Driving where you don't speak the native language

[Jim]

The discussion in https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=7375.0 got me thinking about whether I'd be willing to make a trip like that into Mexico or other places.  What are your experiences driving in places where you do not speak the local language? 

My own international driving experiences are limited to Canada, Germany, and Austria.  In Quebec, I know enough French from high school to be able to read it pretty well so I almost always knew what the signs said.  If I needed anything, I was confident that there would always be someone willing to speak English at restaurants, hotels, etc.  In Germany and Austria, there was no problem at all with signs, since most important signage used international symbols, place names, or numbers.  And I was pleasantly surprised that I never had trouble communicating in English for whatever I needed.  I think there are many parts of the U.S. where I would have more trouble finding someone to speak English (US41 last month in Miami comes to mind).

I think that between my outdated French and having seen many bilingual English/Spanish packages, signs, etc, I could at least get the gist of the important signs in Spanish.  But there's no way I could carry on a meaningful conversation in Spanish.  I suppose all of that scares me less than the drug wars and the corruption we often hear about for travel to Mexico.

How about other parts of Europe, especially eastern Europe?  How difficult is it to figure out signs and to otherwise communicate in, say, Poland, if all you speak is English?

Then there are places that speak languages with different character sets, where I'd have no chance unless signs are bilingual.  I'd probably want to travel with a native in those kinds of places.

[english si]

Most of Eastern Europe uses the international symbols - Ireland is the only European country I can think of that uses different signage.

[1995hoo]

The only other countries in which I've driven are Mexico, Canada, and the UK. No problems at all in any of them regardless of language. I don't speak French, but the French-only signs in Quebec were generally clear enough; when I didn't necessarily understand a message usually I'd know what one of the words meant and I'd be able to figure out the others from that.

I did not do any driving in Russia–rode buses everywhere–and I'm glad I didn't. While they used a lot of symbols, there were enough signs in the Cyrillic alphabet that I'd have been worried about messing up, and the traffic was HORRIBLE anyway. There are some signs that are obvious as to meaning because you recognize a symbol. McDonald's and Baskin-Robbins are the two examples that pop readily to mind (not that those are road-related, of course). I also just happen to know that "PECTOPAH" means "restaurant." But the Cyrillic alphabet makes the signs just absolutely ALIEN and you can't even sound out what they say because you have no idea what most of the characters are.

Here's a Street View link to a spot I remember on Moskovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg. The white sign up ahead on the left (above the station wagon) is not as clear in the picture I took. I now know that Стоп transliterates as "STOP." But when I saw that sign from the bus I found myself wondering what in the world it was and at whom it was directed. I think it's a message for the tram operators who use the tracks in the median telling them to stop because of the pedestrian crossing.

[J N Winkler]

I did not do any driving in Russia–rode buses everywhere–and I'm glad I didn't. While they used a lot of symbols, there were enough signs in the Cyrillic alphabet that I'd have been worried about messing up, and the traffic was HORRIBLE anyway. There are some signs that are obvious as to meaning because you recognize a symbol. McDonald's and Baskin-Robbins are the two examples that pop readily to mind (not that those are road-related, of course). I also just happen to know that "PECTOPAH" means "restaurant." But the Cyrillic alphabet makes the signs just absolutely ALIEN and you can't even sound out what they say because you have no idea what most of the characters are.

If you read the Russian traffic manual before you go (GOST something or other--make sure you get hold of the late-1970's version, not the one that came out after the Soviet Union collapsed), I'd think you would have a fighting chance of coping with Russian traffic signs.  I'd be more worried about places like Georgia, which has a completely different script, or Kazakhstan, where the local alphabet is essentially an extension of Cyrillic with additional characters.

