Visitors no longer welcomed to Scotland's 'Penis Island'

Visitors disembarking at the ferry terminal on the Scottish Isle of Bute are sadly no longer greeted with a Gaelic sign reading: "Welcome to Rothesay – The doorway to the beauty of Penis Island", after the local council moved swiftly to correct a balls-up and add a missing accent. According to The Scotsman, the sign had for …

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised they didn't twin it with lesbos

[JimmyPage]

Proof, (if it were needed)

That a lot of this linguistic pride is an affectation, pure and simple. Which would be fine and dandy, if public money weren't being spunked on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Its one thing if it makes it slightly gibberish, but another if the accent changes the meaning to "Welcome to Penisland, Population: You." So I'll give the councillor the obligatory hat doff on this one and let it slide.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

It's not an affectation; it's a part of our history and culture. That the vast majority does not read or speak the language is a tragedy, not a reason to let it die. Understanding and celebrating your history is one of the cornerstones of any society and is worth the modest amounts spent on encouraging and protecting Gaelic.

[Richard Wharram]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

To be fair Scottish Gaelic was never the only language in Scotland. Scots was also a major language, coming from the same Germanic root as English but NOT being English. Scottish-English is English with a Scottish Accent, Scots is a Scottish language.

Gaelic is actually an Irish language, more imported than Scots. Before either of those a language from the Brittonic family of Celtic languages (rather than the Gaelic family) was probably dominant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Scottish Gaelic was spoken across most of Scotland at one time, almost as far south as the Borders.

"Scots" never had quite the same spread and latterly has struggled to remain separate from English.

[Richard Wharram]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Granted, Gaelic was dominant at one time but that was about a thousand years ago. Anglo-Saxon and Norman influences dominated the populous lowlands thereafter.

(Who's downvoting the AC by the way. It's a discussion, the questions aren't simple and the answers aren't black and white.)

[Bleu]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

You are wrong, and need to study more on the topic.

[Bleu]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Languages.

Scotland had three celtic language groups, two before the invasions from Eire of old, three after, but the other two died out completely, replaced by the Anglisc language. As others say, Gaelic in Scotland has no direct connection to the languages of the Picti and Scotti in Roman times, but to invaders from Ireland after that.

As an observer from afar, I find it interesting that Anglisc took deep hold, with no sign of an invasion, in so much of Scotland from the dark ages.

The remaining gaelic there, in many parts of Eire (sure and all I know that it still lives in *a few* places there), most of all in Cornwall, where the last native speaker died in the nineteenth century, and what is spoken in their Cornish language clubs is an artificial language based on Cymric, with a little vocab.

The possibility of EU subsidies makes the charade worthwhile.

Only Cymric and, in a few places, Irish Gaelic are truly living languages.

Here, the language of the Ainu was completely separate, that of Okinawa very different, but numbers of people who can truly speak them are always falling.

[werdsmith]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Irish language is getting stronger and it's more than a few places. My cousins over there attend Irish language only schools.

BBC have their Scottish language channels.

[jonathanb]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Some people watch the football in BBC Alba with the volume turned down and listen to the commentary on an English-speaking radio station as it is cheaper than Sky. Apart from that, does anyone watch it at all?

[Bleu]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Sorry, it is a dialect of Anglisc.

I do not understand some words or spellings at times, but, my wee bonny bairn, can usually look them up or work them out.

You do know that Burns wrote (beautifully) in a way that was considered archaic *at the time*?

That was a good while ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Once Scotland becomes independent, and it's Scottish taxpayers' money we are spending rather than English, I'll be interested to see if we spend more or less of it on road signs that nobody can read. I suspect the latter, but maybe that's just me being a cynical Aberdonian.

[AbelSoul]

Re: maybe that's just me being a cynical Aberdonian

Is there any other kind?

[Greg J Preece]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Once Scotland becomes independent

While we're talking about pointless gestures...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

So just about every town south of the border should also have street signs in Latin because it was originally founded by Romans?

[Charles Manning]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

" it's a part of our history and culture"

So is morris dancing, but that's left to community organisations (ie. clubs) and not the taxpayer.

Getting the government involved with these programs tends not to work for at least two reasons:

* Governments tend to measure their action in the amount of money spent - not the outcomes. Therefore spending more is good - it does not really matter what happens.

* Taxpayers see this waste and get resentful. Instead of supporting efforts they tend to oppose them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

Fair point. Sounds like Affirmative Action in the US. No need for that, with all the language geeks around.

I know a little gaelic and a few other languages I'll probably never use. Just for the hell of it.

