Proposals discussed to put line between Welsh and English on road signs to help avoid ‘confusion’
Twm Owen, local democracy reporter
A line between Welsh and English on road signs could help avoid “confusion” for drivers, it has been suggested.
The idea was raised by Monmouthshire Conservative councillor Jane Lucas who is a driving examiner and who said she can have difficulty reading information on road signs as she has dyslexia.
She asked: “Could we put a vertical line between the English and Welsh?”
Cllr Lucas, who raised the question as Monmouthshire County Council’s scrutiny committee considered the authority’s annual Welsh language standards monitoring report, added: “It would help people get less confused, it would certainly help me.”
The Osbaston councillor said she will often pass a road sign before she had picked up the English wording but said a line would help her identify it: “A small thing like a line, your eye would go there, whether is above or below I’m not saying one is right or wrong.”
‘Higher’
Welsh language officer Nia Roberts said it was a general Welsh language standard that Welsh text has to be “higher” – so that it is read before English – on signs.
She said knowing which language appears first should aid drivers in reading signs but any suggested change to signs would have to be looked at further.
Pennie Walker, the council’s recently appointed equalities and Welsh language manager, said “with my equalities head on” she could raise the issue in relation to dyslexia with the department responsible for signs.
Committee chairman, Conservative councillor for Gobion Fawr Alistair Neill said: “It wouldn’t be an unreasonable point with 83 per cent, of Monmouthshire residents, having no Welsh are they paying insufficient attention to the English?”
He joked: “I guess we are all driving at 20 miles an hour now so have a bit longer to read them.”
Usk independent councillor Meirion Howells said as he is bilingual it isn’t an issue for him but said others had also suggested a line on signs or “having little flags attached to them, to catch the eye.”
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
Does she mean a horizontal line? What good is a verticle one?
She could mean the | symbol to demarcate the two languages.
Different colour font like in Ireland
Or a different font such as comic sans for the English.
Surely the lorry with the red line through it is the most important part of that particular sign. Icons are universal.
Just the same old anti-Cymraeg tropes. Boring! Bore off!
I speak Welsh but like my father and his father it is the cerrig calch version. By the time I have tried to read the Welsh I am past the sign. Clearly dividing the languages is nothing but a good common sense safety idea..
Wel, os wyt ti’n Gymro byddi di’n gwybod bod hwn yn rwtch pur.
rwtch gair newydd I fi
I don’t have dyslexia, so I cannot comment of not having a line (which ever way up), if this will help people then a good thing?
Remove the licenses from the people with issues, this is getting stupid now. How do these English readers cope with more than one name on a sign then, do they all need lines. Pandering to the bigot is not the way forward.
if she has difficulty reading road signs. should she be driving?
Perhaps the DVLA might take a view?
If anyone has difficulty reading the English on signs should their licence restrict them to driving in Wales? Of course not.
Pedantic insistence on bilingual road signs with Welsh first reduces support for the Welsh Language in English speaking parts of Wales, in my opinion.
Insults will be ignored, reasoned replies only please.
Aside from the fact that this is an anti-Cymraeg rant, it does raise an issue. What should be happening is the removal of mis spelt or indeed nonsense names from road signs and leave the correct spelling. It is utter nonsense that signs (for example) display Crynant/Creunant; Aberafon/Aberafan or further mispelling; Dunfant/Dyfnant. Then there is the total nonsense – Llantwit Major. A Welsh saint with the name Twit Major???? There are countless examples of this and putting it right lifts that status of our language – and making signs smaller helps people so easily confused like Ms Lucas. Incidentally, a… Read more »
St Twit Major is up there with St Rollox in Scotland in the nonsense table.
Yes, there must be “major twits” living in Llanilltud Fawr for not getting that beauty corrected. Perhaps it has got the name right considering the amount of twits living there.
I notice a distinct lack of dyslexic drivers who don’t also happen to be tories complaining about it.
funny that.
Sir Fynwy is Labour now.
This is just another manoeuvre by those opposed to indigenous British culture. Anyone who can’t read the road shouldn’t be driving.
The first word that you can understand is the start of the sentence: it’s not complicated.
How would a line between the two languages help with dyslexia. One of my grandchildren has dyslexia, and it does not go away when he sees a line on a page in a book, when attempting to read, he has a special coloured plastic sheet to place over the page. He is dyslexic in English and Cymraeg, and I would wager if he was shown or taught any language to read he would still be dyslexic, no amount of flags badges or any other symbols will make it go away.
It’s just cultural chauvinist nonsense.
Government trying to fix something that isn’t broken
Sometimes I think people get annoyed for the sake of it on both sides. We should certainly move to one placename only where the alternative is a translation or a transliteration, but elsewhere in a legally bilingual country the signing has to be in both, irrespective of what opinions you may have on English in public life (or Welsh as not everyone on here is supportive of it). Can we not just objectively look at how to make the signs which work most effectively in communicating the information in the language that the reader wants. Having two languages the in… Read more »
English rednecks often speak disparagingly about the “easily offended” yet they seem to get aroused at the slightest use of the Welsh language. Odd that, innit ?
