Re: Street signs in languages other than the local/official one
- From: "Robert J Carpenter" <rcarpen@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 03:06:29 -0500
"GG1" <quincunx@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1132718117.590406.127830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> How common is this in the world's cities. Personally I know
> Philadelphia's Chinatown has official city street signs in
> Traditional
> Chinese script (generally translations but transliterations for
> streets
> like "Hutchinson"). I'm sure this has been discussed before -- what
> prompteed my inquiry is a recent debate in the city council of
> Fairfield, New South Wales -- a suburb of Sydney where it was
> suggested
> by one councillor that signage in Chinese would help alleviate
> illegal
> parking problems. This incensed the Asian community there (which BTW
> is
> predominantly Vietnamese -- though some are of them are of Chinese
> background) as they felt it was a continuance of the stereotype that
> Asians can't drive properly. The main problem is that the council is
> unwilling to pay for a new parking facility which would solve many
> of
> the problems. I'm not sure if the street signs themselves would be
> part
> of this proposal but it would definitely include instructional signs
> like "No Stopping," "No Parking," etc.
Many direction / placename signs in Greece have Roman-letter
"equivalents" on them. Unfortunately they do not use a consistemt
conversion from Greek. This means that the same town will have
different Roman-lertter spelling from one sign to the next.
But the Greeks must be used to that since "official" Greek changed
from an older form to a modern one within the past few decades. I
remember two buses sitting at the depot at Santorini - both destined
to the same place - but the destination's name was spelled differently
in Greek. This really confused a young Japanese couple who stood
there looking at their guidebook and then at the two buses, which were
departing a half-hour apart. Finally the driver of my bus (the
earlier one) yelled to them in English that he was going the same
place. They probably didn't understand his accented English since
they didn't board my bus.
>
.
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