The Superhighway - welcome to Cone City

One kind of literacy that's required by every UK motorist is that of UK road signs. Without them we'd be lost. Some of us are lost because of them! I happen to hold an intuitive belief that men have an inbuilt compass. 'I always know which way I'm pointing!', my late ex-husband used to exclaim. And on our visit to the seaside on the east of England as a refreshing change from the west, he pronounced. 'I feel weird here. The sea's on the wrong side'.

Now, I'm a simple northern girl and if the sea's there and I'm here that's all I need to know, no matter whether I'm in Whitby or Fleetwood. After all, this is bucket and spade country, not an expedition to the source of the Nile.

Back to navigation and the motorway system. What on earth is a non-English speaking tourist going to make of ADVERSE CAMBER? I ask myself. Or DEBRIS ON ROAD?

The Highway Code was ratified by The Plain English Society but how did these utterances-from-another-planet sneak into our navigation system? And speaking of navigation systems, would our neat little sat nav warn us about the aforementioned 'debris' or haughtily edit it out? Of course, this is a rhetorical question on my part but it does give me food for thought.

Frequently on our road ANY VEH is invited to join a certain lane. Qu'est-ce que c'est? might ask Michel or Nicole or even Fred or Alice. Wouldn't ANY VHCLE make at least some sense?

KEEP IN LANE is another weird construction, by now deeply ingrained into our LAD (language acquisition device). Wouldn't, STAY IN LANE be a more accurate instruction? Keep, in the sense of 'keep' (yourself) followed by 'off', 'out' 'away', is very colloquial. It's also a negative idiom. That's why as native English speakers we're not fazed by this aberrant use, but, again, what would Gustav or Heidi make of KEEP IN ...?

KEEP OFF whether it's followed by 'the grass' or 'my chips', makes total sense as a negative instruction.

Ask yourself which sounds more linguistically natural, 'Keep close' or 'Stay close' 'Keep there' or 'Stay there'. I think you'll find ... Oh, and, keep looking!