[OSM-talk-be] Taalfaciliteiten + taalgrens + straatnamen

Sander Deryckere sanderd17 at gmail.com
Wed Dec 2 13:24:30 UTC 2015


2015-12-01 19:46 GMT+01:00 Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas at pettiaux.be>:

> I also tend to think that we should find a solution the let any user find
> the street with any name in Nominatim, especially in this bilingual region.
> I think that our united and peaceful Belgian OSM community can lead the way
> here again.
>
> The problem with Nominatim isn't one of languages, it's one of boundaries.
Nominatim is very hierarchical, and requires that one street only belongs
to one municipality, and one house to one street. So when the streets are
on the boundary, the houses are on different municipalities, which means
Nominatim can't find half of them.


> For example, I find particularly irritating to note that some commercial
> car guidance (often called "car gps") with included commercial maps or
> commercial mapping systems on the web, do offer the region of Brussels
> (which is bilingual but to a much larger extend French rather than Flemish)
> in Dutch / Flemish by default. And not a bilingual version which would be
> at least normal (for me)
>
> Thanks for the work
>

Yes, that's not good. The language of Brussels should either be bilingual,
or depend on the language settings of the user (which is possible when
using vector data). So the situation for OSM in Brussels is good IMO (the
name tag is bilingual, and there's data present to make a French or Dutch
map when wanted).

But I wonder what to do with municipalities that have language facilities.
Having language facilities doesn't mean they are completely bilingual, but
that inhabitants have the option to use the other language. IMO, that's
represented best by having only one language in the name tag, with
translations in the name:lg tags (so search in that language works, and the
map can be rendered in that language).

Meanwhile I did some statistical research on the different municipalities
with language facilities (only the nl-fr ones, not the ones with German
facilities or German ones with French facilities).

Of all streets in all those municipalities, around 91% had a name, but only
26% had name:fr and name:nl tags. Such a low quality is really sad to see.

In 46% of the streetnames, I could recognise a typical French element
(tested on Rue, Chemin, Boulevard, Fausée and Avenue), and in 40% of the
streets, I could recognise a typical Dutch element (tested on straat, weg,
laan, dreef and baan). While only in 17% of the cases, I could recognise
both a French and Dutch element (so use a combined name).

Now, I split the list up in categories: 6 Flemish language-border
municipalities, 6 Flemish municipalities around Brussels and 4 Walloon
municipalities. The situation differs a lot between those cases. I could
recognise Dutch and French elements in 50% of the streets around Brussels,
while only 3% in the other Flemish municipalities (vs 53% Dutch elements
only), and 6% in the Walloon municipalities (vs 60% French elements only).
The municipalities around Brussels also have a lot more name:nl and name:fr
tags (70% vs 3% and 12%).

So it looks like the municipalities around Brussels are almost completely
bilingual, while the municipalities around the language border have a
strong preference for their own language (and often even don't mention the
other language). That's probably also the reason why I'm more fond of
single-language naming convention: I'm a lot closer to municipalities like
Mesen and Comines-Warneton, and I notice that the language facilities
aren't used by most inhabitants.

But I do think we should unify both situations. It doesn't really make
sense to have yet another kind of municipality.

Perhaps we should vote on it?

Regards,
Sander
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