What are some palindromes in languages other than English?

Lepel. (Dutch for "spoon")

Arepera. (Venezuelan for the place where Arepas are sold.)

Regninger. (Danish for "bills")

Itsetesti. (Finnish for "selftest")

Pierogi igor iep. ("Pierogies for everyone.")

Saippuakauppias. (Finnish word for "soap dealer")

Lladd dafad ddall. [Editor: "daffal" in the original, which does not
reverse; "dafad" is Welsh for "sheep"] (Welsh for "kill a blind sheep")

Anita lava la tina. (Spanish for "Anita washes the bathtub")

Ni talar bra latin. (Swedish for "You speak latin well")

En af dem der red med fane. (Danish for "One of those who rode with a
flag")

Esope reste ici et se repose. ("Aesop is resting here and relaxing")

Ein leder gurt trug Redel nie. ("A leather belt never held up Redel")

Dabale arroz a la zorra el abad. ("The abbot was giving rice to the
fox")

Et la marine va, papa, venir a Malte. (French for "And the navy is
going, dad, to come to Malta.")

Nalli laukee taas, saat eekua Lillan! (Finnish for "The detonator is
exploding again, your butt will be toasted!")

Ein Neger mit Gazelle zagt im Regen nie. (German for "A negro with a
gazelle never quails in the rain.")

Signa te, signa, temere me tangis et angis. (Latin for "cross thyself,
cross thyself, you touch and torment me in vain")

Si Tito ya muere de reuma, muere de reuma y otitis. (If Tito is already
dying from rheum, he's dying from rheum and otitis)

-- The Public Domain Page (Nanci Ellis)

[ Editor: "Pierogi igor iep" is not a palindrome as given: reversed,
its letters read "peirogiigoreip".  The French Esope,
German Neger and Latin Signa te palindromes also appear in
language/french/french.palindromes, language/german/german.palindromes
and language/english/sentences/palindromes. ]

[ Editor: from the second summary of palindromes collected by Dr.
Manfred Immler <Manfred.Immler@mch.sni.de> for the LINGUIST List
(Vol-6-857, 23 June 1995), leaving out palindromes already in this
entry or in the language entries.  English palindromes from it are in
language/english/sentences/palindromes and German ones in
language/german/german.palindromes. ]

Spanish:

        ojo rojo
        [a red eye]

-- Manfred Immler

There is a very famous palindrom in spanish that says: 'Dabale arroz a
la zorra el abad' (which means something like: 'the abad gave rice to
the fox').  For instance, the name of the president of Argentina is a
palindrom: Carlos MENEM

-- Pablo Accuosto <accuosto@fing.edu.uy>

Finnish:

The Finnish book of palindrome poetry that Pirjo Karvonen referred to
was written by two young men called Simo Frangen and Pasi Heikura.  The
name of the book was Finnish and Swedish: "Retki - Dikter" (the first
Finnish part could be translated "Trip" or even "Picnic" - "Ausflug"
could be a good translation counterpart in German; the Swedish part, of
course, means "poems").  I'm sorry I can't remember the publisher, but
it was one of the biggest Finnish ones, and the book probably appeared
in 1989.

Simo Frangen and Pasi Heikura also belong to a rock (?) group called
"Alivaltiosihteeri" (Under-Secretary of State) with a weekly radio
programme of their own.  In the programme, there are always two
"official palindromes of the week".

-- Johanna Laakso <Johanna.Laakso@Helsinki.FI>

Croatian:

A poet and literary scholar in Zagreb, Dubravka Oraic' Tolic', has
written an entire poem in five cantos of palindromic lines, entitled
_Palindromska apokalipsa_ (Edicije Durieux, Zagreb 1993).  She began
writing it in 1981 and found that it was a prophecy of war in the
coming palindromic year, 1991; and war did in fact come then.  A few
lines from the end:

(Roza razor...)
KAL
   BOL
      OBLAK
   Idi!
        Vidi!

"(Pink destruction...)
DIRT
   PAIN
       CLOUD
   Come!
       See!"

-- Wayles Browne <ewb2@cornell.edu>

Letters, words and sounds:

I have your extensive report on palindromes at hand.  It apparently
goes without saying that palindromes are products of written rather
than spoken language (though there is one provocative comment about a
backwards tape of Hungarian).  Nearly all palindromes, therefore, seem
to occur in alphabetic languages, reversing the order of letters (and
freely altering spaces, caps, etc.).  There are, however, two instances
of "palindromes" that reverse the order of words ("You can cage a
swallow..." and "Man values God...").  Nobody comments on this major
difference - is either considered a palindrome.  The one Japanese
palindrome also reflects the writing system (or a part of it),
reversing the order of syllabic characters.  Do any of your references
comment on this aspect of palindromes?

