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A border sign between Austria and Slovenia, written in catastrophic Slovene.
I
won’t bother translating the contents, which are pretty mundane. It’s
pretty sad, though, if this is the best that officials can (or want to)
do. Grammatical mistakes abound, including some pretty egregious ones.
For example, they write "slowenske" instead of "slovenske." (The letter w doesn’t appear in the Slovenian alphabet. You will find it, though, in the German word for Slovenes: Slowenen.)
At any rate, to give you an idea of how poorly this is written, here’s what a quick edit of the text would look like:
Mejnei prehod je dovoljen lahko preÄ?kate z izkaznicio za "mali mejni prehod", zs potnim listom, ali z osebnio izkaznicio za avstrijske in slowvenske državlajjane in vse taksne tiste osebe, katere ki nimajo ne potrebujejo vize peski ljudi in gredo peÅ¡, kateri se vozijo z beciklenom se peljejo s kolesom in z ali malim motornim vozil kolesom do 125 ccm.
(Thanks Mysko!)
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Good morning! Michael, according to my information this is a doctored photo. Do you know where it was taken? If one takes a closer look at the photo, one will notice that the shade of white around the letter slightly differs from the rest of the sign. I’m not an expert on digital photography but I’m almost positive that the original text was erased and replaced with the one in bad Slovene. I’m not the one to defend Austrians, but in this case I think they didn’t do it.
Shade of white around the letters differs from the background sign color because of the strong JPEG compression used on the picture.
As of the originality of the photo, I have no idea.
This would be hilarious if it were real, but now that Pengovsky brings it up, it does look a bit too good — or should I say bad — to be true.In either case, the corrected version should read: "Mejni prehod lahko preÄ?kate z izkaznico za maloobmejni prehod."
I first thought it might be doctored, but the sign seems very similar to this — which definitely existed. It also seems a bit dry for a photoshop. There’s no real joke except for the horrible language.If anyone can positively confirm or deny it though, I’d love to know!
Gabr: When I first saw the photo I also thought that was the case. But if that were the case, the shift in colors would be limited to a coulpe of pixels around each letter. But the shift is also present in space between words - notice the last line.Besides - as AZ2SI put it - it’s too good to be true. I’m not even sure the Austrians would bother with Slovene language given their preference to tear down city signs in Austrian Koroska.
BTW, if this is in fact a doctored photo, it’s a very good one, because all of the letters seem to be proportional to the rest of the text and equidistant to the edge of the sign — something that’s hard to achieve considering the sign is shown at a slight angle. The jury is still out, in other words…
Well, Pengovsky just countered one of my points with a sharp-eyed observation.
^ Never mind. I just realized that Pengovsky was talking about the color shift, rather than the spacing between words. I’m going to bed now.
Gabr: When I first saw the photo I also thought that was the case. But if that were the case, the shift in colors would be limited to a coulpe of pixels around each letter. But the shift is also present in space between words - notice the last line.Besides - as AZ2SI put it - it’s too good to be true. I’m not even sure the Austrians would bother with Slovene language given their preference to tear down Slovene city signs in Austrian Koroska.
sorry about the double post….
Not a fake, except if Mladina made it but I doubt.Here:http://www.mladina.si/tednik/200443/clanek/uvo-manipulator–tomica_suljic/
And veÄ?er …. http://www.vecer.si/vecer2003/sredina/clanek/clanek_natisni.asp?kaj=6&id=2004090800567560
Nah, it’s real, I’ve seen this. Not exactly between the two borders, but close, on the austrian side of course…
Hah! I figured it was real. After that Goesser menu from 1990, nothing could really come as a surprise when it comes to Austrians and their mock-slowene lingo. And even the grammar/spelling mistakes seem to fit with the (admittedly more horrible) Goesser menu. My German is better than this… and I’m still embbarrassed to speak it with native speakers. They don’t seem to be ebarrassed at all when it comes to an official thing like this. Pretty sad. It says loads About Austrians, and more particularly their attitude towards the pesky slavics. I wonder if they butcher Slovakian in a similar fashion on the borders with Slovakia.
LOL!Apparently it is real, I’m wondering whether it’s been put up by the Austrian authorities though. Well, what ever the case, it seems to be a good case of Engrish, Slovenian-style (or should I say Austrian). Btw, it seems to be part dialect part terribly incorrect Slovenian..
If the Austrians fail to put Slovenian signs up, you guys complain and
if they put them up, you complain as well. BTW, I think this is
Slovenian slang that’s spoken in the poor suburbs of
Klagenfurt.
putting all national pride (?) and an excellent chance to mock austrians aside, i think wolfgang may have a point there. this could be an example of the dialect slovenes in austria speak, the so-called vindisch… ( i say so-called because this is a delicate expression, and can be understood as derogative)
I’d tend to disagree. It’s a possibility, but in my opinion an unlikely one. Mainly because some of these mistakes seem to be purely grammatical (declinations etc). Dialects still follow basic rules of grammar and alter expressions (or in some cases when they do make grammatical switches, they don’t do it like on that sign).
Freddie has a point: Note that they first refer to "mejne prehod," but then switch to "mejni prehod." This, along with the bizarre declinations, indicates a total lack of consistency that can’t be explained by a dialect. Even though they are not codified, dialects do have rules, and while the writing here may be based on some local speech patterns, the sign appears to be just an example of incredible sloppiness.The fact that some of us at first thought this was a joke says volumes about the sign, as well as the attitudes of people responsible for it. It is funny, though!
you’re both right, of course. i still think that the primary language that got mangled here was not slovene as such but an austrian slovene dialect. which makes no difference to the fact that the language used is a, shall we say, heavily altered version of the supposed original, “mainland” slovene or not…
whether this sign is faked or not, it is a fact that you can find many
badly translated "slovenian" signs in austria; obviously a result of
ignorance. but what is also sad is that slovenians, supposedly very
conscious of their own language do not bother to put much more effort
when putting up german signs. just check out the emergency-brake
warnings in the slovenian ICS trains, menus in many restaurants…