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As anyone who has visited Canada will know, their signs are all bilingual; English and French. This might, just possibly might, make some sense in the predominantly French-speaking areas, but they seem wholly out of place in the others. On my visits to the west coast of Canada it always seemed a nonsense to me that official signage there was bilingual.
In our own country, signage in Wales has become bilingual even though the majority of residents there speak only English, and already bilingual signs are creeping in across Scotland even though only a minority speak Gaelic.
It is one thing to protect a language, but it is quite another to force it on the majority who don’t speak it. The cost of making bilingual signage and, in some cases official documents, must be phenomenal and is something that the Canadians found out years ago. Not only is the cost of bilingual signage expensive, it is often very confusing; the bilingual road signs in Wales are a good example of this.
Because the majority of folk don’t speak the language that is being forced on them, cock-ups can occur and they often take months to discover. Take the sign in Swansea which should have read, ‘No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.’ The man responsible for making signs misread the email order he got for it and made a sign which said in Welsh, ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.’
So I can’t say I have much sympathy for the Cornish folk, admirable people they may be, who have demanded the right to classify themselves as being of Cornish nationality on the 2011 census return. Those pressing for the change will be disappointed that MPs yesterday rejected the proposal. Which may dampen for a while any thought that signage in Cornwall should be bilingual.
It is a case, in my view at any rate, of permissum voluntas increbresco or, for those who don’t want their signs to be set out in Latin as well as English, ‘Let sense prevail’!
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As anyone who has visited Canada will know, their signs are all bilingual; English and French. This might, just possibly might, make some sense in the predominantly French-speaking areas, but they seem wholly out of place in the others. On my visits to the west coast of Canada it always seemed a nonsense to me that official signage there was bilingual.
In our own country, signage in Wales has become bilingual even though the majority of residents there speak only English, and already bilingual signs are creeping in across Scotland even though only a minority speak Gaelic.
It is one thing to protect a language, but it is quite another to force it on the majority who don’t speak it. The cost of making bilingual signage and, in some cases official documents, must be phenomenal and is something that the Canadians found out years ago. Not only is the cost of bilingual signage expensive, it is often very confusing; the bilingual road signs in Wales are a good example of this.
Because the majority of folk don’t speak the language that is being forced on them, cock-ups can occur and they often take months to discover. Take the sign in Swansea which should have read, ‘No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.’ The man responsible for making signs misread the email order he got for it and made a sign which said in Welsh, ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.’
So I can’t say I have much sympathy for the Cornish folk, admirable people they may be, who have demanded the right to classify themselves as being of Cornish nationality on the 2011 census return. Those pressing for the change will be disappointed that MPs yesterday rejected the proposal. Which may dampen for a while any thought that signage in Cornwall should be bilingual.
It is a case, in my view at any rate, of permissum voluntas increbresco or, for those who don’t want their signs to be set out in Latin as well as English, ‘Let sense prevail’!
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