I have something rather embarrassing to complain about here today. When I was in Paris, I was impressed to see that all the signs, notices and explanations in all the museums and photo galleries we went to were in at least three languages. This meant that, despite not knowing French, I had no problem understanding what was being displayed. It firmly contributed to the feeling that the front capital is a welcoming, open, international city.

With that in mind, I became curious about whether the same could be said of London. To find out, this morning I trundled down to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It’s not that I hadn’t been there before, but I wanted to be certain about the writing. Unfortunately, I’m sad to say that I found the signage only in english, and was told by the lady I spoke to there that it was the same case in other museums across London.

I must admit that I find that very regrettable and problematic. If London wants to claim to be a world city, it can’t be so anglocentric. For a city which welcomes so many visitors from across the globe and whose economy is so reliant on tourism, it is surely baffling that we seem to expect everyone to be able to understand English. Of course, I can’t be completely sure whether it is the same case in places like The British Museum or Natural History Museum, but that just gives me an excuse to go and check. Even so, from what I saw today, compared with Paris, linguistically London is not up to standard.