If you know Swedish, the world is funnier

Raymond Chen

As I was driving through Seattle the other day, I saw a sign for a personal storage company called “Stor-More”. I then had to laugh because in Swedish, “Stor-Mor” means “Big Momma”. It’s not restricted to Swedish. On my trip to Germany last year, my travelling companions found several German signs amusing:

• “Ausfahrt” (“highway exit”)
• “Schmuck” (“jewelry”)
• “Bad Kissing” (a town’s name; more accurately, “Bad Kissingen”, but never let the truth get in the way of a good joke. “Bad” in German means “bath” or “spa”)

When he told some German colleagues about this hilarious town name, they just looked at him as if to say, “What about Bad Kissingen? It’s a nice town. What’s so funny about it?” Only when he suggested that they look at it in English did they see the joke.

For some reason I love multilingual jokes.

Raymond Chen

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