Years ago a friend and I went to Turkey, travelling mostly by coach, and we didn't have any difficulty with the signs since the Turks have a transparent color-coding system and are generally quite good about limiting themselves to Vienna convention signs.  We didn't pretend, however, that we understood every single sign.  Turkish is almost its own language family, and though loanwords from European languages (mainly French, but with some English) are used, they don't appear on traffic signs often enough to function as glosses.  It helped to learn some basic Turkish vocabulary and grammar:  yol = road, nüfüs = soul (or "person" within the context of town boundary signs which give the population), cami = mosque, and the convention that a compatible vowel is added to a noun when another noun (not an adjective) is used as a modifier (so, "Yeni cami" = new mosque but "Sultanahmet Camii" = Sultanahmet Mosque; also "Eski yol" = old road but "Divanyolu" = Imperial Council Road), etc.  (Turkish signing is not altogether free of jargon since the Turks don't genericize some destination labels as much as they should:  for example, "Emniyet müdürlügü," which translates literally as "Security directorate," is essentially a police station.)

[austrini]

I've driven in Western/Eastern Europe, Japan, Quebec, Mexico, and Australia (which doesnt count). Japan was very difficult, especially in construction zones. They have a lot of weird little icons that dont appear to make sense like people sleeping or a mermaid or etc... it made Europe extremely easy by comparison because the signs are all more of less uniform across much of the continent.

[realjd]

My experience with Mexico is that the signage is poor, and important signs can be figured out without difficulty. The word only signs were largely irrelevant messages like "obey all signs" and stuff like that.

I've also driven multiple times in various Caribbean countries where the solution to the signage problem was to just not use any. It seemed to work OK for them.

Think about it. Here in the US, how many critical word signs are there? Other countries are no worse and are often better.

And for what it's worth, you'll have no problem using English anywhere in Miami. It may not be their native language, but everyone (under the age of 50) knows enough English to get by.

[corco]

I've only really driven in Quebec, and that was totally fine even though I don't know a lick of French. I was able to get into and back out of downtown Montreal at about 12:30 AM (our plan had been as 18 year olds to stop in Montreal and get drunk, but we ended up getting there a bit too late to do anything) despite having never been there before and having little/no knowledge of the freeway system/layout of the city at the time and no map (knew that we needed to take 20 to 55 to get to Vermont and that's it).

It's pretty straightforward- as soon as we entered Quebec I made an effort to decode directions, and then I was a bit disoriented when we got into Dorion thinking I had missed a turn and accidentally got off the autoroute, but that probably would have happened in the US if I didn't know where I was going (I probably would have taken 540 to 40 if I had a map). But I figured out to get onto 720 by the Centre-Ville signs, assuming that probably meant "downtown," and that worked pretty well. It took a bit to figure out how to get back on the freeway, but we did eventually.

Given that I'd never been to that city before and was unfamiliar with the general layout of the freeway system  and it was late at night, I don't know that I would have fared any better if signage were in English. 

My Spanish is good enough that I'd be comfortable driving in Mexico alone from that standpoint (safety, on the other hand..)- I work at a hotel in Tucson at the front desk and routinely have to give directions to Mexican nationals up here on shopping trips to various Tucson destinations in Spanish and several times have checked people in and out in Spanish, so my Spanish comprehension is pretty good, provided the person I'm talking to speaks slowly.  I'm by no means fluent though- my comprehension is better than my ability to speak so what often happens is a guest speaks Spanish and I'll respond in English, them knowing enough English to understand and me knowing enough Spanish to understand.

[oscar]

I've driven in Quebec and Puerto Rico.  I remembered enough from four years of high school Spanish to catch on to the road signs in Puerto Rico, even though they aren't really bilingual.  I know even less French, but in Quebec it was fairly easy to figure things out in context (for example, I don't have burned into my brain what "voie" means, but a "1 voie" sign under a symbol for a narrow bridge obviously means "one lane"). 

The First Nations-language signs (with their own alphabets) here and there in Canada would've thrown me, except that they generally were in standard shapes like the familiar red "stop" octagon, so it didn't matter that I couldn't even read the alphabet.

[Road Hog]

France is the only country I've driven where language was an issue and that was at a tollbooth. Luckily, the tollbooth operator and I both spoke enough German to agree the toll was 16 francs.