[Greg J Preece]

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

*Cough* Welsh *Cough*

Completely pointless nationalistic resurrection of what was a near-dead archaic language, that now merely requires everything to be printed twice. Oh goodie, I'm so glad my Welsh forebears wasted everyone's time and money making things more difficult for the sake of a national ego.

But then, I've always been of the opinion that if you need "heritage" to provide yourself with a personality, you must be quite dull. Has any Brit here ever genuinely defined themselves as an individual by what happens 500 years ago? How about 1000?

[Paul J Turner]

How nice

that this serious problem has been rectified. P.S. 7 Billion people don't give a shit, why is this on an IT/tech news site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How nice

Maybe the accent was fixed with a 3d printer? ;p

[David Webb]

Re: How nice

why is this on an IT/tech news site?

Knob jokes, obviously. Can't have IT without a knob.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How nice

We have a newcomer to El Reg amongst us. Welcome Paul, you can put that Knob shaped hat on your head now...

[Bleu]

Re: How nice

Well, you made the asinine post.

Seven thousand million? Old news. Irresponsible breeders are galloping it up to eight thousand in quick time.

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently...

...Bhoid doesn't mean penis, but if you pronounce it exactly as written (without the accent) then it can sound like "Bod", which apparently does mean penis (unlike Bhoid, which doesn't mean anything, it is just an incorrect spelling of Bhòid).

So nobody would have read it or thought of it as "penis", until some pedant came along, and pointed out that if you looked closely enough, and read the text out loud, making sure to pronounce the word _without_ the accent (which clearly should have been there), then someone who was standing next to you would probably wonder why you read out "Bhoid" as Bod, when clearly the sign was talking about "Bute" (as in the island, which is spelled correctly in the first sentence on the sign).

Now everyone is outraged and "pinos" island (which _sounds_ like penis, just written differently, kind of like Bhoid and Bod) is famous.

I hope my taxes are spent forthwidth burning the old sign and creating a new one at great expense :)

[FlossyThePig]

Re: apparently...

Unlike "Pogue Mahone" which was deliberately designed to be phonetically like "póg mo thóin", as the original band name of The Pogues.

[Irony Deficient]

Re: apparently…

Anonymous Coward, boid is the genitive form of bod, and bhoid is the lenited genitive form of bod. Given the wording of the sign, Boid would have been the expected spelling in “Penis Island” (literally “Island of Penis”), since there was no grammatical reason for the lenition to take place there.

Fun fact: the linguistic term “lenition” means “softening”.

[Irony Deficient]

Re: apparently…

Aha — the grammatical reason for the lenition in Eilean Bhoid (and in Eilean Bhòid, for that matter) is that in place names, even masculine nouns like eilean will cause lenition of genitives like boid (and Bòid).

[breakfast]

Re: apparently...

Wait, so it wasn't called Penis Island but the young children's TV Show "Bod" does translate as Penis? THIS IS A FAR BIGGER STORY!

Won't somebody think of the children? I mean, they're not children now, obviously, they're me and maybe a fair few other readers here. But maybe we wouldn't all be reading stories about penis islands if we hadn't been subliminally assailed with Scottish knobbery from an early age!

[PNGuinn]

Re: apparently...@breakfast

+1 for "Scottish knobbery"

Enquiring minds need to know when the errant sign was first noticed. Was it Daylight Knobbery??

[Lester Haines]

Re: apparently...

Yes, it's a pronunciation issue. Thanks for the clarification.

[Richard Wharram]

Re: apparently...

It's like the misunderstanding that could occur if I was reading a news article out to the wife and it sounded to her like:

"I see the Republican party is receiving large funds from the cock brothers again."

[PNGuinn]

Re: apparently... @Richard W

You mean theyr'e not??

[skeptical i]

Re: apparently...

That would be the rentboy.com article, then?

[Tom -1]

Re: apparently...

Your Gaelic doesn't appear to be quite up to the challenge. But you're right that "Bhoid" isn't a word, and that this story is the result of a pedant being rather silly (unless it's the result of someone thinking the missing grave accent was a m opportunity for goofg laugh).

"Eilean Boid" means literally "The Island of a Penis" which would, by the usual rules of translating place names, "Penis Island". "Eilean Bod" is meaningless, because it is grammatically incorrect - bod is nominative case, but in a name like that the second word needs to be in the genitive case. Of course if bod were a proper name (Bod) rather than an ordinary noun, the the genitive case would be Bhoid but it couldn't mean penis since penis isn't a proper name.

Being oversensitive about "bod" in a placename seems rather ungaelic, though. Up in Skye people are happy to call a particular rock "bod an Stòrr" (bowdlerised by Màiri Mór to "Leac an Stòrr" in her famous song "Nuair bha mi òg") so why should people dow south be so upset by his missing accent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why it took nine years for someone to spot the grave error

Surely anyone who understood enough of the language also realised it was just missing an accent?

