The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

HTC forgets Norwegian alphabet

Where did the Ø go?

What you need to know about cloud backup

The letter Ø is missing in HTC Desire HD touchscreen keyboards intended for the Norwegian market.

Ø dear.

This language faux pas* was uncovered today by Eurodroid, whose Norwegian correspondent Jostein tells the site:

I recently purchased the HTC Desire HD and quickly discovered that the Norwegian letter “Ø” is non-existent the messaging application, neither with the onboard keyboard or the downloaded ‘Scandinavian keyboard’ app from the Android Market. It, however, works perfect in the recipient field, in the mail application and web browser. I asked HTC about it, and it confirmed the problem:

A software fix is presumably in the works but HTC has nothing to announce yet, Eurodroid says.

Letters we don't have

The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters - three appear after Z. They are ‪Æ Ø Å‬.

Want to know how to pronounce them?

‪You can listen to the Sounds of Norway ‬on Youtube.

*Faux pas

Google Translate renders faux pas in English as faux pas in Norwegian. It renders faux pas in French as snuble in Norwegian. Snuble in Norwegian is translated as stumble in English.

Cloud based data management

Latest Comments

The French for "faux pas"...

may well be something other than "faux pas". Many of the French expressions used in English are either obsolete in French or were never idiomatic French in the first place.

I seem to recall that these are called "faux amis". I have no idea what the French for this is - even less the Norwegian.

0
0

«Snuble» in Norwegian (both bokmål and nynorsk)

is a verb meaning to stumble or to stutter. «Faux pas», of course, is a noun phrase....

Henri

0
0

Sorry, pedant alert

False step, not false move

0
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Curtain drops on Apple Store ahead of WWDC: What lies behind?
Steve Jobs watching from on high. No pressure, lads
 breaking news
Cold, dead hands of Steve Jobs slip from iPhones: The Cult of Ive is upon us
Billionaire biz baron's death clears way for uber-shiny iOS 7
Microsoft in sexism strife again over XBOX rape joke
E3 demo used 'offensive' and 'inappropriate' language
Airbus imagines suitcases that find themselves
Point your mobe at your smalls to track their every move
Surprise! Intel smartphone trounces ARM in power trials
Tests show equal performance while sipping significantly less juice
Apple said to be 'exploring' 5.7-inch iPhone
Who's the copycat this time, Mr. Cook?
Review: Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock
Missing Mac ports reunited, for a price
Australian 'Apple tax' repealed for MacBook Air
But the new MacPro is priced at a premium