It's been some time since I visited the Gaeltacht in Ireland, so I don't know if there are any such signs.
I have now three times tried to post a link to a picture of an Irish road instruction sign but the link just won't show up in the message, LP really doesn't like it for some reason. So google images for Géill Slí or Go Mall or the like, and you'll find some. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geill_Sli-2.jpg
Edited a fourth time by: iviehoff because the link just wouldn't show up
#20 -- Either the URL of the link or the name you were trying to give it probably had an apostrophe in it.
The Thorn Tree god's don't approve of apostrophe's in link's.
I'm with nerb and istvan that instruction signs in Irish, Welsh, or Scots Gaelic are not a good idea. You want to keep such signs to a minimum (and you want people to understand them).
Speaking of which, I saw a sign last month on I-95 in Delaware that said "Notice: E-Z Pass only this lane." What in the world is the point of saying "Notice" at the top of that sign? Are people more likely to read it if you tell them to? I doubt it, and it just takes more time, which may be an issue for non-native speakers and other slow readers..
Are people more likely to read it if you tell them to?
Since they're only being told to read it if they start reading it anyway, it seems a bit Alice in Wonderland.
However, having been in meetings where the boss insists on some daft wording like that in a public notice, and being portrayed as insanely picky and pedantic for objecting, I've got a good idea how these things get passed
I worked in Wales for seven years and we were planning interviews for a much sought after job. We were advised to run two separate assessment centres in parallel: since many of the Welsh applicants' first language was Welsh they should be allowed to speak and write in Welsh.
This was not political correctness (although our approach was most certainly being monitored by politicians) - the Welsh advocates argued that whilst all Welsh applicants could speak fluent English, they would be at a disadvantage on two grounds: they feel more confident speaking in Welsh; they write better in Welsh than in their second language, English.
I took the advice. In the end, an applicant from England was appointed, despite the expectations that I - a Scotsman - would almost certainly appoint a Welsh person. It's not just that I applied equality of opportunity; it's also that appointing the best person for job made my life easier, political fall-out excepted.
As for Scots Gaelic - actively promoting a language, and culture thereby, which was ruthlessly and systematically suppressed is no bad thing.
It is a bad thing if people can't read important road directions due to excess verbiage.
That's the problem with promotion of culture by committees - it's just as likely to have the opposite effect to that claimed
As for Scots Gaelic - actively promoting a language, and culture thereby, which was ruthlessly and systematically suppressed is no bad thing.
Quite so. My concern is whether this right of access to the EU in Scots Gaelic is the best use of scarce financial resources for language promotion. My suspicion is that it is a very poor use of the money, and it could be spent much better.
Despite Irish being the official language of Ireland, so that all EU materials must be translated into Irish; despite everyone at school in Ireland having to learn Irish; despite bilingual signs and much more everywhere; despite one of the most influential and long-serving of recent prime ministers of Ireland, Charles Haughey, being an Irish language enthusiast who spoke it fluently; the active use of Irish still seems to be mainly restricted to a few small Gaeltacht areas, and a few enthusiasts and academics elsewhere. Plainly all that support over many decades means that Irish Gaelic is more lively than Scots. But on a scale showing Welsh and Scots Gaelic, I think you might still put Irish nearer Scots. Maybe that's because Welsh was never reduced to quite the low level that Irish was, a position from which it is much harder to recover. But in general the number and distribution of Welsh users across extensive areas of Wales, and the use of the language in public administration, makes the treatment of Wales as a two-language country across its full area much easier to justify, although it hasn't made much of an inroads back into the working communities of the south.
But what the Irish experience tends to suggest is that you can spend a huge amount of money on language recovery, and not achieve very much. I tend to suspect that some of this new Scots Gaelic spending is in that category.
Although use of Scots Gaelic is now said to be rising among the younger age groups, I believe that the age distribution of Scots Gaelic speakers is such that the number of native speakers must fall for quite sometime before it might begin to rise again. I suspect that continued local grass-roots measures in the core area, and gradual extension of the area where the language is promoted in that way, are probably better use of the money than this.
But there were still a good number of Scots Gaelic speakers left when the "ruthless and systematic suppression" stopped.
The language has continued to decline except among middle-class enthusiasts. You can still hear people speaking it among themselves in the Outer Hebrides, but the Gaelic population of those islands is gradually being supplanted by urban dropouts from all over Europe, who might of course take up Gaelic as a hobby, and often do
Languages die for lots of reasons, and "ruthless suppression" is not the only reason, though we may choose to focus on that to the exclusion of other factors when trying to make people feel guilty.
I'm not saying the decline is a good thing, in fact I find it sad, but you have to be honest about it, as iviehoff has been above.
