# The quick brown fox goes to Europe: non-English pangrams **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 6, 2003, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826 "2003-04-06T06:03:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/1 "2003-04-06T06:03:59Z")
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is probably the most famous pangram\* in English. There are others, of course: “Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymph,” and “Zing! Vext cwm fly jabs Kurd qoph.” Many of these others are remarkably non-catchy. Pangrams can’t be an English language-only phenomenon. What are the most popular or famous ones in other languages? German, French, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Esperanto, whatever. Subquestion: do languages with other alphabets have pangrams – Russian, for instance? How about Arabic? I can’t believe that Mandarin has pangrams, but is there a similar kind of word game that they play with their characters? \*Pangram: a group of words, usually a sentence, containing all the letters of the alphabet. ---
**Author:** ![Petter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/dbc845/32.png) [@Petter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Petter)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/2 "2003-04-06T07:45:54Z")
A perfekt pangram in Danish: “Max brændte høj og flyvsk quiz på wc” which roughly translates to “Max burned tall and flighty quiz in the bathroom”. (Are you allowed to use names in pangrams?) I can’t find any references to common Danish pangrams although we should be able to construct them more easily thanks to three extra vowels. We’d probably have to use a few imported words, however, there aren’t many native words with qwxz’s in them. I’ve always used the quick brown fox for typing exercises. ---
**Author:** ![sotally\_tober](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/46a35a/32.png) [@sotally\_tober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sotally_tober)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/3 "2003-04-06T08:26:47Z")
Mandrin does not have pangrams. Neither does Japanese or Korean, to my knowledge. (Imagine the pain!!!) And what do you mean by similar kind of word games? ---
**Author:** ![Einmon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Einmon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Einmon)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/4 "2003-04-06T09:53:17Z")
Apparently German doesn’t have any real pangrams. I found two sentences approximating a pangram: Sylvia wagt quick den Jux bei Pforzheim (33 letters) (“Sylvia dares to make a quick joke in [the city of] Pforzheim”) and Zwei Boxkaempfer jagen Eva quer durch Sylt (36 letters) (“Two boxers chase Eva through [the isle of] Sylt”) I sort of like the second one better, the first one sounds a little bit constructed. ---
**Author:** ![BleizDu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@BleizDu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BleizDu)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/5 "2003-04-06T10:08:12Z")
Probably the most well-known in French: “Portez ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume.” (37) Something like “Bring this old whisky to the blond-haired judge who smokes.” ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/6 "2003-04-06T10:31:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sotally tober \* > **Mandrin does not have pangrams. Neither does Japanese or Korean, to my knowledge.** Why not? Two of the Japanese scripts are syllabic rather than pictographic, so the number of symbols is more than manageable. And IIRC, Korean uses a rather nifty alphabetic script where the letters are stacked on top of each other. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Einmon_ > **Apparently German doesn’t have any real pangrams.** I take it you mean that it doesn’t have any perfect pangrams, since it’s entirely possible to construct a German sentence using all 26 letters (plus the sharp S and the three umlauted vowels, if you’re so inclined). > [@](#): > > **Zwei Boxkaempfer jagen Eva quer durch Sylt (36 letters)** 35 letters, actually. The “ae” in “Boxkaempfer” would normally be written as “ä”. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/7 "2003-04-06T10:36:07Z")
Hmm… “The Chinese panagram, in 18 Volumes” (Only $399.95 plus postage and handling). I wonder what language has the most concise panagram? That is the least number of duplicate letters. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/8 "2003-04-06T10:44:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shalmanese \* > **Hmm… “The Chinese panagram, in 18 Volumes” (Only $399.95 plus postage and handling).** Actually, I think a Chinese pangram in Pinyin (Romanized orthography) would be possible. > [@](#): > > \*\*I wonder what language has the most concise panagram? That is the least number of duplicate letters. \*\* Probably the language with the fewest number of letters in its alphabet or syllabary. Hawaiian, maybe? ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/9 "2003-04-06T13:53:28Z")
The definitive Japanese pangram is the _Iroha_ poem: [http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/iroha.html](http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/iroha.html) It uses each _hiragana_ (phonetic alphabet) exactly once. This used to be the standard _hiragana_ order, but it has been replaced by a more logical grid table with 5 rows for the 5 vowels and 9 columns of consonant sounds plus one column of pure vowel sounds. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/10 "2003-04-06T15:43:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by psychonaut, concerning shortest pangrams \* > … > > Probably the language with the fewest number of letters in its alphabet or syllabary. Hawaiian, maybe? Perhaps, though the alphabet has 18 characters, if you allow the accented vowels and the backtick glottal stop: [http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Shores/6794/o-piapa.html](http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Shores/6794/o-piapa.html) However, there seems to be some unspoken rule that Hawaiian words contain repeated letters. Another candidate might be Hebrew - 22 letters, and leaving out the vowels makes the writing rather compact. ---
**Author:** ![Tusculan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Tusculan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tusculan)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/11 "2003-04-06T16:13:40Z")
A Dutch pangram that is mostly refered to: “pa’s wijze lynx bezag vroom het fikse aquaduct”. Dad’s wise lynx looked piously at the large aquaduct. Not a very good pangram, but hey, it does the job. I’ve tried to find a better one, but have never really got a satisfactory one. My best was: “Exact vijf voor twaalf had de psycholoog zijn quotum bereikt”. Exactly five to twelve the psychologist had reached his quotum. As you can see, all those are much longer than The quick brown fox. I gather it is difficult to make a short one in a different language than English. English uses quite a lot of those odd letters like x and q. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Cobweb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Cobweb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Cobweb)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/12 "2003-04-06T18:01:38Z")
Without any attempt to answer Interrobang!?'s original question, I thought I’d drop in to recommend Douglas Hofstadter’s _[Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise Of The Music Of Language](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465086454/qid=1049651494/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2778505-9269535?v=glance&s=books)_ to anyone who is interested in matters of this sort. Though pangrams are not what the book is about (and in fact I’m not certain they’re even mentioned, specifically), palindromes, and the various levels of difficulty of creating palindromes in different languages, are discussed. The book is about translation as a concept, for starters, though like all Hofstadter’s books it ranges rather broadly and deeply, covering a lot of ground. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and recommend it heartily to anybody interested in language or translation. And now back to our regularly scheduled discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/13 "2003-04-07T17:37:24Z")
> [@](#): > > And what do you mean by similar kind of word games? I don’t know enough about langauges without alphabets to know what I’m asking, if that helps any. But basically, is, say, Mandarin in non-Romanized characters organized in a way that allows people to try to use every organizational category in a work as concisely yet understandably as possible? (More understandable than that last sentence, even.) ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/14 "2003-04-07T17:45:39Z")
In languages with a large number of characters (e.g. Chinese and Japananese Kanji), there is no such thing as a complete list of characters. The Japanese government has a list of characters that can be used for a person’s name, but even that is revised occasionally. ---
**Author:** ![Fish\_Cheer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fish_cheer/32/17179_2.png) [@Fish\_Cheer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish_Cheer)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/15 "2003-04-07T17:48:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Einmon \* > **Apparently German doesn’t have any real pangrams. I found two sentences approximating a pangram:** “Franz jagt im komplett verwahrlosten Taxi quer durch Bayern.” (51. gosh!) (“Franz is rushing the completely run-down taxi all across Bavaria.”) ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quick-brown-fox-goes-to-europe-non-english-pangrams/166826/16 "2003-04-07T17:57:48Z")
I notice that the [Rearrangement Servant](http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz) comes up with a rather entertaining English pangram I hadn’t yet seen: **Blowzy night-frumps vex’d Jack Q**