[James Hughes 1]

I think Peneston is Brittany should get a mention. 'Cos it sounds like Penistown.

Snigger.

(Yes, it also is missing an accent)

[werdsmith]

Penistone, is actually a few miles west of Barnsley on the A628.

Twatt is on Shetland.

And Finally CC Peniston is a dance music singer/artist from Phoenix, Arizona.

And that place in Pennsylvania.

Nobody really seems to make a big deal of any of them, apart from the one on Shetland where the road sign is one of the most photographed.

[Alan Gauton]

There is more than one Twatt - there is one on the mainland of Orkney as well.

[Cardinal]

"There is more than one Twatt -

- there is one on the mainland of Orkney as well."

So there's only two twatts in Scotland then? Well that IS a surprise.

Though there's at least one less - since Trump went home to try for President!

[NotBob]

Did you mean those places in Pennsylvania?

Where else can you start driving in Blue Ball,drive around Virginville, head into Big Beaver, ride into Puseyville, and soon be in Intercourse?

It would be an odd route, but it sounds like fun...

[desht]

And there's a coastal village called Muff in Co. Donegal, Ireland. With a diving club.

Paris, because she enjoys diving. Apparently.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

re: Muff Divers

There's also a Feakle in Co. Clare. You wouldn't want to mix them up by mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: re: Muff Divers

There's a Wankdorf in Switzerland.

[Peter Simpson 1]

Muff Divers

I wonder if they sell t-shirts?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I think Peneston is Brittany should get a mention. 'Cos it sounds like Penistown.

Is that near Brest?

Anyway, I don't know anything about Scots Gaelic but I just logged on to say that "feis" (a festival) in Irish doesn't take the accent. We Irish would pronounce that something like "fesh". If it had a fada (the acute accent; I never knew Scots used a grave, but I assume it denotes the same sound change) on the 'e', it would sound more like "faysh". In other words, the fada changes the vowel from a short one to a long one.

[AlC]

Bigger fish

Think this boy Combe has bigger fish to fry given that he doesn't even know where he lives. Johnstone isn't in Ayrshire, it's in Renfrewshire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bigger fish

Thanks to the BBC, we all know it's actually called Renfrewshite.

[MrWibble]

"Bute councillor Len Scoullar thundered: "It makes us look bloody stupid. I’m not a Gaelic speaker but I would apologise to people who are Gaelic speakers and we will rectify it right away.""

How refreshing for a counsellor to actually say there's a problem, and get it sorted quickly.

[Greg J Preece]

And in such straightforward language, too. I was also impressed. It's a very small thing in the big picture, but it's nice to hear a politician act and talk like they're not a scripted Ken doll.

[SleepyJohn]

Probably an EU welfare handout is involved

You know, one of those "bribe the minorities witless so they love us and hate their national governments, thus fomenting unrest in their countries and enabling us to extend our empire-building tentacles" ones. Usually abbreviated to "Divide and Conquer".

Would he have thundered so if the cock-up had been on an English sign, I wonder?

PS: I lived in the Highlands when all the road signs were made totally illegible with the addition of Gaelic, such that you had to stop your car and walk up to them to figure out where to go next. As the five Gaelic-speakers had lived there all their lives so knew which way to go without needing a road sign, and all the people who did need them could now no longer read them, it seemed like a typical EU project.

[Roj Blake]

"How refreshing for a counsellor to actually say there's a problem, and get it sorted quickly."

In all fairness, counsellors often do work hard. It's councillors who take ages to sort something out unless there's a vote or backhander in it for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

"1.1 per cent of Scotland's population spoke Gaelic"

And that's why every bloody railway station in Scotland now has a Gaelic (i.e. Irish) version of its name on the signage.

Even if they have to invent one for it.

[AndrewDu]

The point surely is that it's been wrong for nine years and nobody noticed.

Because nobody on Bute speaks Gaelic and nobody ever did.

The whole thing is a complete waste of taxpayers money.

Similarly, some clown has spend 10's of £1000's replacing all the railway station name boards with bilingual ones, throughout Ayrshire - where again, nobody speaks Gaelic and nobody ever did (Rabbie Burns wrote in old Scots, which is dialect of English). I imagine most of the "gaelic place names" they've used had to be invented for the purpose, since none ever existed before.

Again a complete waste of money. Anyone would think there were no actual real problems in Scotland that the SNP idiots should be focussing on, but alas this is not the case...

