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352 clues · 100 countries.
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352 clues · 100 countries.
Showing 352 clues across 100 countries.
Albanian is not very closely related to any other European languages, and therefore has a fairly distinct look.
Words often contain the letter Ë, ë, and sometimes Ç ç.
The Albanian word for street is rruga.
Catalan is the main language in Andorra. It is a Romance language that is closely related to Spanish and French.
If you are unfamiliar with Romance languages, it can be hard to distinguish between Catalan and Spanish. If you see i instead of y (“and” in English), it is Catalan. In addition, more Catalan words end with consonants.
NOTE: The Catalan language is also used in eastern Spain: in Catalonia, the Valencian community and the Balearic islands.
The Catalan word for street is “carrer”.
The white ‘No Stopping’ and ‘No Parking’ signs that include text are unique to the Australian Capital Territory.
The official language of Austria is German. The German language uses the special letters Ä, Ö, Ü and ß.
NOTE: The other majority German-speaking countries with coverage are Switzerland and Germany. In addition, German is spoken in East Belgium and the Italian province of South Tyrol.
These one-way traffic signs, with the word ‘EINBAHN’ written on them, are unique to Austria.
NOTE: In Germany there will be “Einbahnstraße” written on the sign.
“No Stopping” and “No Waiting” signs in Austria will often have the words “Anfang” or “Ende” (meaning “beginning” and “end”) written on, or below, them.
Vienna street signs are extremely recognizable dark blue plaques with a traditional-looking white serif font. The number at the start will indicate which district you are in (see the map).
You can click the image to enlarge it.
Street signs in the Azores are almost exclusively painted ceramic tiles, with blue letters and, typically, a decorative pattern around the edge.
The Bengali script features a continuous horizontal line at the top of each word. It has a similar look to Devanagari (Hindi), however it can usually be recognised by the many letters featuring triangular shapes.
NOTE: Bengali is an official language in Bangladesh and parts of eastern India.
Signs will be in Belarusian or Russian. Both languages use the Cyrillic alphabet.
NOTE: The letters ў and і are not found in Russian.
The Minsk centre street signs are sea-green, and can be seen almost everywhere.
NOTE: If you are close enough to the sign, you can make out the Cyrillic letters “вул (vul)”, the Belarusian name for “street”.
Street name signs in Belgium are very diverse, and often unique to a city. Most common colours are white and dark blue. They often have the town or city name written on them.
NOTE: These signs often have variable designs, but most of them are fairly short and tall. In comparison, Dutch street signs are almost always much longer than they are tall.
Belgium has 3 official languages.
Dutch (Flemish), spoken in Flanders, the Northern part of Belgium. There is an abundance of letters and combinations like z, w, ee and ij.
French (Walloon), spoken in Wallonia, the Southern part of Belgium. You can see letters like ç, é, è and à.
German, spoken in Ostbelgien, a small region in the east of the country. You can see letters like ä, ü, ö and ß.
Brussels, the capital of Belgium, is bilingual. You will see both French and Dutch on signs.
As mentioned before, municipality names are often mentioned on street signs, usually in smaller font than the street name. The map shows a selection of recognizable street signs in the bigger cities.
NOTE: Of the big cities, Bruges (Brugge) is an exception to the rule of signs usually mentioning the municipality name.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Baarle-Hertog, located north-east of Antwerp, is composed of several exclaves and enclaves of Belgium and the Netherlands. You can often see the country's borders in this city (indicated by small white crosses). Street name signs tell you whether you are in Belgium or The Netherlands.
Dzongkha is an official language in Bhutan and has unique-looking letters.
NOTE: On street view, these letters can only be found in Bhutan.
These signs are frequently found in the cities of Bhutan and are often coloured red or blue.
NOTE: As seen here, they will typically have the town name you are in written on them.
Signs in Botswana are usually in English. Most town names, however, are derived from any of the indigenous languages spoken in the country.
NOTE: The Afrikaans language, which is closely related to Dutch and common in South Africa, is very rare in Botswana. You will almost never find Afrikaans place names.
Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, as opposed to most Latin American countries which speak Spanish. Compared to Spanish, some essential differences are that Portuguese uses -ão rather than -ón, -ch/-lh instead of -ll and -nh instead of -ñ.
Each Brazilian state has a two-letter acronym. These show up most prominently in the numbers of state roads (found on kilometre markers). They can also be found in other contexts however.
The state acronyms show up when you zoom out a little bit on Google maps, which is also possible in the minimap while in-game. However, for quick and or competitive games, it can be very useful to learn them by heart anyway, as this can help a lot with eliminating scanning time.
Bulgaria mainly uses the Cyrillic alphabet. However, a lot of signs will also have the Latin alphabet.
The letter “Ъ” is only found in Bulgarian and Russian, although it is fairly uncommon in Russian.
The Bulgarian word for street is улица (ulitsa), sometimes abbreviated ул. (ul.).
NOTE: In older street signs seeing only Cyrillic is more common.
Russia also uses улица/ulitsa.
Bulgarian directional signs are blue, arrow-shaped, and use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet. Importantly, even if you are far away and cannot decipher the script, you can still see that the sign has two lines of text instead of one.
Town entry signs have a simple white design and also use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet. Like with the directional signs, the two lines of text are obvious, even when seen from far away.
Khmer is the official language of Cambodia. It has its own unique script, which is very distinct and recognizable. In most fonts, letters have an intricate, curvy look.
Khmer can look fairly different depending on the font used. A compilation of what this script looks like in street view can be found here.
NOTE: The Thai and Lao scripts look similar, but the letters tend to have a less intricate look. However, some simplified Khmer fonts can look a bit like Thai and Lao.
Bilingual signs with Chinese writing can commonly be found in Preah Sihanouk.
The English-speaking parts of Canada use British English spelling (e.g. centre; colour). In addition, Canada mostly uses the metric system. For example, speed is measured in kilometres per hour.
NOTE: This is useful to distinguish between the US, where American English spelling and (usually) the imperial system are used. For example, the US measures speed in miles.
Canada uses the word ‘maximum’ on speed signs. Because speed is measured in kilometres instead of miles, the numbers tend to be higher than the US which can be identifiable from afar.
NOTE: The US uses the words ‘speed limit’ on such signs. In addition, speed limits ending with 5 are more common in the US, and the ‘speed limit’ text takes up two lines versus one for ‘maximum’ in Canada.
French is the majority language in Québec and parts of New Brunswick.
NOTE: At the federal level, French has official status alongside English, so you can sometimes find bilingual signs in other parts of Canada. In addition, French is also spoken in several communities in Nova Scotia, Ontario and Manitoba.
Some provinces have unique speed signs.
Ontario speed limit signs may have a black section on the bottom with the words ‘km/h’ or ‘begins’ written in white.
British Columbian signs also include the ‘km/h’ but lack the black section.
Québec can sometimes have French on their speed limit signs.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Stop signs with the word ‘Arrêt’ are unique to Québec.
Stop signs with both ‘Stop’ and ‘Arrêt’ are most commonly found in New Brunswick.
NOTE: Such stop signs can rarely be found in other provinces.
Like the stop signs, street signs in New Brunswick are also bilingual.
Though unlike the stop signs, bilingual street signs are found in other French minority areas of Canada.
Acadia is a French-speaking cultural region in the Canadian Maritimes. It does not have clearly defined borders, but is usually understood to at least include north and east New Brunswick. It has its own flag, which is very commonly seen in this region. The flag is a French-style tricolour with a yellow star in the blue band.
NOTE: There are some isolated Acadian communities in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (shaded pink on the minimap).
Iqaluit is the capital of Nunavut, meaning it is more urban, and built up compared to other Nunavut settlements. The city features bilingual turquoise street signs. Speed limit signs are also uniquely bilingual. And on the outskirts of the city, these unique road markers can be seen.
Chinese writing consists of often complicated symbols made up of several strokes. On mainland China, you’ll typically find simplified Chinese, where the number of strokes of many symbols have been greatly reduced compared to traditional Chinese.
NOTE: Traditional Chinese is widely used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
Like in most of Latin America, Spanish is the official language of Costa Rica.
NOTE: In Brazil, they speak Portuguese.