[Chris]

I've never encountered any real problems on my road trips through Europe. Tolls are automated, they show you how much you have to pay and you pay. I always pay by credit card at unmanned booths because it's faster anyway. If you don't want to "talk with hands and feet" like apes, you need to learn some numbers to indicate which pump you used at the gas station. In the Czech Republic and Slovenia I used English and all attendants understood what I meant. I'd say speaking English is more of a problem in southern Europe than eastern Europe nowadays as long as you don't have some 40+ year old dude to deal with.

Sometimes when I'm France at a hotel or campsite, I ask "parlez-vous l'Anglais?" and they respond "un peu" which usually means they know 3 words and nothing more. I blame the dubbed programs on TV for that, most people don't have a clue how to pronounce English. Once I ordered an ice cream in Italy, and they didn't understand the word "magnum" (which is a universal brand in all of Europe). But, they said "ahhh, mainum!" which is about how you pronounce it phonetically in Italian.

[realjd]

^^^
Automated kiosks like toll booths are often unusable by us Americans with our antiquated swipe credit cards. They all seem to be chip-and-pin only.

[Chris]

They indeed appear to be for the chip-type credit cards. However, I have never had to enter my PIN at a toll booth. Gas stations and other locations usually require a PIN code though.

[cpzilliacus]

We didn't pretend, however, that we understood every single sign.  Turkish is almost its own language family, and though loanwords from European languages (mainly French, but with some English) are used, they don't appear on traffic signs often enough to function as glosses. 

I have driven a lot in Finland, and I don't speak much Finnish.

Finland is officially a bilingual nation (Swedish the official "second" language), but bilingual signs are only posted in municipalities where the percentage of Swedish speakers exceeds a certain threshold, which is along the south coast and parts of the west coast.  In the island province of Ã...land signs are posted in Swedish only, since almost none of the population speaks Finnish. 

Many Swedish words will be recognized by English speakers, which helps.

The Finnish language is not related to Swedish or any other Indo-European tongue.  It is a member of the Finno-Ugric family, and is closely-related to Estonian, and more-distantly related to Hungarian.  Fortunately, Finnish uses the Latin character set.

So in most of Finland, highway signs are in Finnish only.  But Finland does use the "usual" international European signage, so it's not so hard to navigate, and the signs are clear and generally well-maintained.

And most of the Finnish population under age of 65 or 70 is likely to speak English (and in many cases, excellent English).

[1995hoo]

They indeed appear to be for the chip-type credit cards. However, I have never had to enter my PIN at a toll booth. Gas stations and other locations usually require a PIN code though.

They're supposed to be able to accept an American card if you go inside to pay, rather than trying to use the pay-at-the-pump thing. I've never had a problem using an American credit card in Europe (including Estonia and Russia) other than at the pay-at-the-pump thing.

[J N Winkler]

Finland is officially a bilingual nation (Swedish the official "second" language), but bilingual signs are only posted in municipalities where the percentage of Swedish speakers exceeds a certain threshold, which is along the south coast and parts of the west coast.  In the island province of Ã...land signs are posted in Swedish only, since almost none of the population speaks Finnish.

As I recall (from material which the Finnish transport ministry supplied to the Bowen committee in 1972, which was considering bilingual signs for Wales), there are four scenarios in terms of signing in Finland:

*  Predominately Finnish (Swedish minority below a certain threshold)--Finnish only

*  Mixed Finnish-Swedish (Finnish majority)--bilingual signs, Finnish first

*  Mixed Finnish-Swedish (Swedish majority)--bilingual signs, Swedish first

*  Predominately Swedish (Finnish minority below a certain threshold)--Swedish only

This system was partly transposed to Wales, which is bilingual throughout but is divided into English-priority areas where English legend appears first on signs (mainly in southern Wales) and Welsh-priority areas where Welsh legend appears first (mainly in northern Wales).  For purposes of fixing language order on signs, it is assumed that each bilingual name pair is read from top to bottom, not inside-out.