-- Eleanor Olds Batchelder <EOBGC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Most people seem to automatically assume that palindromes refer to
letters as units, not words, and personally I think that
"Palin-sentences" (as the pseudonymous author Battus writes in his book
mentioned in my files calls them) are much less interesting than "true,
letter-based palindromes".

But you are right in insisting that palindromes terribly depend on the
writing system you are in, and what astonishes me most is the fact that
acoustic palindromes do not even interest me as much as written (as for
instance in German "falsch" (wrong) vs. "Schlaf" (sleep)).

What also astonishes me: why are there so few "heteropalindromes",
i.e. sentences which, when read from behind result in ANOTHER
meaningful sentence of the same language.  These, too, should occur,
and should be interesting.

-- Manfred Immler

[ Editor: the Japanese palindrome and the Hungarian comment were in
Immler's first summary, which is not in the collected material. ]

Danish:

[ Editor: from a rec.humor thread, April 1994, on the Danish palindrome
"En af dem der red med fane" (one of those that rode with a flag): ]

Didn't Valdemar Poulsen, the inventor of the wire-recorder, come up
with this?

-- Ricard Wolf <ricard@axis.se>

[ Editor: from Christoph Enzinger's posting "Longest Palindrome"
  (rec.puzzles, March 1995), items not given elsewhere in the archive.
  Translations are Enzinger's. ]

Italian:

A VALLE TRA MASSE EBRE LA NERA, L'ACCESA D'IRA ETNA TI MOVEVA? L'ETNA
  GIGANTE LAVE VOMITANTE ARIDA SECCA L'ARENA L'ERBE ESSA MARTELLAVA.
  (1925, referred to an eruption of the Etna volcano; from Lisa
  Maccari <lisa@arcetri.astro.it>)

Croatian:

A krt u razu mi laze no one zalim u zaru trka. (Vedrana Spadoni)
  (But the mole in the rye lies, because I am sorry for all those, who
  run with enthusiasm.)

Latin:

simillimis (similar)

Si dote tibi metra sono bis te Iesus in odis, si do nisus ei et si
  bonos artem ibit et odis.

Swedish:

I Reval sitta ni alla i natt i slaveri.
  (In Reval you all sit in slavery tonight.)

Hungarian:

láttál [Editor: "lttl" in the posting, its accented letters lost]
  (you have seen)

Indul a görög aludni. [Editor: written g"or"og in the posting]
  (The Greek goes to bed.)

-- Christoph Enzinger <leo@cosy.sbg.ac.at>

[ Editor: two postings by Christoph Enzinger in a June 1994 thread
"Palindromes", in reply to a list of English palindromic words and "A
man a plan a canal Panama". ]

Everybody knows this, everybody knows longer ones.  In English it is
very easy to build palindromic sentences.

Finding palindromic words IS difficult.

Did you learn foreign languages?  Try them!

How about... German:

Ara
Bub
Ehe
Anna
Ebbe
Elle
Kajak
Radar
stets
Neffen
nennen
Retter
Rentner
Reittier
Marktkram (Schopenhauer)
.
.

How about... Latin:

ala
ara
ibi
mulum
sedes
mutatum
.
.

How about... Italian:

a
afa
osso
aerea
ingegni
.
.

How about... Swedish:

aja
eke
alla
ramar
rattar
.
.

-- Christoph Enzinger <leo@cosy.sbg.ac.at>

Risto Lankinen (ristol@xerver.icl.fi) wrote:
: leo@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Christoph Enzinger) writes:

: >Finding palindromic words IS difficult.
: >
: >How about... German:
: >Marktkram

Reliefpfeiler (Schopenhauer)
Lagertonnennotregal

: >How about... Latin:
: >mutatum

simillimis

: >How about... Italian:
: >ingegni

onorarono

: [deleted all but the longest of each language]

: How about... Finnish:

: taloussuolat            (=household salts)
: saippuakauppias         (=soap merchant)
: saippuakalasalakauppias (=secret trader of soap-fish)

: Can anyone beat 23 letters (in the somewhat made-up word) or 15 (in
: the perfectly valid and usable word 'saippuakauppias') in any other
: language?  I think that 'saippuakauppias' has made its way to the
: Guinness' Book of Records as the longest palindromic word of any
: language.

: BTW, Finnish is a language well suited for the creation of
: palindromic words, because it allows quite liberal concatenation of
: words to form longer words.  Witness
: 'saippuakalasuolatalousalakauppias' which has 33 letters and means
: roughly 'merchant in the field of soap-fish salt economy'.  It is not
: exactly everyday Finnish, yet it is a valid word.

: But I think that many of these words are sufficiently made-up so that
: their exclusion from any record books is well justified (the
: 'saippuakauppias' being the last one that I'd count in, as the G.B.of
: R. does, correctly IMO, as well).

: Now, let's all vote Finnish for the World Language!

-- Christoph Enzinger <leo@cosy.sbg.ac.at>, quoting Risto Lankinen
   <ristol@xerver.icl.fi>