develops new Welsh letters for road signs
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As a graphic designer I would have thought he could see the signs & font look outdated like something from 1850 & less readable to current clear reading signs. Also adding extra characters, is he living on a different planet.
UK sign font should all be the same to be consistent.
Surely everyone who can read Welsh will be able to handle their own alphabet & those who have a basic understanding (Welsh second language education) also get what’s going on with the existing system.
Everyone else is just going to read the English signage only? Surely.
It’s April 1st yer? So he’s looking to amend the Welsh language? The Welsh language police would have a field day, and has he though of all the L’s and D’s who would go to the font farm. What an iddiott / idiot.
Changing the alphabet is not an extra-planetary idea: The Turks have done it once, the Azeris a couple of times and some of the central Asian countries have changed alphabets three times over the past hundred years. The Russians tidied up their alphabet following the Russian revolution. The Spanish have changed the status of ‘ll’ and ‘ch’ in their language and these are just the examples I know of, I bet there are hundreds of others. Even the English managed to drop two letters, though that happened a millennium ago.
I am not a linguist but I have been baffled by whether the Welsh have completely got a grip on which letters are actually in their alphabet. It is an issue that has been a struggle for the Cymry ever since they tried to systematize their language and someone came up with the idea of these double letters. I am amazed WAG hasn’t set up some quango to deliberate on this ad infinitum et nauseam.
I like the green and red colour scheme (but will it faded quicker? and how will the colour blind cope?), but the different typefaces is a second rate idea borrowed from the Gaeltacht in Ireland. They have a folky italic typeface for Irish, though less retro than the one used for Basque in France. Overall as a designer, he has done well to get us thinking. We definitely need some new symbols because road signs in Wales are getting wordier and bigger!
Leave well alone. The signs are bilingual.That should be good enough. Yes, languages do evolve but this is not feasible.
Place names, village & street names – Welsh only
Use symbols where at all possible eg. a wheel for industrial estate (wheels of industry).
Bi-lingual safety signage red & white. Red background with white print (Welsh) white background with red print (English)Original Story
Why doesn’t England put a Welsh translation of their town and cities under their names too?
So Chester would be Dinas Moch,
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