Like in Mexico, Panama and Guatemala, Costa Rican stop signs display the word “ALTO”.
NOTE: Stop signs in Panama use a thicker font. Furthermore, in the rest of Spanish Latin America they say “PARE”.
The provinces are sometimes written on signs, so they are useful to know. We will also refer to them in the clues below.
Small black stickers with a QR code on the bottom can be seen around Corralillo, south of San José.
These black pole stickers with yellow lettering, located near the bottom of the pole, are limited to western Guanacaste province and the Nicoya peninsula.
The entire municipality of San José consistently uses these green street signs with a white rectangle containing an emblem. Calle/Avenida streets are numerically ordered, increasing from downtown outwards.
Croatian is a Slavic language. It is always written in the Latin alphabet. ‘IJE’ is common in Croatian whereas Serbian uses only ‘E’ instead.
NOTE: The Slovene language also features a lot of ‘J’s. Serbian and Montenegrin are also very similar, but Serbia and Montenegro use both Latin and Cyrillic script.
Stickers with the letters HR can be found on Croatian cars. HR stands for Hrvatska, the Croatian name for Croatia.
NOTE: These were mainly used before EU plates were introduced, meaning they will be less common in Generation 4.
Bilingual street name signs with Croatian and Italian are typically found in Istria, especially in the western cities.
Town names ending with “-ec” are common to see in the northern parts of central Croatia.
Cyprus uses the Greek and English languages. Greek has a unique alphabet not used in any other language. It shares similarities with both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, however the lower case letters generally have softer shapes than the Cyrillic letters.
NOTE: It goes without saying, but Greece also uses the Greek alphabet.
A former crown colony of the United Kingdom until 1960, Cyprus continues to use some borrowed infrastructure, like signs and roadlines. This is also why Cyprus drives on the left, and why English is so widely used.
Directional signs are very similar to Greek directional signs, with the one notable difference being that the Greek text is written in all-caps.
Town entry signs consist of either a yellow rectangle with a red border, or just the smaller white rectangle that contains the town name in both Greek and English. The signs will also contains a speed limit sign above them. These designs are unique to Cyprus.
With a Russian-speaking population of around 17%, many commercial signs in Limassol feature Russian translations.
Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible Slavic languages with several similarities such as acute accents above vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý). However, they both have some distinct letters:
Czech uses the letters Ř, Ě and Ů;
Slovak uses the letters Ľ, Ô, Ä, Ŕ and Ĺ.
NOTE: Acute accents on vowels are not found in South Slavic languages.
The most common type of street sign in Czechia are bright red signs, which can either be wide and stuck on walls, or thin and attached to signs posts. Note that other street signs do occur in some areas, most notably in Brno. Similarly designed blue signs are also fairly common.
Furthermore, the Czech word for street is “ulice”, unlike most Slavic languages which use “ulica”. This word is usually omitted, but finding “ulice” on street signs is still possible.
NOTE: Slovakia typically uses white street signs with a red border and blue text.
Czech road signs have a fairly thin font.
NOTE: Slovak signs normally have a much bolder font. The same font is however used in Luxembourg and Germany.
White street signs with blue text are most common in the eastern parts of the country, but can also be seen in the central northern parts.
Pairs of black and white house numbers are found in Brno.
NOTE: The city district can be found written on the black house number.
Polish bilingual street signs are found in Český Těšín, and very rarely in other nearby towns.
The street signs in Šumperk can be recognized by being blue, with text filling out almost the entire sign.
Most Danish street names end in “vej.” This is the Danish word for “street.” Street signs most commonly have a blue background with white text.
Danish is a North Germanic language that is closely related to Swedish and Norwegian. The Danish alphabet contains these special letters: Æ, Ø, and Å.
NOTE: The special letters found in Danish can also be found in some of the other Northern Germanic languages:
Norwegian uses Æ, Ø, and Å.
Faroese uses Æ and Ø but not Å.
Icelandic only uses Æ.
Swedish only uses Å. In addition, Swedish uses Ä and Ö, which are not found in Danish.
Despite being located in Central America, stop signs in DR contain the South American “PARE”. Moreover, many signs are attached to yellow signposts.
