Six languages on one stamp

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 10

Six languages on one stamp

(By

K. W. ANTHONY)

Stamps inscribed in more than one language are not a means. Belgian new idea by any stamps, for example, have given the name of the country in both French and Flemish ever since 1893.

And the stamps of South Africa have always given equal prominence to English and Afrikaans. It was not until postwar years, however, that tri-lingual stamps first appeared fn the album.

Cyprus stamps have been inscribed in English, Greek and Turkish since 1962. Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) has included its name in Sinhalese and Tamil, as well as English, on all its stamps since 1951.

Five languages The year 1951 was also notable for the appearance of stamps in five languages — but these were the United Nations issues, valid for postage only at the United

Nations headquarters in New York. They were the first stamps to carry inscriptions in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.

Now Sweden has gone one better — again in a United Nations context — by producing a stamp with an inscription in no fewer than six languages.

The occasion was the United Nation conference on environmental pollution, which was held in Sweden in June, 1972, on the invitation of the Swedish government.

Two stamps were issued to commemorate the conference, and one of these (as the illustration shows) aptly underlined the theme of international co-operation by giving the conference slogan, f ‘Only One Earth,” in

Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian. With all this, it is not surprising that there was barely enough room left for the name of the issuing country and the face value of the stamp. The perforations, it will be noted, are missing from the sides of the stamp, but not from the top and bottom. This is not an error; it is simply the result of the unique Swedish practice of printing most of its stamps only in coils and booklets rather than in conventional sheet form. The stamp illustrated is from a coil, making perforations down the sides unnecessary.