Friday, September 30, 2011

Around the World: From Folding Bike to 折叠自行车 (zhedie zixingche)

As the days are getting shorter and colder, a Brompton rider may be inclined to go on a tour in the internet.
I will tell you how a folding bike enthusiast can find the most interesting picture collection of folders.
I sat by the fireside and started surfing.  My linguistic interest took me to places where I learnt what a folding bike is called in the languages of countries with a  remarkable bicycle culture.
When  I had collected my data, I was not sure which language should be placed at the top of my list.  English is spoken around the world, but China is definitely the biggest bicycle  country.
Here is my list:
Chinese:  折叠自行车 (zhedie zixingche)
English: Folding bike 
Dutch/Nederlandsk: Vouwfiets
French/Francais: Vélo pliant 
German/Deutsch: Faltrad
Italian/Italiano: Bicicletta pieghevole
Japanese:  折りたたみ自転车 (Oritatami jitensha)
Polish/Polska: Rower składany
Russian: Складной велосипед (skladnoi welosipjed)
Spanish/Espagnol: Bicicleta plegable
Swedish/Svenska: Hopfällbar cykel


This is how you get your picture collections.  Copy one of the  expression for folding bike and paste it into Google`s search engine for pictures on the web. 


Google` search result for the input of "folding bike" yields this: Chinese version (zhedie zixingche). 

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