NOTE: ‘PARE’ is also used in all of South America as well as Puerto Rico.
Street name signs in Santo Domingo often contain the letters “ADN”, a reference to the Distrito Nacional, which the city is located in.
The official language in Egypt is Arabic. You can occasionally see it on signs in several of the trekkers. Its script can be identified by its lines and dots.
Estonian belongs to the Finnic languages, a branch of the Uralic language family. It is closely related to Finnish.
Within the Baltic languages, the following letters are unique to Estonian:
Vowels with umlauts (two dots): Ä Ö Ü.
Õ with a tilde.
NOTE: Latvian and Lithuanian are both Indo-European languages that are not related to Estonian, and therefore look very different.
The Estonian words for street and road are tänav and tee, respectively. These words are unique to Estonian. Tänav is often abbreviated as ‘tn’.
Many streets, especially in urban areas, have a simple name that completely lacks the tänav and or tee suffix.
NOTE: The Finnish suffix -tie, meaning street, can look similar.
Estonia has a large Russian minority. In most of Ida-Viru County, they form a majority. As a result, you will sometimes see bilingual signs with Russian Cyrillic and Estonian in the region in and around Narva.
Note that the majority of signs will still be in Estonian. You may occasionally see Cyrillic in other places.
If you see Portuguese text in Eswatini, you are most likely in the small town of Lomahasha.
NOTE: This is because of its proximity to Mozambique, where Portuguese is spoken.
The Faroese language is most closely related to Icelandic, with the special letters Á, Ð, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý, Æ and Ø. It differs from Icelandic by using the letter Ø, while Icelandic uses É and Þ.
The Finnish language is not related to most other European languages, so it has a very unique look. It has a lot of long words and double vowels. The Finnish alphabet includes the letters ä and ö.
NOTE: Estonian is closely related to Finnish, so it can look similar. Estonian uses the letters õ and ü, which are not used in Finnish.
Most Finnish street names end in “tie” or “katu.” These are the Finnish words for road and street. Street signs most commonly have a white background with black text.
NOTE: You may find roads ending in “polku” and “kuja”.
Finnish directional signs consist of a solid blue background, white text, and a white border with guiding arrows.
The Swedish language is common in some coastal areas in the south and the west. In these areas, bilingual Swedish or Finnish texts are common. If you see Swedish language in a Finnish setting, do not guess inland.
The Sámi languages are spoken in the far north of Finland. In this region, you can sometimes find bilingual signs with place names in both Finnish and Sámi. Unlike Finnish, its alphabet uses the letter c.
Åland is monolingually Swedish. If you see only Swedish, and no Finnish language, but you suspect that you are in Finland, consider the Åland Islands.
The buses in and around Tampere are blue on the bottom and white on the top. The word ‘NYSSE’ is written on the sides of the buses.
Lahti uses these street signs with a black border and all capital letters.
NOTE: You can rarely find similar signs in other cities, but Lahti almost exclusively uses this design. Notably, Kuopio can use these signs, which use a thicker, more compact font.
The city of Järvenpää uses street signs with this blue-and-grey coat of arms in the top-left corner. The neighbourhood name is also written above the street name.
NOTE: If you see a street sign with a coat of arms not mentioned in this guide, you should be near Kerava or Lahti.
French is a Romance language that is closely related to languages like Catalan, Spanish and Italian. It uses these diacritics and special letters:
Accent aigu: é
Accent grave: à, è, ù
Accent circonflexe: â, ê, î, ô, û
Trema: ë, ï, ü, ÿ
Ligature: œ
Cédille: ç with a small hook
In addition, the -ux suffix is only found in French.
NOTE: Other European countries with sizable francophone populations include Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland.
The French word for street is “rue”.
French directional signs are usually white with a black outline slightly offset from the edge. They have an arrow-like shape, with the black border getting thicker at the point.
Highway directions have either a blue or green background.
Smaller places and points of interest are frequently written in an italic font.
This guide will mainly operate with two types of administrative divisions: regions, totalling at 13 in European France, and 96 departments, which appear on google maps as the primary administrative divisions. Other rarer divisions you may come across include pre 2016 regions, historical provinces, and regions based on cardinal directions.
