I had to summon up a bit of courage to ask the man on the reception desk.  I mean, was it just a silly question?  Would it make me look stupid by my revealing my ignorance?  Finally, I decided he had probably been asked more stupid questions.  In the end, seeing me hovering uncertainly, he pre-empted me:

“You’re wondering what language that is on the sign, aren’t you?  I get asked that question every day.”

It had been the question I had been wanting to ask.  Mind-reader the man on the reception desk might have been, but he hadn’t yet given me an answer.

I was in the foyer of the Guildhall in Derry, Northern Ireland.  An impressive building, famous, amongst other things, for being the site where the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday first heard the findings of the Saville Report on 15 June 2010.

However, it had been the rather more prosaic pursuit of a toilet rather than anything associated with either history or politics, which had led me to enter the Guildhall that day, and I quickly spotted a sign that appeared to be directing me towards my goal.  Or was it?  It was the same sign, which had stopped me in my tracks, bemused by what I was reading.

The sign was written in three languages.  “Female Toilets & Baby Change” was self-evident enough.  “Leithris na mBan & Friotháil Naíonán” was incomprehensible to me, but was presumably Irish.  But, what on earth was “Weeminfowk’s lavatries an bairns’ hippins cheynge”?

There was a charming naivety about the words, such that I couldn’t decide whether it was written in Elvish, Goggledegook, Nadsat, Esperanto, or was just an elaborate piss-take to confuse tourists.

It was the kind receptionist who eventually put me right:

“It’s Ulster-Scots.”

© E. C. Glendenny

E. C. Glendenny has never prided herself on being a linguist.