Only about 18% of the population speak Welsh, so you would think that it there was a genuine issue with road signs, you might hear complaints from all the Welsh people who only speak English?
yet it’s always English people, or tories who identify as british, who complain about it. So I just don’t buy that it’s a genuine problem.
I say that as an English speaking, Scottish incomer who doesn’t speak much Welsh.
No, The Welsh is at the beginning of the wording so is read first. If you can read Welsh, you have got the message. If you only read English, by the time you get to the English part, often you have passed the sign and missed the message.
Yes, divide the two languages on signs.
Surely most people just automatically focus on the language they recognise in a fraction of a second and read the relevant block of text? Just like if you’re looking at a long list of destinations on a sign where your brain automatically locks onto the one that’s relevant – you don’t read them all in turn, one at a time. Or are we really saying people are reading entire road signs top to bottom, laboriously mouthing out every single word in a language they don’t understand, in the manner of a pre-schooler, till they finally stumble with teary-eyed relief onto… Read more »
How long do you spend reading the bit of the sign you don’t understand, or is it that you’re travelling at the speed of light?
And Labour councillors
TfW Rail has clearly been agonising over this with various combinations of greens, greys and blacks and bold / light type on their station signs coming and going in recent years. Seems their solution to the issue is putting English second AND in lighter lettering. They should be careful what they wish for in Monmouthshire. 😂
Yes I noticed that with TfW, makes a mockery of the Welsh Language legislation, which says equal treatment has to be given to both languages 🙂
It does, it does use Cymraeg on its trains often. Should be prosecuted for their English only nature
It’s interesting how we differ from Scotland on this. Despite otherwise using identical signs to us, they use different colours for English and Gaelic on their road signs.
I don’t think a change is really needed, but copying the Scottish approach wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. (It would look much neater than the messy mix of all-capitals and italics in Ireland, anyway!)
Possibly also time we started using e.g. “100m” for short distances, instead of the rather old-fashioned “100 llath / 100 yards”. Saves space and is language-neutral!
Dydw i ddim yn gweld gwledydd Ewropeaidd gydag arwyddion yn Saesneg. Mae’n rhaid i dwristiaid ddioddef yr ieithoedd lleol sy’n gywir yn fy marn i. Mae’n anghywir pan mae’n rhaid i ni yma yng Nghymru foddio at y siaradwyr Saesneg. Byddwch yn falch o’ch mamiaith er mwyn daioni!!
Where have all the replying comments gone that were here?
How “slow” must you be if this is in fact needed?
I don’t see much of an issue. There is plenty of space between the two languages. The only change we need is that Welsh should be before English on all road signs because there are many that aren’t, like motorway signs. I don’t speak fluent Welsh but making the effort to learn.
But if it helps people who have difficulties reading due to things like dyslexia then a short line could help.
It brings up the questions… How far is this this to go? Every sign including motorways? If they are spending money on this let’s prioritise our Welsh language.
Can’t read a road sign containing text in your first language because there’s some other stuff on there too? Then DVLA should put your licence in the shredder.
It cost an absolute fortune to change speed limit signs. Now it may cost another bundle of cash to put a line to separate Cymraeg from English. There are more essential things that need doing here first.
So how many deaths have there been on Welsh roads due to introduction of bilingual road signs? Let’s have the stats. And have there been more in Monmouthshire due to Llantilio Pertholey and Llandeilo Pertholau being on the same sign?
Is there one driver iin Wales who would be confused or not understand if the sign just said “Usuitable for HGVs”?
If you reply please just answer my question and don’t dare to accuse me of being anti the Welsh Language!
Or perhaps, just the picture without any text might be clearer. Use the extra space provided to make it larger.
I’m sure the HGV drivers they are trying to communicate with are neither Welsh or English speaker, so a photo would be better.
This sign always made me laugh, in a later Google view half of it was blanked out.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6153786,-3.0072949,3a,15y,318.73h,90.29t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sgNzhNJYarN7L9Ecp1-6qfQ!2e0!5s20160801T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DgNzhNJYarN7L9Ecp1-6qfQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D318.726398468021%26pitch%3D-0.2931935917537771%26thumbfov%3D90!7i13312!8i6656?coh=205410&entry=ttu
That isn’t the point, Wales is a bi-lingual country.
Plus I’m willing to bet that there hasn’t been even one casualty caused by these signs.
As I’ve said time and time again, if you are confused by a bi-lingual road sign to the extent that you crash the car, then you have no business having a driving licence. The roads will be safer without these people.
I’m not saying for one minute that you’re anti Welsh language.
Can you please explain how English monoglots mange when they take their vehicle’s through the Channel Tunnel to Continental Europe!
I don’t know if you are aware but you will see many right hand drive vehicles on mainland Europe.
I don’t know if you have ever travelled outside the UK but many countries use bilingual road signs and I would hate to think how you would manage in Switzerland where it’s common place to see the 4 National languages on one road sign.
The Greeks seem to manage fine with road signs in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts with no dividing line.
Cllr. Lucas might like to note that pretty pictures are often included on signage for the hard of thinking.