Departments are often named after physical geographical features and their logos may show up on various infrastructure, shown in the next tip.
You can practise them with this quiz.
France is home to many minority languages, 6 of which will be covered in this guide:
Alsatian, a dialect of Alemannic German.
Basque, the only European language isolate.
Breton, a Celtic language.
Catalan, Corsican and Occitan, Romance languages which are related to French.
However, French, legally the only official language, is dominant in all regions of the country, so don’t exclude highlighted regions when you’re placed in an all French round.
Towns with the Plou- prefix are concentrated in Northwestern Brittany.
Alsatian, a dialect of German, is occasionally found in Alsace, a region that changed countries 4 times in modern history. Most bilingual street signs use some variation of gasse or strasse.
NOTE: Streets containing German names are also concentrated in this region, though not as consistently.
Occitan is a Romance language closely related to Catalan that’s sparsely concentrated in the South of France, most often found on street signs in big cities, and very rarely on town entry signs. It can be divided into dialects, each using a slightly different word for street, all similar to Catalan “carrer”. For example, in Toulouse, you’ll find the Languedocian carrièra and in Avignon carriero, in the Provençal dialect.
Click here for a more extensive infographic.
NOTE: The street sign designs pictured are also unique to the two cities respectively.
Bilingual signs in Basque, a language isolate, are concentrated In the western half of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, bordering the Basque speaking regions in Spain. Common letters include K, X and Z. On directional signs, it’s written with a thinner font, which is unique within all minority languages in France.
The word for street is karrika, in contrast to “kalea” in the Spanish Basque country.
On the island of Corsica, you may find bilingual signs in Corsican, a Romance language that utilises many features found in Italian, like words almost always ending in vowels. In particular, the endings u/iu/ju, changed from o/io, are common in Corsican. Moreover, placenames will usually have an Italian origin.
The far southern department Pyrénées-Orientales, also known as Catalunya Nord (Northern Catalonia), uses Catalan on their various signage.
It is closely related to both Spanish and French, with Ç being considerably more common than in French. The word for street is carrer.
Knowing basic toponymy in France is crucial for regionguessing, particularly suffixes. This map shows one of the most common and useful endings, with rare exceptions. Other, extraordinarily rare suffixes can be found here.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Many French cities contain the name of the river they lay on, usually in the format -sur-[river]. On signage, sur are often shortened to ˢ/, in this case Chalonnes-sur-Loire (Chalonnes upon Loire). The picture shows five of the longest and therefore most common origins of river based names, but cities can bear the name of any river, regardless of length.
Similarly, city names containing -sur-mer (=on sea) or -plage (=beach) are found exclusively on the coast.
Réunion is an overseas department and region of France, east of Madagascar. As such, it is counted as France for country streaks purposes.
Plonk It has a more in-depth guide to Réunion here.
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France, south of Newfoundland in Canada. As such, for country streaks purposes, it is counted as France.
Plonk It has a more in-depth guide to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon here.
Paris, Lyon and Marseille are the three largest cities in France and the only ones divided into municipal arrondissements (Arrᵗ or Arrt. for short). The arrondissements appear on google maps, so finding these street signs can help a lot with pinpointing.
The street signs of these three cities will be further described in the following tips.
Small tables with “Arrᵗ” written on a small separate sign, are found in Bordeaux, despite being a city not divided into arrondissements.
Montpellier street signs will typically contain a blue ‘M’ on a white background in the top left corner.
The official language of Germany is German. The German language uses the special letters Ä, Ö, Ü and ß.
NOTE: The other majority German-speaking countries with coverage are Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein. In addition, German is spoken in East Belgium and the Italian province of South Tyrol.
These one-way traffic signs, with the word ‘Einbahnstraße’ written on them, are unique to Germany.
NOTE: In Austria, there will be “EINBAHN” written on the sign.
These are some of the more useful and common suffixes for regionguessing Germany. Due to their Slavic origins, endings like -ow and -itz are primarily found in the east, whereas place names ending in -weiler and -ach are mainly located in the southern half.
