Well now this depends upon where in Wales the signs are. Swansea has a modest number of Welsh speakers, but not a majority of the county borough are first-language Welsh. Signs in Carmarthenshire and anywhere west of Llandudno have signs in the Welsh first. Mind you, it is as equally illegal to have Welsh-only signs as it is to have English-only.cdd wrote:In that case, alexia, how come the English text appears above the Welsh text?
The difference between the Welsh example and your example with German is of course that Welsh is indigenous to Wales, and English is not indigenous to Germany. I am by no means a Welshyshouter, however surely the right of Welsh people to live their lives in Welsh in Wales stands to reason?Mr Q wrote:Yet if I were forced at the drop of hat to converse in German, to understand signs in German, to go about my day-to-day life using German, I would struggle (at least at first). But then I didn't learn German when I was very young. I wasn't exposed to it at all until school. Indeed, my exposure to it has pretty much only been in a classroom environment, apart from three weeks travelling through Germany a couple of years ago.
By contrast, I suspect - although I admit that I have no first hand knowledge of this - that most Welsh children grow up with quite extensive exposure to English from a very young age. Even if they have a preference for Welsh, I don't imagine Welsh-speakers would face any great difficulty if they had to read and understand something in English. My impression is that they are fully bilingual, and so even where English is the second language, their comprehension of it is not substantially lower than with Welsh. So I question whether it is strictly true that English doesn't come "naturally" to them.
And there are many people where I came from whose English skills are pitiful; some in my old town did not pass their GCSE with any grade. That is regrettable I agree, but not inexcusable, as there is afforded to them another means to exist and converse in their own country. A lot of Welshyshouters also refuse to use English at all.
My own opinion is that I don't find signs the problem, I find the paint on the roads the problem -- it's hard enough to read as it is, without e.g.
S+E C'FF
CITY CTR
DE+DN
C'YDD
CANOL
Y
DDINAS
