Re: Signs that prove I have way too much time on my hands.

>From: Danny Wier <dawier@...>
>Subject: Signs that prove I have way too much time on my hands.
>Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 17:27:43 -0700
Thanks for the fun-mail! :)

>Stuttering problem?
>Icelandic: Stuttur steyttur fluttur fleittr
>fljä´ er breyttur skjä´ hé²  skreyttur há´´ur hreyttr
>hæ´´i neyttur mæ´´i reyttr.
>[no translation available]
The first line (where 'fleittr' should be 'fleittur') reads "short, pounded,
moved, floated" (just approximately; many Icelandic words have no direct
English counterparts). The rest of the lines are illegible to me, as our
wonderful unicode technology has somehow failed. The '-r' endings should all
be '-ur'.

This reminds me of a similar line in Icelandic, making use of the frequent
occurrence of the word (or word-form) "á" (or "a'"), pronounced [au]:

"Bóndinn á Á á á á á."

<or, if unicode fails>

"Bo'ndinn a' A' a' a' a' a'."

Meaning "The farmer on River <the farm's name> owns a sheep on a river
<where it is grazing>." Utter this sentence to any normal Icelander and he
won't be sure of the meaning, without doing some thinking.

Oskar
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