A sign welcoming visitors to the Scottish Isle of Bute in both English and Gaelic has been standing for around nine years, but it was only recently that officials were told of a translation error -actually just a missing accent mark- that renamed the island Penis island.
Àdhamh Ó Broin, a native dialect campaigner and Gaelic coach for the TV series Outlander, said: “It’s meant to be the genitive case, not the genital case. A genitive case is when one noun follows another and its form changes. Bhòid is Bute but Bhoid is penis. You would need the accent over the ‘O’. It says ‘Welcome to the doorway to the beauty of Penis Island’.”
He added: “You know when people speak Chinese the wrong way and they end up saying ‘Your mother is a dog’ instead of ‘The rice is nice’? It’s like that.”
After a photograph of the sign went viral, local council members promised to investigate how the sign ended up that way. The sign will be corrected as soon as possible.
Bute councillor Len Scoullar, an independent, said: “It makes us look bloody stupid.
To be fair, only 1.1% of Scottish residents speak Gaelic. And those people probably thought it was funny. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Coinneach Combe)