Kor till vanster

[GKW]

I have seen recently a sign which says Kor till vanster. What language is this and what does it mean?

[DaSwede]

K�r till v�nster is Swedish. A verbatim translation would be Drive to the left as in Make a left turn.

[DaSwede]

PS A Danish or Norwegian sign might read something similar. Also I should add that linguistically it's possible that the sign tells you to drive on the left side of the road, but we drive on the right side of the road in Sweden so it's not a likely interpretation.

[GKW]

Thanks for the answer. I should perhaps have said that it was in the UK that I saw the sign.

[DaSwede]

You're welcome, GKW.

Another reflection: You wrote Kor till vanster, without any dots over the o, and I assume you don't have any � on your keyboard. But if the sign did indeed read Kor till v�nster, it may have been a jesting distortion of the original road sign. Kor till v�nster would mean Cows to the left...

Yet another one: The original road sign is sometimes used politically here as a "command" to make a left-wing choice.

As in most (?) languages, there are a number of connotations to the word "v�nster" (left), many of them implying some kind of "deviation" from standard procedure. If you saw the sign not in a traffic context, the person displaying it may have had almost anything in mind (depending on the context of the situation.)

[GKW]

I don't have an � or an � symbol on my keyboard. There is a way of typing them using alt+ number typed on the numeric keypad, but don't know which combination to use.

'Drive to the left' seems right, given the location of the sign.

[jno]

is it perhaps directing visiting Swedes over the top of a cliff? Some Brits are funny about foreigners.

[DaSwede]

We're certainly preparing for your next visit to Stockholm, jno. (Sorry, GKW, it had to be done ;-)