAY OUT' signs, instead of the tamer 'No Exit' signs I was used to in Canada. I'm still prone to declaring in a very dramatic movie-hero-esque way that WE NEED TO FIND A WAY OUT of a multi-level car park when I see those signs.. hee

I know what it means! Thank you Belgium for being trilingual!

Wel, I don't know how they use it in Canada, but in French it basically means the room you need to drive (height and width) or something to measure the height and width of something.



@Chromatix: The signs in France used to say "arrêt" too, but they changed a lot of them because of the unified Europe... I know at least one village in the South of France that still has arrêt-signs. And more silly signs too

[cloudy.thoughts]

Yeah I read about that! It's not the first time something like that has happened, either!

No, not the first time, but it was a good one I think.

I've seen enough road signs with spelling and grammar errors to know that not just the road uses who have poor knowledge of English. Although usually the sign's intent is clear to any user with even half a noggin.

I wonder if there's any statistic on accidents that can be traced back to the lack language abilities of the road user.

Any one care to put up there hand for getting their Left and Rights mixed up when driving. I have real problems with this. I've no problem with this but if a sign says goes Left I really have to think hard about which way to turn. Or is that just me?

Back to the original post, re the inability to read the bill - I've come across people like this before. Sometimes its an excuse and the start of a sob story. Problem is, I've also met people who really have problems reading bills. Often their English is not top notch but they can read newspapers (and probably road signs), however something about the combination of a few unfamiliar words and numbers on a bill can send them in to panic, and they just glaze over. I think the numbers play an important part here. From personal experience there are many more people with severe numeracy problems than illiteracy.

[Primer]

Kay, have you been hinting that you've been driving without a license??? Or are you just now getting used to being a passenger while somebody else is driving on the left?

[edible_hat]

When I went in to get my Licence they asked me to take off my glasses for the vision test. After I had been asked if I needed to wear them all the time. The lady then realized when I kept telling her that no I couldn't see the little star thing that you're supposed to see, that oh right, she should have her glasses on. *shakes head* Not as bad as a blind person cane and all but still.

I can't seem to find it on Youtube, but comedian Adam Hills does this bit about getting his drivers license renewed. His license has "must wear artificial foot" written on it... though it's not like he can walk from the house to the car without the foot...

[Chromatix]

Speaking of misspellings, it reminds me of the huge variety of rude-looking place names in Britain.

There is a village named Shilbottle signposted from the A1 in Northumbria.

There is a small town called Ramsbottom near Manchester.

There is a larger town called Cockermouth in Cumbria, which could be deliberately misinterpreted too if you like. (It's on the River Cocker.)

There is a village called Lunt, which perennially has it's signs vandalised with a strategic extra line. The locals are considering changing the spelling to Launt.

There is a waterfall named Linton Falls in Yorkshire, whose limestone is of course heavily worn. One of my science teachers was called Linton, who was also on the large side. You can imagine the jokes.

[MannersMakethMan]

Speaking of misspellings, it reminds me of the huge variety of rude-looking place names in Britain.

That reminded me of an article in the times recently. Before you read, see if you can work out why Corfe Close might be banned for being too rude - a challenge for the gutter minded. There's a cookie in it!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle5467103.ece

[Rapscallion]

Speaking of misspellings, it reminds me of the huge variety of rude-looking place names in Britain.

There's Upper and Lower Netherthong, as well as Wetwang, if you look at a map of the Yorkshire regions carefully.

Rapscallion

[edible_hat]

Not to mention Scunthorpe, where the local council once introduced a rude words filter for their email server. It worked so well that no email was delivered for weeks... See if you can figure out why...

[Chromatix]

Even without that specific problem, the town is just as likely to be known as Scumthorpe.

[Primer]

Not to mention Scunthorpe, where the local council once introduced a rude words filter for their email server. It worked so well that no email was delivered for weeks... See if you can figure out why...

I hope Sweetwater, Texas never tries an email filter!