I’d probably be pull over by the police officers everyday.
My wife and me are always chuckling when in Germany taking the Ausfahrt.
English: ride to art museum
German: Fahrt zum Kunstmuseum
I’m blowing past that limit
I know this is old, but it is a bit irksome that this post is titled “Fact of the day” when it can’t even keep its facts straight about which country does what.
Those signs aren’t from Sweden. Our traffic agency (who prints the signs) doesn’t use ‘fart’ meaning ‘speed’ - except for ‘gångfartsområde’, ‘walking speed area’, which disappointingly enough doesn’t even have the text on it - but mainly uses ‘hastighet’ meaning ‘velocity’. Other commenters in this thread have posted examples of ‘fart’ in a different meaning being used on Swedish traffic signs.
hastighet
As a native speaker of a language that’s unlike anything, I envy you folks so much. Knowing enough English and German you just look at it, and go ‘aaah, speediness’ (I guess the ‘hast’/‘hastig’ bit is the same as ‘haste’/‘hasty’ in English, and the ‘het’ is the same as ‘heit’ /~ness’/ in German).
You wouldn’t guess the word, reading it in context is so much easier.
both the E47 and E55 also don’t exist in sweden, E55 is only signposted up until køge in denmark.
“fart” is colloquial swedish for speed, but the actual meaning (as used on signage) is “travel” or “fare”, like german “fahr-” words. so we have “sjöfart” (seafaring), “rymdfart” (space travel), “fartvind” (wind rushing by when moving quickly), “uppfart” (driveway) and, importantly for signs, “utfart” and “infart” (exit and entry for vehicles).
my favorite of this is a sign nearby on a narrow road that warns about multiple exits with no sight lines.
I will never not laugh at this
You’re never going to believe this -
If this bus drops under 50 MPH, you’re gonna see some serious shit.
Funny, that movie was called “The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down” in English.
The tagline makes it even funnier
As someone who only speaks English, that movie poster is clearly just using Simlish. Gjor deg klar? For rosh tid! Sui sui, haha! relationship improved
Unbelievable
It’s not the fart that kills, but the smell.
For the uninitiated: This is a Swenglish joke, a mistranslation of “It’s not the speed(/fart) that kills, but the impact(/smäll)”
Always practice fartkontrol, when you go to the slutstation.
What is that 2 - 12 kmh sign? A speed limit for a pedestrian road?
It’s not km/h, just km. So maybe from km 2 to km 12 on this road, they are “controlling the farts”.
I guess you need to expect your farts being controlled over the next 2-12 km.
That kind of speed is called hastighet in Swedish…
This is either Norwegian or Danish.
It’s true that ‘fart’ means speed in Swedish, but in this context ‘hastighet’ would be used (~‘hastiness’).
i think we figured out last time this was posted that it’s danish.
You’re just fartblind.
I guess this is where we get “haste”?
It’d be more accurate to say they share the same origin. Swedish and English are both part of the Germanic language family.
English has a lot of influence from both Germanic and Latin, to the point where I don’t think it’s reasonable to classify it as a strictly “Germanic” language.
There are plenty of English words that can be traced to old Norse (i.e. Norwegian Viking occupiers, raiders, and/or traders).
and “fart” is where you get “fare”, as in to travel. or rather, we both got them from german.
Ok, “fart” is where English gets “fare”, that makes sense I guess. Is that coincidentally where English gets “far”? Otherwise I’d think it’s closer to where we get “wide”. Like weit gefahren?
Hmm I’ve been to Sweden and I’ve seen many fart kontrol signs. I know because I took funny selfies in front of them
then you weren’t in sweden. we dont even signpost them.
‘Fart’ does refer to speed occasionally, but the key here is that it’s always called ‘Hastighetskontroll’ in Swedish. Note the double ‘L’ in ‘kontroll’ and the compounding of ‘hastighet’ and ‘kontroll’.
Probably Denmark then. European route E47 goes from Germany to Sweden, E55 from Greece to Sweden. In Denmark they share the same physical road for a while.
These signs are not Danish, not officially at least. “Fartkontrol” is a Danish word but the sign is not an official sign and in Denmark we wouldn’t split “fart” and “kontrol” into separate words.
