What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

[Glen]

"Drive on left" signs are common in the Highlands, especially at tourist attractions, in several languages.



And also near ports.

[Owain]

"Drive on left" signs are common in the Highlands, especially at tourist attractions, in several languages.

I think I remember seeing them on the A9 heading North from Perth, presumably because that could be the first bit of S2 that a continental driver heading that way will encounter, and because the sparsity of traffic might enable the driver to forget in a way that you wouldn't if driving a traffic-clogged A40 or A15, for example.

[Glen]

There aren't any like that on the A9 itself, although car parks at attractions along the route might have them.
There are plenty of two-way traffic warning signs, which remind drivers of all nationalities that it is a single carriageway road as well as which side to drive on.

Also, it is common to see multi-lingual VMS messages in the summer.

[exiled]

The big Belgian sign is in a part of Belgium with language facilities. It is just inside Wallonia but the Flemish minority is large enough to require Dutch to be signed.

Greece and Cyprus sign in Greek and English.
Spain has bilingual signs in Cataluna, Pais Vasco, Navarra and Galicia, and also in some parts of Castillian Spain.
Israel they are usually trilingual, English, Hebrew and Arabic
Canada the three territories, Yukon, Nunavut and North West Territories are minimum bilingual. If the sign is Federal or on federal land it will also be bilingual no matter where in Canada it is. In the provinces most are monolingual English except Quebec (monolingual French), New Brunswick (bilingual) and Ontario where they appear to be moving to bilingual English and French.

[Nwallace]

"Drive on left" signs are common in the Highlands, especially at tourist attractions, in several languages.

Oh! Never seen the Gaelic name for Fort Augustus before; Cille Chulmein...
Wikibawsica... Yikes!

Original Scots name was Kiliwhimin

But the Saint is Cummein

[Mark Hewitt]

I notice someone has started a thread about bi lingual signs in Wales.

What other countries have bi-lingual signs? Do any have three or more languages on signs?

Nobody mentioned Ireland yet?!

[Nwallace]

I'm now wondering if there's any settlements in Scotland that's got different names in Gaelic, Scots/English and Norn

[bothar]

I'm now wondering if there's any settlements in Scotland that's got different names in Gaelic, Scots/English and Norn

Surely that should be Gaelic, Scots, English and Norn and you are not implying that Scots is the game as English! Shock Horror.

[Nwallace]

I'm now wondering if there's any settlements in Scotland that's got different names in Gaelic, Scots/English and Norn

Surely that should be Gaelic, Scots, English and Norn and you are not implying that Scots is the game as English! Shock Horror.

I may be suggesting that there are no English language place names in Scotland at all

[Glen]

The Anglicised version of Cille Chuimein is Kilchuimen, which I think is what was most recently used until 18th century military establishments appeared. The name is still used, for example the schools and medical centre, and there have been suggestions locally to revert to that name.

Dingwall has Norse origins and a different meaning to Inbhir Pheofharain (mouth of the Peffery).

[exiled]

I'm now wondering if there's any settlements in Scotland that's got different names in Gaelic, Scots/English and Norn

Surely that should be Gaelic, Scots, English and Norn and you are not implying that Scots is the game as English! Shock Horror.

I may be suggesting that there are no English language place names in Scotland at all

Scots and English are mutually comprehensible being West Germanic off shoots of the same stem, West Germanic-Old English. Scots is closer to Old English than modern English is! So the pot gets stirred.

The third member of our linguistic family, ie our closest linguistic relative, is Frisian. It has helped Frisian confidence that its closest relation is not Dutch, but English.

[Lewandowski]

Poland has bilingual signs too. I have seen Belarusian, German, Kashubian and Lithuanian signs.

[MJG]

I notice someone has started a thread about bi lingual signs in Wales.

What other countries have bi-lingual signs? Do any have three or more languages on signs?

I think most European countries contain areas of strong language minorities. The signs are often bilingual in those areas.

Niebüll, Germany

Niebull.JPG (16.1 KiB) Viewed 1961 times

Parts of Finland are bilingual, with Swedish as the second or even the first language. The implications to the signage are discussed at http://www.mattigronroos.fi/Tiet/eng/

Language areas in Finland (Turquoise Finnish-Swedish bilingual, Green Swedish-Finnish bilingual, Yellow Swedish monolingual, Pink Finnish-Sami bilingual, other Finnish monolingual)

There are a few tri-lingual signs in the northern Norway (Norwegian, Sami, Finnish):

Lakselv, Norway

Lakselv.jpg (74.38 KiB) Viewed 1961 times

[chris486]

Three languages, three alphabets.