[cpzilliacus]

Finland is officially a bilingual nation (Swedish the official "second" language), but bilingual signs are only posted in municipalities where the percentage of Swedish speakers exceeds a certain threshold, which is along the south coast and parts of the west coast.  In the island province of Ã...land signs are posted in Swedish only, since almost none of the population speaks Finnish.

As I recall (from material which the Finnish transport ministry supplied to the Bowen committee in 1972, which was considering bilingual signs for Wales), there are four scenarios in terms of signing in Finland:

*  Predominately Finnish (Swedish minority below a certain threshold)--Finnish only

*  Mixed Finnish-Swedish (Finnish majority)--bilingual signs, Finnish first

*  Mixed Finnish-Swedish (Swedish majority)--bilingual signs, Swedish first

*  Predominately Swedish (Finnish minority below a certain threshold)--Swedish only

The information they gave you is correct.  Helsinki has, of course, a Swedish-speaking minority, and even in the transit vehicles there (bus, trolley, regional rail and Metro), the signs are in both languages. 

As an aside (this would be good for AATransit :-) ), Helsinki is perfectly scaled for a trolley network.  It gets heavy use for a relatively small city, and the lines are relatively short, so it serves short trip lengths (longer trips are served by bus, regional rail and the Metro (only one Metro line, which  connects the eastern "suburbs" (within the corporate limits of the municipality of Helsinki) to the downtown area, though it is currently being extended to serve the western suburbs, which are outside the limits of Helsinki).

This system was partly transposed to Wales, which is bilingual throughout but is divided into English-priority areas where English legend appears first on signs (mainly in southern Wales) and Welsh-priority areas where Welsh legend appears first (mainly in northern Wales).  For purposes of fixing language order on signs, it is assumed that each bilingual name pair is read from top to bottom, not inside-out.

Never been to Wales (the only part of the UK I have visited is England).   Are the Welsh as sensitive to being called "English" as people from Scotland are supposed to be?

[J N Winkler]

Never been to Wales (the only part of the UK I have visited is England).   Are the Welsh as sensitive to being called "English" as people from Scotland are supposed to be?

Yes, very much so, but non-English Britons tend to tolerate it more from foreigners who use "English" as a metonym for "British" than from native English speakers who grew up in the UK and therefore should be aware of the "one nation, four countries" aspect of British identity.

It is in talking about Ireland that things get really strange.  The island of Ireland contains the entirety of the Irish Republic, a sovereign country, and Northern Ireland, which is formally part of the United Kingdom but whose status in relation to the other three countries actually has more in common with the dominion status Canada used to have.  Pretty much everything is separate in Northern Ireland with the exception of foreign affairs and national defense--NI, for example, has its own road traffic law (including traffic signs regulations), its own driver and vehicle licensing agency, etc.  I am American, and I have visited NI, but the vast majority of Britons (close to 90% of the British population actually lives in England) have not.

As a foreigner living in southern England, I encountered a number of Irish who described themselves unabashedly as coming from the Republic, and others who identified themselves just as "Irish" without offering any further glosses.  When I got to know one person in the latter group a bit better, I realized he was actually a middle-class Protestant from Northern Ireland.  I think people from that demographic group who go to England for university tend to identify themselves as Northern Irish when they want to make it clear that they are British, and just "Irish" when they don't want to get into the whole north-versus-south thing.

[Truvelo]

They indeed appear to be for the chip-type credit cards. However, I have never had to enter my PIN at a toll booth. Gas stations and other locations usually require a PIN code though.

They're supposed to be able to accept an American card if you go inside to pay, rather than trying to use the pay-at-the-pump thing. I've never had a problem using an American credit card in Europe (including Estonia and Russia) other than at the pay-at-the-pump thing.

I have the same problem using my card at some American pumps which ask for your zip code. I have no option but to pay inside. It's about time credit cards were standardized throughout the world.

