venta: (Default)
venta ([personal profile] venta) wrote2011-11-22 11:22 am
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A fox went out on a moonlit night

Leaving Reading station this morning, I spotted a young chap carrying a black canvas shoulder bag. On it, in a nice, clear typeface, was written:

Wrongful practising of xylophone music tortures every larger dwarf.

Well. As political statements go, it's a bit unusual.

Something about the unhandy construction of the sentence made me guess that it was one of those which contains every letter of the alphabet. The words had that shoe-horned quality that suggested someone was trying to stick to some arbitrary rules when writing. Except... no z. No b, either, though it took me longer to spot that. In fact... no, it's just rubbish.

Curiosity piqued, I googled for the phrase once I'd got to work. From the google summary page, I deduced it was a known pangram.

A what? Wikipedia. Oh. That'll be "a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once".

But it isn't!

Further googling. Aha! That's a translation. The original is:

Falsches Üben von Xylophonmusik quält jeden größeren Zwerg.

So there you go. Pangrams: obvious even in translation.

[identity profile] pseudomonas.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 12:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Do German pangrams canonically always include a,ä,o,ö,u,ü,and ß?

[identity profile] venta.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 12:20 pm (UTC)(link)
From my vast experience of two, yes :)

(The two being this one, and the Wikipedia-provided "Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich").

That page I linked to does suggest, however, that for German it can get much more demanding (http://shiar.nl/misc/lingua/pangram#de), as well!

[identity profile] pseudomonas.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)
That one lacks ß!
Edited 2011-11-22 12:22 (UTC)

[identity profile] venta.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
So it does! The pangram page I linked to gives it as:

"Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagten Eva quer über den großen Sylter Deich"

I counted the letters in that one, but then pasted from Wikipedia, it seems!

[identity profile] venta.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 12:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Have you noticed that ending a sentence "it seems!" makes anything sound like a cryptic crossword clue?

[identity profile] bateleur.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 12:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I love the idea of using a translated pangram. It's like an in-joke people can work out for themselves.

[identity profile] venta.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 06:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Ubiquitous, obviously-comprehensible in-jokes made bateleur fizz with exigetic joy!

[identity profile] drdoug.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 07:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Wrongly taking amazing xylophone music just batters every quiet dwarf.