Must Not Have

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by joyceholt

by joyceholt

A few years ago when we needed to move, Mark and I compiled two lists for ranking properties in our house search: must-haves and must-not-haves. High on the must-not-have list was speed bumps, one of Mark's pet peeves.

What do you do when you find a place that meets all your hopes except one? That's right. You live with the speed bumps. Even the one right out front with a sign posted in the corner of your yard. Yep, the cover for this mini-memoir features a photo I took of our very own front-yard speed bump sign.

A few years ago in Norway I came across a similar sight and broke out laughing. The Norwegians on the bus must have wondered if all Americans were as wacky as me. I took a photo which you'll see in a moment.

Language is a peculiar thing. Mother Earth teems with myriad languages, and quite a few different ones use common pools of letters. Letter-combinations in one dialect might exist in another but with completely different meaning. Take for instance the Chevrolet Nova. When it first hit the market, Chevrolet couldn't figure out why the sporty new car wasn't selling well in Hispanic countries – until someone pointed out that "no va" in Spanish means "won't go."

Just for fun, here are some common words in Norwegian: Ed (oath), Fred (peace), Ned (down), Tom (empty), Bill (beetle), Mark (field, or – more colorful a definition – maggot. Sorry, honey!). The only woman's name I could find that worked the same way was Tess (amount to something).

This word-confounding whimsy works in the reverse direction as well. That traffic sign in Norway? The translation means "speed dampeners" and it refers to those annoying, speedster-deterring bumps in the road. But what you see on the sign is this: "farts dempere."

Fart-dampers, just what every party needs!