WTF? “No personal handy telephone inside. Thank you.” When I saw this it made me laugh because I’ve never heard this before. I did some research to see if it was real or a messed up phrase and all I could find was information about a mobile network in China.
From Wikipedia:
The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), also marketed as the Personal Access System (PAS) and known as Xiaolingtong (å°çµé€š) in China, is a mobile network system operating in the 1880-1930 MHz frequency band, used mainly in Japan, China, Taiwan and some other Asian countries.
Do you use this phrase in your country?
Well ‘handy’ is German for mobile phone. Perhaps they tried to include as many translations of mobile as they could?
What you say makes sense Henry. Maybe they wanted to use ‘handy’ but put in ‘personal’ since others might not know what they’re talking about. I could see a sign in another country using a English as the second language saying “mobile cellphone” since mobile is used in many countries but cellphone is used in the U.S. a lot.
Maybe it’s an old sign or the person who translated used an older dictionary. The PHS phones were some of the first mobile phones available in Japan. I think it was sort of like the Sony Beta (as in Beta versus VHS) version of cellphone technology.
If i’m not mistaken, PHS is still used in Japan, for some low cost cell phone plans.
Xiaolingtong (that’s all I’ve ever heard it called in China) is still thriving in China due to the low cost of service. It doesn’t have the frills that mainstream cell service does, but… when you need to talk, why not talk for much less (it’s a shame other countries don’t adopt this cheaper technology- at least for heavily populated areas).
In German we call cellphones das Handi.
Yea I remember it from when I was living in Taiwan. I’m not sure if they still got it but just kind of like a phone but like people said, it’s cheaper for those who can’t have yearly plans and what not. Interesting though, thanks for posting!