I don't know why sometimes I get frightened

[venta]

After the recent HD disaster, I bought two new disks. If you're interested, I bought one of these for work and a portable one[*] which can live at home and come into work occasionally to get backed up.

Being a USB HD, it doesn't need much in the way of instructions. The first page is titled "Plug-and-Play Setup for Windows and Mac OS X". Fair enough.

The next page is "Installation Plug & Play pour Windows et Mac", then "Installazione plug & play in Windows e Mac". We go on... "Plug & Play-Einstellung fü Windows und Mac", Insalación plug and play para Windows y Mac", Instalacja plug-and-play w systemach Windows i Mac". You get the general idea. Even the Greek and Russian (which I don't have the inclincation to find all the html entities to type out) include the phrase "plug and play" in Latin characters.

Then we reach Finnish, the notorious problem child of the Scandinavian languages. "Kytke ja käytä -asennus Windows- ja Mac OS X -kättöjärjestelmille.

Just who let that language into Europe anyway ?

[*] Which actually also came from Overclockers, but they now seem to have stopped stocking it.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

(btw I think it's a bit sociopolitically dubious to describe Finland as "Scandinavian", they don't usually much like it.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Again, I ran that by my colleague and she was fine about it. Maybe she's just an unusually laid back Finn :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

My Finnish penfriend was, while happy to strongly recommend I never even attempt to learn his language due to aforementioned linguistic isolation from all bar Hungarian, most adamant about being Fennoscandian rather than Scandinavian.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

If they don't like it, they shouldn't have the same style of cross on their flag as all the other Nordic countries. (Is "Nordic" OK?)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

AFAIK Nordic is OK as that's purely a geographical term. But Scandinavian implies a sociocultural entity that many Finns don't want to be considered part of. (I guess because they resent their long years of quailing under Swedish hegemony.)

Flags can be a bit misleading sometimes, eg. one might think that Ireland and the Ivory Coast were closely linked.