More than 15 years after the invention of Google Maps, it seems strange that the issue of bilingual road signs is still exercising people quite as much as it is.
Cue a familiar row, and a petition to simply rename Fort William by its Gaelic name officially to avoid future problems.
So far, so tongue in cheek, but in Scotland, as well as in Wales and in Northern Ireland, the question of road signs has staying power. Either a wasteful example of petty nationalism or an effort by an oppressed community to simply exist under the yoke of the English, depending on your perspective, it remains good fodder for talk radio, taxi conversations and pub rows met with a groan by those nearby.
Why use bilingual signs?
Not only place names but also general traffic signs must be bilingual in Wales (Photo: Getty)
The case in favour of bilingual signs is fairly simple: this is Scotland (or Wales, or Ireland) and in spite of the fact that everyone speaks English now, these places often had names before they were either rendered into English or given new ones by anglophones. Why not, especially in areas where those languages are now strongest (the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, or republican west Belfast, say), respect that heritage with a sign that gives the minority language equal esteem?
In Wales, bilingual signage has been a legal requirement since 1983, including on safety signs (such as stop and yield). In Scotland, it has been emerging since the 1970s, and present on trunk roads in a number of council areas since 2002, but is still absent in 28 of the 32 local authorities.
For Wales, then, the question is largely settled.
“The campaign for bilingual signage in Wales was won decades ago, and we’ve all been able to drive without any safety issues whatsoever,” a spokesman for Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh language activist group, told i.
“Bilingual, or multilingual, signage is common all over the world, and only ever becomes a public debate when people try to ignite a culture war by stigmatising a minority language for no valid reason.”
In Scotland, Professor Wilson McLeod of the Celtic and Scottish Studies department at the University of Edinburgh told i that the signage is considered a “matter of showing respect for the language – both the Gaelic speakers of today and tomorrow and the role of Gaelic in Scotland’s past and present”.
Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the body in charge of the Gaelic language in Scotland, says that in the context of historical erasure, the use of Gaelic in signage “has an immediate impact on the status of Gaelic, making it visible, accessible and valued”.
The case against bilingual signage
A bilingual road sign near Uig in Scotland (Photo: Getty)
Critics have a number of angles of attack. They have, as the blogger Effie Deans did, claimed to be personally confused by signs that feature both languages, to the extent that they have been delayed in their arrival at their destination.
They have called the whole project, especially where old signs need to be replaced, a waste of money. There have been murmurs of nationalist plotting, particularly in Northern Ireland but increasingly in post-referendum Scotland: a wanton effort to make the signage look different to the rest of the UK, in order to encourage the people to feel different too.
Most of these arguments are political, and it’s hard to directly debunk a claim that someone got lost because they couldn’t find Fort William on a sign. It’s worth pointing out, too, that a 2019 freedom of information response revealed only two complaints about Gaelic signage have ever been made to the Scottish government.
But on one contention, there is some research: are bilingual signs dangerous? Is it a genuine problem that “Araf” is painted on the road alongside “Slow” in Wales, or that Inverness is “Inbhir Nis” too on the motorway sign?
In essence, if a sign has four lines on it, whether they’re all in English, or two are in English and two are in Welsh, that has an effect on the behaviour of drivers. The study found that drivers may be forced to “chunk” the information on the sign by reading it in multiple glances.
Signs with more than four lines were found to effect the behaviour of drivers (Photo: Getty)
Reading time is increased by up to 15 per cent on bilingual signs, according to prior research, but there’s no benchmark for whether that’s a lot or a little – especially compared to the distraction of something like a sat-nav or using the radio. It was suggested in the Leeds study, however, that becoming familiar with the set-up of the signs, rather than encountering them for the first time, could help.
Research commissioned by Transport Scotland in 2012 found no increase or decrease in accident rates in areas with bilingual signage, and suggested that the additional demand on attention may be absorbed into the margin drivers already give themselves for decision-making. It did, however, accept that this could be more difficult for tourists driving on already unfamiliar roads.
The picture elsewhere
It may then, to some extent, be beneficial to have signs solely in the lingua franca, for the sake of monoglot English speakers and tourists who are unlikely to have much of a command of Gaelic or Welsh. But the downside is marginal.
In Belgium, where three languages (French, Dutch and German) enjoy official status in various parts of the country, there has been research into whether simply putting them all in English would solve the problem.
Around the world
Signs in French and Basque in the Basque Country (Photo: Getty)
Much of Europe also uses bilingual signs on a region-by-region basis, with Switzerland (various mixes of French, German, Italian and Romansch), Finland (Finnish, Swedish and Sami) and Spain (Spanish and regional languages such as Basque and Catalan) being prime examples. Many other countries – including Greece – render place names in English when they use a distinct script that tourists and travellers may not be able to read.
In New Zealand, a more regional approach is taken, with “te reo”, the language of the Māori, gradually re-establishing its status in public life. Rotorua and Porirua, two towns on the North Island, have introduced bilingual signs – though not without the same conversations about “confusing” drivers taking place.
But the study, for the Brussels Institute for Applied Linguistics, concluded that traffic signs can convey an “important message” about language status – and that even three-line signs are “unlikely to have an impact on reading times and driving safety”, which could be good news for advocates of the Scots language looking to secure its status.
In Ireland, signs have been bilingual since the early days of independence in the 1920s, and tend to provoke little concern, although Irish-language campaigners have periodically pointed out that the smaller, italic font in which the Irish is rendered is almost always ignored in favour of the English.
Dr Brian Caulfield, a transport expert at Trinity College Dublin, highlighted research on drivers’ perception and the importance of placing signs with enough time for the correct decision to be made, but said that arguments about bilingual signs are non-existent.
“I’ve never heard a debate on the radio about the safety of bilingual signs in Ireland,” he said. “And of course if you’re getting directions these days, you’re getting them from your smartphone most of the time. I don’t see a huge issue.”