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Q: How many Gaelic Language academics does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: 202. One to hold the ladder, one to change the bulb, 200 to think up a Gaelic equivalent of "Lightbulb".

[SleepyJohn]

The Gaelic for 'lightbulb'?

Reminds me of once asking my Latin teacher at school what the latin for 'television' was.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid as well as ignorant

If nothing else, AndrewDu has proved there's a Twatt on the mainland as well as those in Orkney.

I can assure you that Gaelic was spoken in Ayrshire and on Bute Andrew; just looking at a map of Ayr itself for a couple of minutes will show you place names derived from the language. I'm not sure if you're English and simply unaware or just one of Ayrshire's famous little Britishers, but the point of adding it to signs is to kindle an interest and awareness in the language, the culture and the history. That you have no interest nor the mental faculty to develop one is no reason for the rest of us to lose another part of our identity. March along now...

[rmv]

"throughout Ayrshire - where again, nobody speaks Gaelic and nobody ever did"

So all those Gaelic place names in Ayrshire, like Dunure, Kilmarnock, Ardrossan and the like - they were all chosen by the non-Gaelic natives for their exotic, foreign sound?

Carrick was known to be a Gaelic speaking holdout against Lowland Scots certainly through until the early 16th Century. In 1504, William Dunbar repeatedly sneered at Walter Kennedy of Dunure's Gaelic in The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy (an early predecessor of The Register comment section and the first recorded use of the word "shit" as a personal insult).

R

[Robert Carnegie]

Maybe not Ayrshire but

Someone's house name caught my attention... it seems to be Gaelic for "Our House". I'm not sure what to make of it. Except maybe to build my own house next door, call it the same thing, and wait for the cheque to come when they win the football pools.

[PNGuinn]

@ AndrewDu

I suggest that many DID notice the error over the years, but for strange reasons best known to themselves, decided to leave things as they were....

[Anonymous Coward]

it's been wrong for nine years and...

every scots gaelic reader who saw it, had a silent giggle and strolled on...

not everyone is outraged by amusing errors on signs, y'ken

[kmac499]

Why leave the mainland..

When you can visit the charming small industrial town\village just north of Sheffield called

Penistone..

(The locals pronounce it "Pennystunn" BTW)

and just to keep the gender balance right there is a neighbouring village called

Wombwell

[dajames]

Was: Why leave the mainland..

... there is a neighbouring village called

Wombwell

That's on Wimbweldon Common, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shades of the Welsh bilingual policy

Back when I was a student in Aberystwyth, this sort of bilingual nonsense was rife. Google Translate didn't exist back then, so translating English to Welsh basically involved finding someone with a vague smattering of Welsh, and buying them a beer or two.

However, the Students Union, unrepentant uber-lefties to a man/woman/whatever, loved that policy. A politically correct yet utterly unimportant set of rules to whinge about and make everyones' lives a misery with? A gift from the Gods! In the Biology Society, we very sensibly totted up how much money a grant from said Students Union would give us, how much it would cost to comply with their nonsensical rules, and told them to get lost.

Or rather, told them to go do something with lots of syllables to a sheep, which amounted to the same thing.

These days I imagine that Google Translate will have rather taken the fun out of the matter, although I dare say they'll still be pissing money away on live translators of student union debates.

[Ben Holmes]

Re: Shades of the Welsh bilingual policy

It's the same approach that lead to the two union bars being called 'Bar 9 Bar' and 'The Joint' though. If it ain't broke...

[chivo243]

Obligatory Toy Story Joke

nice butte...

[Rabbit80]

True story..

The village hall near my workplace was "PANNAL VILLLAGE HALL" for at least a year before anyone noticed it..

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/10997138.One____L____of_a_mistake_on_village_hall_sign/?ref=rss

[Anonymous C0ward]

Re: True story..

Would they notice if the P and one of the N's disappeared?

[100113.1537]

With all due respect to Gaelic speakers...

This kind of thing makes a mockery of your language.

When you change the meaning of a word so completely with an accent then you are setting yourself up for misunderstanding. The purpose of written language is to be understood by those who read it. In the majority of cases accents are used to guide pronunciation - not meaning - for the well displayed reasons in this paper. Half of the mistranslations in biblical scripts are because the ancient Hebrew used accents above or below the general text to denote vowels - with the predictable results as the texts became old and the accents were lost in transcription by non-speakers.

I am sure there is some College of Gaelic scholars somewhere who are desperately working to "keep the language pure", but they are doing no good to keeping the language alive if they don't allow it to modernize.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: With all due respect to Gaelic speakers...