[Duke87]

I have the same problem using my card at some American pumps which ask for your zip code. I have no option but to pay inside. It's about time credit cards were standardized throughout the world.

Supposedly, sometimes it works for foreign cards if you type in "00000".

[OracleUsr]

My French is only from Junior year in high school, about 24 years ago, but right after I graduated, we went to Quebec.  I kept asking "parlez-vous Anglais" and praying they would say yes.  Most did.

More recently, I went to New Brunswick, where most of the signs are in English and French, but when I went to Miscou Island at the northeastern tip, it was practically all French.  Thanks to the restaurant for having an English speaker on hand, or I would have been completely lost.

[ghYHZ]

I've found New Brunswick to be the most Bi-lingual of the provinces. Especially in Moncton, (pop 140,000).......go into a lot of stores and you'll hear a clerk switching effortlessly between English and French.

The French population in New Brunswick is mostly of Acadian descent (think Louisiana "Cajun" ) not Quebecois. 

[Dr Frankenstein]

I have the same problem using my card at some American pumps which ask for your zip code. I have no option but to pay inside. It's about time credit cards were standardized throughout the world.

Supposedly, sometimes it works for foreign cards if you type in "00000".

I have yet to find a pump that will accept that. I try it every time.

Sometimes I look at GSV imagery in Europe and can understand most of the signs, but there are a few generic danger signs ( /!\ ) with text plaques under them that I was completely unable to understand in some countries (notably the Netherlands).

[agentsteel53]

If you read the Russian traffic manual before you go (GOST something or other--make sure you get hold of the late-1970's version, not the one that came out after the Soviet Union collapsed)

as a clarification - GOST is Russia's equivalent of ANSI: a standards organization.  Just asking for a "GOST" will not lead you any closer in understanding to "I would like a traffic manual". 

[J N Winkler]

as a clarification - GOST is Russia's equivalent of ANSI: a standards organization.  Just asking for a "GOST" will not lead you any closer in understanding to "I would like a traffic manual".

Yup, I was being lazy.  In order to access the manual directly you actually need the GOST standard number, which I could not remember off the top of my head, hence "something or other."  And actually there are separate standards numbers for the various editions because GOST apparently does not recycle standard numbers for new editions.  The standards are as follows:

*  GOST 10807-78 (1978 edition)

*  GOST 23457-86 (1986 edition)

*  GOST 52290-2004 (2004 edition)

The 2004 edition can be downloaded here (not sure how official this version is):

http://avtogid4you.narod2.ru/zakon/GOST_52290-2004.pdf

I have the 1978 edition as well, but I am not sure if I have the 1986 one.  Sometimes it is possible to find scanned copies of the older standards on the Web for free, but availability tends to come and go and official standing of these copies is uncertain.

Soviet signs are like Soviet tech:  very simple.  Aside from a few fork diagrammatics, the 1978 manual has just chevron-ended signs and arrow signs which are comparable to our D-series conventional-road guide signs.  However, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russians have been building more actual freeways, so the 2004 edition has different types of diagrammatics which are supposed to be used at various kinds of grade-separated interchanges (including some cloverleaf diagrammatics of the kind not allowed in the US since the 1978 edition of MUTCD).

It is possible to find designs for signs done to the GOST standards which are pattern-accurate.  Moldova has them, for example (using the Latin alphabet since the official language is Romanian--actually described as "Moldovan," but since it looks like Romanian to me, that is the story I am sticking with):

http://www.asd.md/ENG/tenderdoc_contract-eng.htm

Edit:  Found a HTML version of the 1978 edition:

http://www.6pl.ru/gost/G10807-78.htm

[Chris]

Sometimes I look at GSV imagery in Europe and can understand most of the signs, but there are a few generic danger signs ( /!\ ) with text plaques under them that I was completely unable to understand in some countries (notably the Netherlands).

The Netherlands excels in putting numerous subsigns below regular signs to have sitautions legally watertight. It's usually "except for" or "except when" or something similar. No foreigner understands them and sometimes it's too much to get while driving even for a native Dutch.