Berlin uses white signs with a grey border, and a separate section for numbers under the street name. Also note how the letter ß looks.
Munich has blue street signs with a white decorative border that does not touch the corners. Also note the unique font.
Stuttgart uses black signs without a border.
Düsseldorf has black signs with a white border, similar to Munich. The signs have a metallic frame.
Dortmund uses blue signs with a white border and a grey frame. The signs also have a separate section for numbers under the street name.
Essen has blue signs with a very thick metallic frame.
Dresden has blue signs with a unique font.
Hanover uses white signs with a wider than usual gap between the sign and metallic frame.
Nuremberg has blue signs with a unique font. The signs also have a grey frame with a small gap between it and the sign.
Wuppertal uses white signs with a unique font and a white painted frame with a small gap between it and the sign.
Mainz has a mix of blue signs, and this unique red variant.
Frankfurt uses blue street signs with a metallic border around the sign, as well as the separate section for numbers under the street name.
NOTE: More rarely, some smaller towns can use similar signs to those in this graphic.
Sorbian, a Slavic language, is spoken near the Polish and Czech border. You can find it on a variety of signs in these regions.
The main language used in Gibraltar is English. This can be especially helpful if you see English on official signs in a Mediterranean setting.
NOTE: Note that English is also one of the main languages of Malta, which also has a Mediterranean landscape and vibe.
The Greek language features a unique alphabet not used in any other language. It shares similarities with both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, however the lower case letters generally have softer shapes than the Cyrillic letters.
NOTE: Cyprus also uses the Greek Alphabet.
Greek directional signs are typically blue and arrow shaped. One of the most recognisable features are the place names, which are written in Greek with a yellow font, and in English with a white font.
Greek kilometre markers are blue, having “km” written on the left with both the latin and greek alphabet.
East Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and even Russian are common to see in Guam.
NOTE: This is also the case in Northern Mariana Islands.
Like Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica, Guatemala uses the word “ALTO” on stop signs.
These white rectangular stickers that have the word ‘electricista’ written on them are unique to Guatemala City.
Hawaii is the only state to use its own language, though English is still predominantly used. Most place names are in Hawaiian, so you can spot it on street signs, and other road markers.
Hawaiian is a vowel-oriented language that only uses eight consonants: H, K, L, M, N, P, W, and (ʻ), called an ʻOkina.
Every Hawaiian word ends in one of 5 vowels: A, E, I, O, or U.
Each vowel can also have a macron over it: Ā, Ē, Ī, Ō, and Ū.
These vowels are often combined to make Diphthongs. I.e. UI, AI, AE, etc...
Hong Kong is located in Southern China, sharing a border with the Guangdong province. It is a Chinese Special Administrative Region, so for country streaks purposes, it is counted as part of China.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Hong Kong has two official languages: English and Chinese (legally, no variety is specified, but residents primarily speak Cantonese).
Bilingual signs are common, with English next to traditional Chinese characters.
Road signs are white and rectangular, with a thick black outline and bilingual text.
Give way signs feature a white upside down triangle with a thick red border and bilingual text.
The Hungarian language has a unique look, with a very large number of acute accents, umlauts over o’s, and long words. The letters "Ő" and "Ű", with double acute accents, are unique to the language.
NOTE: Hungarian is also spoken in some parts of neighbouring countries: notably there are large Hungarian-speaking communities in central Romania and southern Slovakia.
Hungarian street names typically end with the word “utca”. The word “út” is also used for bigger roads. These two words are unique to Hungarian, and translate to “street.”
Hungarian signs are usually bolted to the sign post using four bolts, going through the sign, in the shape of a tall rectangle.
NOTE: This is not common in any other Eastern European countries.
Many Hungarian town names use local prefixes, the most common of which are shown in this infographic. Note that some rare exceptions exist.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
The Icelandic language contains a couple of unique letters. These are some of the most recognizable ones: ð þ and æ. Vowels can have the following accents: á é í ó ö ú ý. The uppercase version of ð is Ð.
NOTE: ð is also found in the Faroese language. æ is found in Danish, Norwegian and Faroese.
A wide variety of scripts can be found in India. Most of them can be used to narrow down the region.