As I understand it, the word itself is more a slang term derived from the word for "old man" - bodach. You know, like the English slang for a penis - "old man" or perhaps the English term for a penis - "cock" which could be confused with a male chicken? Or dick, which could be confused with a chap's name. I could go on...

Perhaps the guardians of English should be forced to ensure the clarity of all the above.

[rmv]

Re: With all due respect to Gaelic speakers...

It's better than English in that respect; If I "take a bow", there's nothing in that to tell you whether I'm acknowledging your applause or getting ready to shoot you full of arrows. Except the context of course, but Gaelic shares that too.

I'm sure there are some Gaelic speakers who want to "keep the language pure" but hey, you can say that about pretty much any language; You just need to absent-mindedly drop a split infinitive in English and the language pedants leap out of the woodwork.

I can barely string two words together in Gaelic as I have no talent with languages whatsoever. But my wife's family from the Hebrides speak it as a first language. The eldest of them is in his seventies and the youngest has just turned 21, and when they're rabbiting away, it doesn't seem like a dead language to me.

Here's the Gaelic for Punks lessons if you want to learn a bit:

https://soundcloud.com/an-t-uabhas/sets/togaibh-ur-guth/

R

[Irony Deficient]

Re: With all due respect to Gaelic speakers…

100113.1537, the difference between bhoid and Bhòid is to guide pronunciation — the ò indicates a longer vowel sound than o has, and they’re not allophones in Gaelic. As you’d stated, the purpose of written language is to be understood by those who read it; if you believe that the length mark is the cause of the change of meaning, then you haven’t understood what its purpose is. It is no more the cause of the change of meaning than the trema is the cause between “coop” and “coöp” in English; in both cases, the diacritic is used to indicate a different word altogether, not to cause it.

[Anonymous John]

Re: With all due respect to Gaelic speakers...

It's two words not one, with different meanings and pronunciation. The accent indicates pronunciation and the meaning is usually obvious from context. You don't have a problem with words like "watch" having several meanings, do you?

The article mentions two, but as far as I know, there aren't that many examples. Bàta (boat) and bata (stick) are the only ones I can think of (admittedly my command of Gaelic is limited)

I'm not aware of any organisation trying to stop Gaelic evolving. The acute accent dropped out of use in the 20th century, largely unchallenged. Bòrd na Gàidhlig is is only interested in the language surviving..

[Mike Banahan]

Re: With all due respect to Gaelic speakers...

The 'accent' is a key piece of orthography (spelling) in the Gaelic languages that I'm familiar with. You might as well say that the English words 'cop' and 'coop' are somehow the same and likely to be confused! English spelling tends to use doubled vowels as a length indicator, whereas the Gaelic languages signify that with the sínead fada (long accent) instead so you never see 'aa', 'ee' and so on. Oddly, Irish and Scottish Gaelic have differently slanting fadas. Manx orthography, just to be different, does tend to use vowel doubling as a length indicator despite being quite closely related to Irish.

Take your pick: cop/coop or fear (man) féar (grass) in Irish, with distinctly different pronunciations in each case. There's numerous examples where two entirely different words in either language differ only in the length of the vowel sound.

I can't vouch for the meaning in Scottish Gaelic, but when I've heard 'bod' in Irish, it has a substantially earthier implication than the rather medical 'penis'.

[Anonymous Coward]

The sooner they erectify it the better.

[bjr]

Athol, MA

In Massachusetts we have a town named Athol. A former governor, Endicott Peabody was said to be so popular that they named four towns after him. Endicott, Peabody, Marblehead and Athol.

[Alan Denman]

Quite obviously..

A spelling mistake is a hard on to spot.

[Colin Stratford]

Has anyone looked at the picture of the island upside down? "Penis Island" seems quite apt...

[Anonymous (Noel) Coward]

The Bhoid mightier than the sword!

[The Vociferous Time Waster]

I vote yes

have your independence and with it your own taxes to spend on shite like this

[Anonymous Coward]

All very amusing

Such errors tend to occur from time to time and good on the local council that they want to fix this one, albeit a little late. I imaginge the locals generally knew what the sign actually meant and Tourists hadn't a clue - so storm in a tea cup?

Then again, in the village of Loose near Maidstone in Kent there is the "Loose Womens Institute" and that is no error.

[Nick Pettefar]

Obvious

The owners of Rentboy.com (see a previous article) should relocate there.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Two pages of comments and no-one has used the phrase "cunning linguists"?

For shame, people, for shame.

[Anonymous C0ward]

So is a fèis feis

an orgy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh God

Does that mean the Welsh translated forms on the website of the charity I work for are going to be full of howlers like this?

[Martin Maloney]

The gist of the article

No penis is an island.

Gettin' me coat...