FosseWay wrote:The failure to choose Polish, which today would be a self-evident choice, can be explained by the fact that those signs have been there for a very long time. They predate the entry of Poland etc. into the EU and possibly even the fall of the Wall.
Clutching at straws here, but could Swedish have been chosen because it is also intelligible by Danes and Norwegians? Even so, for all three nationalities English is a more obvious choice than any of the other Scandinavian languages.
It is odd.
The sign exiting Clacket Lane has Czech, which in a previous discussion we worked out acts as something intelligible to most Eastern Europeans who speak Slavic languages.
"“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations" Thomas Jefferson
FosseWay wrote:Clutching at straws here, but could Swedish have been chosen because it is also intelligible by Danes and Norwegians? Even so, for all three nationalities English is a more obvious choice than any of the other Scandinavian languages.
Slightly off topic, but how likely is someone who only speaks Icelandic to be able to understand Swedish?
(In reality, I understand Danish and English are both taught there from an early age)
I would say the degree of dissimilarity between Icelandic and the mainland Scandinavian languages is not as great as the difference between Anglo-Saxon and modern English but greater than that between Latin and French, if that helps put it in context.
An Icelander or anyone else who can speak/read Danish well will have no problems with written Swedish (just as I who speak and read Swedish well have no particular problems reading Danish). But I'm not sure how widespread practical and extensive knowledge of Danish actually is in Iceland. I suspect English is more relevant as a second language these days.
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FosseWay wrote:I would say the degree of dissimilarity between Icelandic and the mainland Scandinavian languages is not as great as the difference between Anglo-Saxon and modern English but greater than that between Latin and French, if that helps put it in context.
An Icelander or anyone else who can speak/read Danish well will have no problems with written Swedish (just as I who speak and read Swedish well have no particular problems reading Danish). But I'm not sure how widespread practical and extensive knowledge of Danish actually is in Iceland. I suspect English is more relevant as a second language these days.
Thanks for that.
I know for a fact that spoken English in Iceland is superb- there were very few words, if any (can't remember) they didn't understand.
I brought up the Danish because I'm sure I read somewhere they learn it from the same age as English which would make sense given the historic connections, so I would assume they'd be as good at that as they are at English.
FosseWay wrote:I would say the degree of dissimilarity between Icelandic and the mainland Scandinavian languages is not as great as the difference between Anglo-Saxon and modern English but greater than that between Latin and French, if that helps put it in context.
An Icelander or anyone else who can speak/read Danish well will have no problems with written Swedish (just as I who speak and read Swedish well have no particular problems reading Danish). But I'm not sure how widespread practical and extensive knowledge of Danish actually is in Iceland. I suspect English is more relevant as a second language these days.
I toured Iceland in 1983. I was led to believe that Icelandic, Danish and English were all studied at school. Most books in the bookshops appeared in both English and Icelandic and the norm then was to go to University in Denmark. Our guide, who went to university in Denmark, spoke fluent Icelandic, German and English. The only English/German phrase that I picked up was wheh she said that supper would be at "half past seven"/"um halb sieben". (The Germans would have said "half before eight").
It is quite usual in the Arab world to have Arabic and English or another Latin alphabet based language on the signs. One exception I've been reading about was Gaddafi's Libya where the signs were in Arabic only to make moving about for non Arabic speakers more difficult and make learning a second language difficult for Libyans.
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I don't doubt that Danish is taught in schools, but in isolation that just means that your average Icelander is as good at Danish as your average Brit is at French. I suspect far more Icelanders study English at a higher level (A level plus) and they will certainly absorb more by "osmosis" through films, music and technology.
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FosseWay wrote:I don't doubt that Danish is taught in schools, but in isolation that just means that your average Icelander is as good at Danish as your average Brit is at French. I suspect far more Icelanders study English at a higher level (A level plus) and they will certainly absorb more by "osmosis" through films, music and technology.
I think the 'osmosis' is definitely important, but learning Danish is usually also compulsary- found this from an official website:
'English is the most commonly learned language at the upper secondary level with 15,454 students, who are 61.5% of students at the upper secondary level. Danish is the second most commonly learned language with 8,268 students; 32.9% of students at this level. These two languages are compulsory for most students at the upper secondary level.'
Vierwielen wrote:The only English/German phrase that I picked up was wheh she said that supper would be at "half past seven"/"um halb sieben". (The Germans would have said "half before eight").
Most Germanic languages takes that approach: German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Frisian. The English language pinched the Latin approach. Like French 'sept heures et demi', Italian 'sette e mezzo' etc.
In some areas of Germany, they even speak of 7.15 and 7.45 as 'quarter eight' and 'three quarters eight'. Perfectly logical. The clock as a maths exercise
Russian also uses the Germanic approach for the half-hours. Up to half-past it's xx of the next hour, so 8.30 is polovina devyatovo (sorry, can't be bothered to do Cyrillic at this time of night!) or half of the ninth (hour). After the half, it's the following hour minus so many minutes, so 8.50 is bez desyati devyat (without-10 nine).
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Vierwielen wrote:The only English/German phrase that I picked up was when she said that supper would be at "half past seven"/"um halb sieben". (The Germans would have said "half before eight").
Just that halb Sieben is an hour earlier than half past seven.
Here in Ireland we have had bilingual road signage for the past 65 years or more. In Gaeltacht (supposedly Irish speaking) areas road signage is in Irish only.
We also have the multi-lingual "Drive on the left" signs at ports and airports.
[quote="vlad"]There are five languages on this sign in England.
A pity that only three of them are written correctly. (Only two if you if you count the missing diacritic in the French, but then I wouldn't want people to think that I'm a pernickety old so-and-so ...even though I am.)
vlad wrote:There are five languages on this sign in England.
A pity that only three of them are written correctly. (Only two if you if you count the missing diacritic in the French, but then I wouldn't want people to think that I'm a pernickety old so-and-so ...even though I am.)
mikewhitcombe wrote:
vlad wrote:There are five languages on this sign in England.
scragend wrote:As for other countries, Belgium is known for tying itself up in linguistic knots on its road signs. You may even get trilingual ones in/close to the German-speaking area. South Africa I think has a different approach, whereby they alternate with one sign in English and the next saying the same thing in Afrikaans.
This is something only done in areas where Afrikaans has prominence, i.e. (Pre-1994) Transvaal and Western Cape. And rightfully so. Given the 9 other official languages in SA, you can almost wait for more, yet I haven't seen any such signs yet.
There are few if any new Afrikaans signs in Johannesburg; Afrikaans has much more of a presence in Pretoria so maybe that's different. In public life generally the trend is towards linguistic standardization (English) rather than further fragmentation, and I doubt you will see ever see new signs in other languages in truly multiethnic cities like Joburg. I suppose where one African language has overwhelming dominance, like Zulu in most of KZN, it might make it onto signs at some point if it hasn't already.
