Road signs and Irish Language

As it happens, my eye is drawn to the yellow writing - some gobbledygook I don't understand - which I find makes the sign much more difficult to read.

The only info on a road sign should be necessary info.

is it a necessity that the sign contains Irish ? NO.

Why ? Because the whole population speak English or 99.999% of us do.

The 2016 census showed a slight daily decrease in how much Irish is spoken in Ireland. The figures from Ireland's Census 2016 show 73,803 people, of the total population of 4.75 million, speak Irish daily. This equates to 1.7 percent of the population.

so why is it necessary that the signs are all congested with information that will take more time for the driver to look through...answer : politics.

Without a doubt Irish signs are in dire need of a redesign. Whoever thought of using an oblique typeface for road signage should never have had an input in the matter. Also the terrible use of condensing (by simply squashing the letters instead of designing a font, like in Italy or Germany) just makes the matter so much worse.

I don't really understand the argument of the yellow text being distracting or even unreadable. Greece uses these colours (yellow text in Greek on top, white text in English on the bottom). They look perfectly fine to me. In fact, I prefer it over the use of one colour for both languages - it just creates confusion otherwise (Wales makes the matter worse by changing the position of Welsh text in different areas). It's not to prioritise one language over the other.

The main issue with the original sign in the first post is that the sign is too narrow. This created a need for indentation, which is why it looks like 'An Muileann gCearr Thoir' is all over the place.

Here's something I quickly made there last night:

https://i.imgur.com/lgEvc1Y.png

Junction no. is at the top, following a technique used in some European countries (e.g. Czechia and Hungary). Route no. (with an outline, as seen in every European country bar Ireland and the UK) is placed at the top of the sign, followed by the destinations. I've used a specially designed condensed version of the font for 'An Muileann gCearr -Thoir', to avoid the sign from being too wide.

What are your thoughts?

No, you are missing the point. Ireland is legally and officially bilingual. It doesn't matter if more people speak English, because Irish is an official language too. The law requires the government to provide the information in both Irish and English, so unless you can convince the country to scrap either language, both will be on the signs.

If Ireland officially used both miles (English or Irish) and kilometres, then both would be on roadsigns too. But we don't - we scrapped English miles long ago, and Irish miles long before that.

The Official Languages Act of 2003, which puts the Constitution's naming of Irish as both the "national language" and the "first official language", and English as "a second official language", into effect by allowing signage in either Irish only or Irish and English.

@Strumms Well, if you are defining clutter and pandering as two languages on one sign, all I can say is that I hope you never have to suffer driving anywhere outside England or the US!

Of course, we could easily remove the "clutter" by extending the Irish-only roadsigns of the Gaeltacht across the entire country. As Irish-speakers are currently forced to speak English, English-speakers could easily just learn Irish. But something tells me you would still complain about the road signs then. ;)

I’m multilingual and have lived outside this country as well as having extensively travelled so that debunks your little rant there. :) closed mind ? No just not of the same mind as you evidently :)

im comfortable anywhere, debating whatever, but as this topic is about road signage I’d rather stick to that as opposed to making up hokey insults as you are inclined in your post above... thanks :)

I chose to use Clearview not for its supposed improved legibility, but rather it was a personal touch. The use of yellow and white text in Transport doesn't really sit with me (even though I do find Scottish bilingual signs to look not that bad). Otherwise, I don't think Transport is a bad typeface in itself.

The reason I placed it separately was because... where else can it go without making the sign bigger or crammed with too much information right next to each other? There is space at the top right, but then it would be too confusing. Currently, on exit taper signs, the route numbers are "floating" and uncentred while the junction number sits nicely at the bottom right. Following your opinion on "hierarchy" (albeit based on ADS signage rather than exit taper signage), I chose to place it at the top, followed by the route number, followed by the destinations. And while you mention it, I quite dislike the separation of route numbers on route confirmatory signs. The current rule is that it they are separated when there is more than one destination signposted; I'm not quite sure of the reasoning behind this, as even the UK doesn't do this. The only European country I can think of that follows this practice is France, but they separate their route numbers on all signs anyway. In my opinion, it looks much better when it's all on the one sign, like here: https://goo.gl/maps/LBcSUWGgJziwTMUG6

This was sort of an experiment on my part. I followed Dutch practice here, where they've used arrows pointed upwards since 2010.

Again, this was another experiment. I did realise afterwards that it should be bigger with wider spacing.

I disagree, Greek signage is still relatively clear, especially since it's based on German signage (at least, the motorway signs are). But speaking of which, when I experimented using coloured route numbers (red for motorways, white for N roads and yellow for R roads) it became all too much, so I did away with it.

This is where the Balkans exceed in their bilingual signage. Greece could've done the same, but at least their signage gives inspiration for Irish signage to follow the same practice, for me anyways. 😉

where did I say that I dislike Irish ? I don’t dislike it at all. You are making things up now :)

im saying that there are no people in this country who require Irish on the signs... every person who speaks Irish here speaks English...

therefore, de-clutter the signs, have only the information on them that is required.