Israel popped into my head when I first saw the thread.

[Lewandowski]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... elanka.jpg This is my favourite, as it is a bilingual Polish/Lemko commune. While most people will have heard of the German minority in Poland, the Kashubian and Belarusian minorities are less heard of, and virtually no-one in the UK would have heard of the Lemko minority.

[brombeer]

Scots and English are mutually comprehensible being West Germanic off shoots of the same stem, West Germanic-Old English. Scots is closer to Old English than modern English is! So the pot gets stirred. The third member of our linguistic family, ie our closest linguistic relative, is Frisian. It has helped Frisian confidence that its closest relation is not Dutch, but English.

You can't deny that in terms of linguistic history, but if you look at how many words they took from Dutch and North German (rather than their closere linguistic relatives), it's probably fair to say that English, Scots and Frisian are now miles away. Compare today's news in Frisian with the Scots language Wikipedia and you'll see a further form of evidence how pots do get stirred.

In fact, the Frisian pot got so stirred by Dutch that a non-linguist Dutchman will find it hard to justify that Frisian is considered the second language of the Netherlands, without equivalent recognition for dialects that sound as distant to Dutch as Frisian.

[Nwallace]

Scots also "borrows" from Norse and Gaelic as well not just words but sentence structures; which have then filtered into Scottish English!

[scragend]

Going slightly off-topic, Wallonia has been working on a new style of signage, but despite this new style having been around for ten years or so, you still do not see it an awful lot. That's what you get in an area where signs won't be replaced until they truly fall apart. You can see the new style on my website.

In the French far North, there are indeed bilingual references to many Flemish towns: Gent, Kortrijk, De Panne, Ieper. The French exonym always comes first and in a way you should be glad when there is also Dutch on the sign. This deviates from signs in the North-East of France and in fact Wallonia, where French exonyms for German towns (e.g. Sarrebruck for Saarbrücken, Trèves for Trier and Fribourg-en-Brisgau for Freiburg im Breisgau) have been gradually removed over time. Germany, The Netherlands and many other European countries have also adapted this as the new style of referring to places in different language areas: always the endonym and addition of an exonym only if space permits and motorists could get confused as a result of not knowing the actual name of the town.

I've always thought the Belgian signs in general look a bit shabby. They very often look like they've been knocked together by a local in his garden shed. (Please don't take this as a slight against the Belgian nation. I am very much a Belgophile, but they really could do with sorting their signs out.)

As for the exonym/endonym issue, I don't really know where I stand. As a foreign visitor, it can be difficult if you don't know that Trèves is Trier, or Liège is Luik, or whatever, but then again I wouldn't consider it wrong for a sign to be in the language of the majority of people who will see it, which surely is the native language of the area where the sign is located. If exonyms stop being used on signs, what then is the point of exonyms? Could they die out? For example if signs in West Flanders had to say Lille, would people talking about going over the border still say they were going to Rijsel? What purpose would the name "Rijsel" then serve if it never appeared on signs?

If the Flemish are to be told they can't use Rijsel, or the French can't use Sarrebruck, why can the English still use Munich? (Apart from the obvious answer that there aren't any road signs in England pointing to Munich.)

So many questions, and seemingly no one has the answers - or at least they can't agree which is the right one!

[scragend]

"Drive on left" signs are common in the Highlands, especially at tourist attractions, in several languages.

(picture snipped)

And also near ports.

(picture snipped again)

It seems that the makers of these signs can't agree on the French term. The pictures show both "roulez à" and "conduisez à" gauche, and think the ones coming out of Dover use "tenez la gauche".

I would have thought "tenez la gauche" would be better French. I know there is the difference between "keep left" and "drive on the left" but, for the latter, I would prefer "roulez" over "conduisez", it seems like better style to me. But I am not a native French speaker.

[Lewandowski]

What's curious about road signs to foreign destinations in Poland is that there's no real consistency. I've seen signs to both Lwów and L'viv, but then Dresden seems to be preferred over Drezno. Ostrava seems to be used over Ostrawa, but then Frankfurt nad Odrą is used exclusively over Frankfurt (Oder). Going North, you'll never see signs for Kowno, but only Kaunas. But then... Brest in Belarus is referred to as "Brezść".