>On some southern Maine Turnpike exit signs, the word "sortie" is added for the benefit of numerous Quebec visitors, and a few other signs in that area are in French as
>well as English.
S. Gallagher:
On the other hand, most road signs in Quebec are
in French only. But I always laugh when I see a
certain exception to this rule. On a sign near
Montreal it says "Pont aux EU - Bridge to USA".
I guess they figured that if that sign were in French
only, the Americans would never find their way home.
Me:
Maine was heavily settled in the past couple centuries by people from Quebec, and French is the primary language for a lot of residents even now; it's not surprising the road signs are bilingual.
I've seen other autoroute signs in the Montreal region that say things like "[shield for Autoroute 15] vers/to [shield for Interstate 87] U.S.A." For the francophones, it's just using the name of the country as US citizens call it; for US residents trying to find their way home, the "U.S.A." and the Interstate 87 shield are enough to get them pointed in the right direction. I haven't seen "E.U." much. The Ministere de Transport must have written to his New York counterpart and asked for enough Interstate signs to take care of what was needed.
Carleton
