[Talk-GB] Multi-lingual tagging in Wales

[Philip Barnes]

On Fri, 2020-10-16 at 14:28 +0100, David Woolley wrote:
> On 16/10/2020 14:08, Gruff Owen wrote:
> > With that in mind, and admittedly polemicising the debate a little.
> > If 
> > we accept the premise that the native language of Wales is Welsh
> > and 
> > that OSM is a community mapping project where we have an
> > opportunity to 
> > respect native communities in a way that past colonial mapmakers
> > didn't. 
> > Could we take this as an opportunity to prioritise authentic Welsh
> > place 
> > names where that's possible? I understand that there will be
> > objections 
> > to this, but I'm not sure we can disregard it completely as an
> > option?
> > 
> 
> My understanding of how it works is that it is up to the local 
> communities to ensure that road signs, etc., in the local area,
> reflect 
> the community preferences, and OSM will reflect whatever the signage 
> says.  
I am Welsh, live in England in a town which shares a border with
Wrexham borough so am a frequent visitor to both North and Mid Wales.

My family lost Welsh as a language during the days of the Welsh Not so
totally support the language.

That used to be the case, at least at county level, there was the rule
of thumb Araf on top then Cymraig, Slow on to then English.

That has changed in recent years and in general as signs are changed
then Cymraig is on top. Local knowledge tells me that changing
Welshpool to Y Trallwng is probably not going to make OSM more useful
to our end users which has to be the primary focus of how we map
things. OSM is not a plaything/hobby project. 

Adding name:cy tags should be encouraged, I added quite a lot locally.
For my nearest Welsh Village I found the name Llys Bedydd on the sign
outside the church, its not on any roadsign and I doubt my local
doctors would recognise it even though they do cover Bettisfield.

https://openstreetmap.cymru/ still exists although the project seems to
have died, probably the grant ran out.

Phil (trigpoint)