When push comes to skyv...

[khiemtran]

The doors to the conference centre are marked with the word SKYV on one side, which I finally worked out today meant "Push". It was only then that I worked out that, since "SKY" is pronounced something like "SH" and "Y" is a sound halfway between a U and an I (with pursed lips), it probably would have been obvious if I'd just sounded it out...

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, the Swedish for "pull" was something like "drag".

After our Swedish/Norwegian trip I knew three words. "Hello", "thank you" and "sand lizard" (sand ödla). "Sand lizard" was courtesy of a nature programme on TV. :)

From etymonline.com

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

shove O.E. scufan "push away" (class II strong verb; past tense sceaf, pp. scoven), from P.Gmc. *skeub-, *skub- (cf. O.N. skufa, O.Fris. skuva, Du. schuiven, O.H.G. scioban, Ger. schieben "to push, thrust," Goth. af-skiuban) "to put away," from PIE base *skeubh- "to shove" (cf. scuffle, shuffle, shovel; likely cognates outside Gmc. include Lith. skubti "to make haste," skubinti "to hasten"). Replaced by push in all but colloquial and nautical usage. The noun is attested from c.1300. Shove off "leave" (1844) is from boating.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Heh; when I visited Stockholm, I found Swedish was like that: most of it was (largely) gobbledegook, but from time to time I'd see a sign saying, frex, "öppna dörren", and I'd think, "that can't be genuine Swedish; it doesn't look foreign enough!" :o)

(That said, I managed nevertheless to misinterpret it: As you'll no doubt know by now, "-en" wasn't the plural ending I naïvely assumed it to be, but the masculine definite article.)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

There's also at least one Nordic dialect that sounds very close to an Australian accent (although with all the words being gibberish), based on what I've overheard while walking around the conference centre. Or it may have just been a group of Australian students practicing their Norwegian with really bad accents, of course.