IKEA: linguistics, esthetics, engineering, part 2
« previous post | next post »
Some assembly required.
From Olaf Zimmermann:
(source [2002 no. 5])
Olaf remarks:
By the late '70s IKEA had been very well established in W-Germany (I was living in Munich at the time) and had already become part of popular culture in more senses than one.
I found the basis for the content of the painting here.
Note that these ELKTÅUER instructions come with a few words, though mine for NEIDEN had not a single word. Instead I had arrows and fingers pointing to where parts should be inserted and also directionality, including circular movement.
For those who are skeptical about the difficulty of putting furniture together following this kind of directions, with your mind's eye try to mentally assemble ELKTÅUER according to what you see in the drawing.
Swedish inte lätt / German nicht einfach!
It's no wonder that, as kararina described in this comment, it took two young men 12 hours to complete the assembly of her new IKEA "davenport" (her name for the "day bed" she just acquired).
Selected readings
- "IKEA: linguistics, esthetics, engineering" (3/8/25)
- "Following Directions", The Language Fix (1/27/09)
Jonathan Smith said,
March 11, 2025 @ 12:08 pm
Well wow… I am a proud owner of the ELKTÅUER! Humming along to this day… I found assembly a breeze but YMMV.
S Frankel said,
March 11, 2025 @ 12:40 pm
G*d*m thing won't even load a Finnish operating system like Linux.
Philip Taylor said,
March 11, 2025 @ 12:46 pm
Not surprising, M. Frankel — the Finno-Ugric family is very different from the North-Germanic family to which Swedish belongs !
Chris Button said,
March 11, 2025 @ 4:34 pm
IKEA used to be a client of mine during my ad/media agency days. I absolutely loved working with them. This was in the USA, so everyone had to learn the correct pronunciations of things (or at least close approximations). I fondly remember explaining to someone why Kivik being pronounced in Swedish more like Shivik was perfectly reasonable and quite in accordance with the spelling.
Scott P. said,
March 11, 2025 @ 4:34 pm
I'm guessing the ELKTÅUER is what the Swedes use to key an eye on all the elk.
KeithB said,
March 11, 2025 @ 4:53 pm
Lego instructions are the same way.
Mike Anderson said,
March 11, 2025 @ 5:23 pm
We've all heard of idiot-proofing designs (God will provide an improved idiot). IKEA has flipped the script with bone fide idiot inducing instructions
Steve Morrison said,
March 11, 2025 @ 8:19 pm
Although Linus Torvalds actually belongs to Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority.
Edith S. said,
March 12, 2025 @ 2:35 am
What could a LLM trained exclusively on IKEA assembly diagrams build for us?
Whatever it would be, there'd be a couple of screws left over.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 13, 2025 @ 5:30 pm
This is a real head-scratcher. I'm disappointed in myself, in particular by the fact that it bothers me that I genuinely can't tell who's being funny. Too difficult.
Itüpflreiter said,
March 15, 2025 @ 10:19 am
Who is funny?
The Austrian artists Harald Ritsch and Marcus Renn, drawing and writing a cartoon for the German computer magazine "ct" (in 2002). They are still doing so, because most of their readers (including me) like their work.
ritsch-renn.com
What is funny about it?
(I know that a joke that needs explaining …, but)
Firstly, and obviously: mixing furniture assembly instructions IKEA style with computer assembly instructions and a hint of LEGO.
Secondly: Most of the fun is language related (this is language log, not assembly instructions log) and needs some knowledge of German to understand.
It´s a humourous take on IKEA product names (or maybe the reception and pronunciation of them of them in Germany and Austria).
German words for parts of a computer system including a few loanwords are distorted (eg by exaggerated phonetic spelling, double letters and diacritics) into Scandinavian-looking words.
– Elk (moose, German "Elch") is what really identifies IKEA. The company heavily used the moose as a brand image in the 80´s and 90´s (at least in Europe).
– tower (computer case form factor)
– motherboard
– spurt (used in German for sprint as in running)
– malocher (from Yiddish, "hard worker", might refer to the power supply)
A few names for computer parts are inventions for fun´s sake: (translations approximate, my interpretation/identification; ymmv)
– toenspukk => German "Tönespucker" tonespitter => soundcard
– kriichdisk => "Kriechdisk" creeping(ly slow) disc ?(single/double speed) CD drive
– spörtdisk => "Spurtdisk" fast running disk (see above) => hard disc drive
– fröstenpust => "Frostpuster" cold blower => CPU cooler
Annegret (floppy disc drive) and Vilbur (?network adapter) are names.
It´s a cartoon for a quick laugh, not linguistics or computer science, not meant to be analyzed too deeply.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 16, 2025 @ 10:19 am
@Itüpflreiter — Thank you, and it's much appreciated, because I didn't want to do what you've just done; I'm too cowardly…
But I was referring mainly to the content on here, not the original art…