By that I mean signage that either excludes your country or region’s official language, or gives it secondary importance and/or less visibility in favour of another language.
This is something I notice in my region of Portugal, the Algarve. It’s long been an international vacation destination and has a reasonable expatriate population, so signage in languages other than Portuguese is to be expected. What I don’t agree with is signage that places Portuguese in a secondary and/or less visible position (i.e. foreign language text comes first, is larger, bolder, ect…), or even worse outright excludes the official language.
This is something that I feel has become more noticeable in the past decade. The amount of billboards and other outdoor advertising for property and real estate has increased, and you can tell that it’s not directed towards the Portuguese as the official language has a lesser presence in comparison to English (or German, French, etc…) or sometimes absent entirely. The same goes for signage employed in shops and cafés/bars/restaurants in some areas of the region.
That being said, most signage in the region is in Portuguese (either entirely or primarily), but foreign language signage is still a common enough sight.
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I live in Prague downtown so basically on every street where is something for tourists, but these are mostly places where tourists go.
Never. Unless we count advertising, then all the time.
Live somewhere where noone wants to go. Problem solved
Never. In fact, I think the only place where I *have* seen it is in the centre of Reykjavik and in other places in Iceland on the tourist trail. Definitely not in England though.
In some towns on the French Riviera (thinking of Beaulieu sur Mer mainly), the signs of real estate agencies are written in Russian and English first, French is an afterthought. They know who their buyers are.
I think almost never? I’m so used to reading/listening to English that sometimes I don’t even notice if text or audio is English or German.
In the [Gaeltachtaí](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeltacht) English is not used in signage. In the rest of the country English is written in big writing and Irish is always written above in [Smaller writing.](https://www.dochara.com/info/driving-info/irish-road-signs/)
There are also a few unique cases of towns that are not Irish speaking but adopt the Irish name and so only have one official place name, like Portlaoise and Dun Laoghaire who used to be called Queenstown and Kingtown.
Pretty much only when driving through a Swedish-majority municipality. In Finland municipalities have either only Finnish, only Swedish or both languages on street signs, depending on the percentage of population of people’s mother language. In Lapland, Sami languages are also used. This is regulated by Finland’s language law, which prescribes Finland as a bi-lingual country.
Oh, they do that systematically in France, where French is the only official language. They constantly do that with the Basque language in the North Basque Country.
For example with street signs. You’ll notice that if they bother to put in the Basque language (which they usually don’t), they put the Basque name underneath the French one, or in smaller letters, or in a different font, when they don’t outright make mistakes, which they also regularly do.
Which they never do with French. In fact I think it’s part of French law to make the French version more prominent, it always has to be more visible.
Basque activists sometimes steal, graffiti or destroy the French versions, to only leave the Basque versions.
And that’s just the street signs…the French usually just ignore the Basque language in things such basic as advertisements and product labels.
As a funny note, I grew up in a Koreatown where most of the signage in the shops were only in Korean. It’s not a big problem. If English speakers enter a Korean shop, the chances are that they already know what they’re there for, or they can ask the shopkeeper for help (assuming he/she speaks okay English).
Plenty of other signage (advertisements, notices etc) were also only in Korean. The people who wrote them were usually purposely addressing themselves to Korean speakers and didn’t need or want English speakers to read them.
There are a lot of restaurants in Malmö, Sweden, that have signs in hindi, farsi or arabi in the windows. Usually Swedish as well, but not always.
It’s very common on the Black Sea coast to see gigantic signs about buying properties written only in Russian. Many restaurants there would advertise in Russian, English, German or Romanian.
Outside of touristic places it doesn’t happen that often
Welsh can be above English in Wales, that is quite common. Some international shops may have signs in that language (such as Polish or Chinese) often advertising things. Around Chinatown and Brick Lane some roadsigns are translated. But as a nice little touch rather than necessity.
Yeah, in touristic places in Turkey it is quite common to see signs only in English, German, increasingly Arabic… it’s been like that since quite some time.
Tricky question. If we say that ‘my language’ is the one I speak best then technically pretty much 100% of the time as Irish always features above English. If ‘my language’ is my country’s language then it’s much rarer.
Very often signs are written in Arabic. Especially near where my closest grocery store is because it’s next to a ghetto. Even political ads for the election had some Add only in Arabic.
Other than that, maybe an English sign now and then but not that often
Edit: By signs I mean signs companies put up at their store windows for instance
Essentialy nowhere, you have multilingual signs but you always have french on them.
Official signage is always in [German and the regional second language like Sorbian](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Bautzen_Ortsschild.jpg).
Some ad posters are in English and some shops here posted some leaflets in Arabic when there was the huge influx of Syrian refugees and now in Ukrainian/Russian.
But those are either translations of things already posted in German or a German version is not necessary, since they explain things most German already knew, like how to weigh vegetables etc.
You see that in Spain in many places all over the coast. An especially prominent in Mallorca, an unofficial German colony
Almost never. A lot is in both Norwegian and English.
The closest thing is text on packaging often featuring a hybrid Danish-Swedish-Norwegian. And signs for only EU when it should have been EU+EEA.
Shop displays saying “Open” or “Closed” instead of German “Geöffnet” or “Geschlossen”. Shop displays saying “Sale” instead of German “Angebot”, “SSV” or “WSV“.
They think it’s hip. I think it’s hip to be square. And not buy something at such places.
Bad advertising. It’s all English. And often not even correct.
All road signs here have English and Irish on them, except in northern Ireland it’s only English. As for advertising or shops, most are only English and a small few are in irish.
In most places everything is in Dutch, and below that there is sometimes English, French and/or German. However, in Amsterdam it’s likely for a lot of things to be in English.
When it comes to adverts however it’s often in English.
And near the tulip fields there are signs in English and Chinese (not sure if it’s Cantonese or Mandarin) to not stand in the flowers, but (mainly Chinese) tourists still ignore those signs a lot. Certain farmers have over 10.000 euro in damage from tourists trampling their flowers, not to mention that people walking there may spread diseases in the flowers.
Language is always a contentious topic in Belgium. Communication from the government in any shape or form must be in the regional language. I think using any other language, even if it’s secondary, is not even allowed (except in the bilingual areas).
There are some exceptions for tourism and such but even then the regional language must come first, followed by the other two national languages. Only after those English or other languages may be used.
These laws unfortunately do not apply to private entities, leading to an ever increasing Frenchification of the Flemish areas around Brussels and the language border.
Haha I’m a Native Lisboan and people don’t even address me in Portuguese anymore. I wondered why then I realised that restaurant waiters or hotel/hostel staff don’t even speak Portuguese in first place (or if they do, it’s in Brazilian Portuguese).
What usually happens in Wales is the likes of Costa or Starbucks open a branch in a predominantly Welsh-speaking region and [fuck the signage up somehow](https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/costa-coffee-welsh-language-row-2846006).
All road signs are bilingual, ditto signs on trains, buses etc. Even the automated announcements in places like Lidl and Aldi when they open and close tills are bilingual.
As far as I know it would be illegal in Poland to do this in a shop/restaurant/tourist spot – all signage there MUST be in Polish first, I think. (some exceptions apply to stuff like imported products with foreign packaging, but there still need to be some translation on them) It probably doesn’t extend to advertising though, because I’ve been spotting Ukrainian-only outdoor ads more and more often recently. But it is rare enough that I don’t really care.
In Spain, all over the place, specially in touristic areas frequented by Englishmen and Germans.
At the regional level, I have to tell you your parent language is sometimes relegated to the bottom, or excluded.