The notoriously hilarious website Signspotting has just relaunched, featuring even more photos of ridiculous Chinglish, poorly worded bathroom placards and unfortunately named restaurants. (Dinner at Phat Phuc Noodle Bar, anyone?) The revamped site now lets you rate every sign, making it into a veritable Hot or Not for semioticians.
It can also net you some travel cash. Every week, site photo editor Doug Lansky sifts through dozens of entries to pick the best sign and pays the photographer $50, just like that. Really awesome signs can even earn round-the-world tickets on Star Alliance; so far six have been awarded and Lansky hopes to hand out another next month.
In the meantime, he's organizing an exhibition in Stockholm of some of the best Signspotting has to offer. The outdoor show in Kungsträdgården Park runs July 5-20.
Back in high school German classes, we were handed a weighty dictionary and a grammar-heavy textbook and left to fend for ourselves. Trust us, it didn't help when we finally got to Germany. If only we'd had iPods back then, we could have downloaded the new iPod phrasebooks from Collins publishers.
The new "digital phrasebooks" come in all the main western European languages, plus Polish and Mandarin, and come July, they'll add Japanese, Turkish and Finnish to the mix. For less than $10, you can see and hear 500 useful phrases that really are useful: from "Where can I charge my cell phone?" to "Is there a danger of avalanche?"
If you're not convinced, they even let you start off with a free demo--we checked the German one and it had basic phrases all the way up to "This is my partner." Seems they've got everything covered.
There's a hot destination in Ireland that we haven't been to yet, but want to check out: Dingle. Doesn't the name alone make you want to visit this town in County Kerry, in the pretty southwest corner of Ireland? A recent decision could've made it very hard to find Dingle, but there's been a change of heart.
You see, changes to Irish language laws meant that the anglicized name of Dingle should actually have been changed back to its original Irish name of An Daingean. But many locals were concerned that the good reputation Dingle has with tourists--they say because of the landscape, we say because it's a silly name--would be lost, and with it, much of the town's revenue.
So in the friendly spirit of the Irish they've made a compromise. The official name of the town is now Dingle Daingean Ui Chuis. Nice choice, guys. We can really see that fitting nicely on a map.
No Italian prostitutes fell victim to hit and run accidents this week in Treviso and we owe it all to clearly marked road signs. But not so clear is the neon sign atop a warehouse just past prostitue alley. It simply reads F.A.R.T. Spa.
Neither a day spa nor a place that freely promotes flatulence, the dingy building actually houses Europe's leading manufacturer of transformers for neon technology.
F.A.R.T. (Fabbrica Apparecchiature Radioelettriche Treviso), has posted the secret to its international success on its website: It's a combo of a family-owned "special formula" and "patented vacuum sealing system." Heh.
In the tradition of curious Scandinavian airline marketing--we're thinking of Finnair's creepy panda--SAS Scandinavian Airlines is launching a new, multilingual marketing campaign.
The whole thing centers on using local languages in English-language advertising. The reasoning is, according to one of SAS's general managers, that
the Scandinavian languages, like the region's sleek, stylish designs, reflect the real essence of what makes this vast northern region so unique.
Yeah. Unique--or really difficult to understand. The meant-to-be-eye-catching ads use words like Bättre (it means better) and Störst (which, of course, means largest). We're not sure if these words are sleek and stylish or just unusual. Would you really buy a ticket on SAS just for the umlauts?
Any language that gives cute names to national tourist attractions--like Kiek in de Kök--is a language we're prepared to love, and the language we're talking about is Estonian. Strictly speaking we have a feeling that Kiek in de Kök isn't a correct part of the modern language, but there are still oodles of cool-looking words in Estonian.
So we're more than happy that the Estonian government has launched a Beauty Contest for Languages. The whole contest idea apparently came about like this:
The idea for the contest arose out of an Estonian story that the country's language was once crowned the second most beautiful language in the world after Italian. The winning phrase then was "soida tasa ule silla" which means "go slowly over the bridge".
The contest will involve kids from around the world recording a phrase in their language of seven words or less, and judges will decide which language sounds the prettiest. It's all timed to coincide with Estonia's 90th birthday as an independent state, so we can presume that some cute Estonian phrase will rank highly in the winners' list.
We're always on the lookout for the next travel tidbit that's going to ease our trip. If you're headed abroad for a holiday getaway in France, China or Japan, look into getting yourself some spiffy Lingolook Flashcards. The size of a passport, Lingolooks offer travelers the most useful phrases to help them get by in a language that might not necessarily be their native tongue.
The cards are double-sided and fan out neatly in your hand, making them discreet enough to carry, but easy enough to refer to if you get really stuck.
Inspired by a moment when they were lost in Japan, Lingolook's founders realized that asking strangers for help from a 10-point font guidebook on the street is, well, just awkward. The cards are easy to understand and you'll likely remember the 75+ included phrases quicker too.
Buy a set for $12, and you'll also get a free e-version, which is perfect for displaying on Blackberries, iPhones and PDAs. Italian and Spanish versions are on the way in '08. Just imagine, you'll blend right in with the locals--at least linguistically.
Like to learn a language before you head off to explore another country? We certainly recommend it as a way to not only understand the culture and history of a destination, but also to be able to order a beer. One way to learn or brush up a language is with a language partner, and one website where you might be able to find such a buddy is My Language Exchange.
This site is well enough organized that you can plug in whatever you language you speak, the language you want to practice or learn and even the age range of your prospective language buddy, and a bunch of multilingual people who fit your specifications pops up. And it's true, whether you're an Icelandic guy looking to brush up his Macedonian (and vice-versa) or perhaps more commonly an English speaker wanting to practice a bit of Spanish, you can find the person you need (in the case of Spanish helpers, some 60,000 of them in fact).
Just sign up, log in and practice away with your partner. They even have lesson plan ideas if you get stuck with nothing to say, and chat rooms for text, voice and video. You'll be saying "Hvernig hefur þú það?" (that's Icelandic for 'How are you?') before you know it.