English is also an official language in India and can be seen on a lot of signage.
Hindi is the most common language in India and can be found in many central and northern regions. It uses the Devanagari script, which can be recognised by the line going through the top of each word and the straight vertical lines found in the majority of all letters.
Marathi, found in Maharashtra, also uses the Devanagari script, however it sometimes uses the letter ळ which is not found in Hindi.
Punjabi can be found in Punjab in northwestern India. While the script looks somewhat similar to Hindi, it can generally be differentiated by the softer shape of the letters and the horizontal bar being broken over certain letters. It also has some distinctly different features, such as the letters ਨ, ਲ and ਅ as well as a diacritic in the shape of a soft curve beneath a letter.
Gujarati, found in Gujarat, has a script with several similarities to the Hindi script, however it notably lacks the horizontal line at the top of every word.
Bengali is found in northeastern India and has a similar look to Devanagari (Hindi), however it can usually be recognised by the many letters featuring left-facing triangular shapes.
NOTE: This is also the language found in Bangladesh.
Assamese, mainly found in Assam, also uses the Bengali script, with the addition of some characters, most notably ৰ and ৱ.
Kannada is found in Karnataka and has a script with a lot of smooth curves and small circles. It is very similar to the Telugu script, with Telugu having one additional feature described in the next tip. Many characters also feature a distinct squiggly tail in the top right corner, which is less common in Telugu.
Telugu, found in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, has a script very similar to Kannada, but you’ll often see diacritics resembling checkmarks at the top of letters.
The Tamil script is found in Tamil Nadu and has a distinct combination of curves, straight lines and 90° angles. Some letters also have diacritics shaped like dots.
NOTE: Tamil is also commonly found in Sri Lanka.
The Oriya script is found in Odisha and has a curvy look, with many letters having wide semi-circles covering the top. Many letters have a distinct diacritic in the shape of a wide curve above the top of the letter. A useful mnemonic is that the shape of the characters resembles a skull emoji.
The Malayalam script can be found in Kerala and mostly consists of somewhat simple-looking curvy letters, often containing upside-down U-shapes.
Manipuri, also called Meitei, is the official language of Manipur. It is written using the Meitei script, which can be recognised by its many vertical lines and right angles.
Mizo, found in Mizoram, is the language most commonly found on the Indian coverage other than English, which uses the Latin script.
While English can be found anywhere in India, Meghalaya is the only region which almost exclusively uses English.
Indonesian can look very similar to Malaysian, however Indonesian has been influenced by Dutch, and Malaysian by English. These small changes in spelling may help differentiate the two.
An example is the word television in English, which translates to ‘televisi’ in Indonesian, similar to the Dutch word ‘televisie.’ In Malaysian, it translates to ‘televisyen’, more similar to English.
Cigarette ads can be found all over Indonesia, usually with a black or red colour scheme and around a price of 18,000 Rp. Keep an eye out for illustrated graphic pictures, and the word ‘PERINGATAN’.
The names of 2nd level subdivisions, named ‘Kabupaten’ or ‘Kab’ for short, translating to regency, can be found all over Indonesia on various signs and billboards. Each province is split up into multiple Kabupatens, totalling to 417 which are covered by street view, and therefore applicable in Geoguessr. These are learnable with enough time and patience.
See the resources section for more information.
You can find the cardinal directions written on many addresses. They are as follows:
North = Utara
East = Timur
South = Selatan
West = Barat
Central = Tengah
Irish signage is often bilingual, with English in a regular font, and Irish in italics. Place names, regular words and phrases are all translated.
Irish language is somewhat less common on non-official signage.
Irish yield signs feature the word “YIELD”.
NOTE: UK yield signs have the phrase “GIVE WAY”.
You will typically find two languages; Hebrew, which is practically only found in Israel and the West Bank, and Arabic, which is particularly common in the West Bank.
Blue house numbers with the number written with Arabic numerals in the top left and with Eastern Arabic numerals in the bottom right, with a thin diagonal line between them, can be found in Bethlehem. Street signs will generally have the same format.
Italian is the most spoken language in Italy. It uses many double consonants, and typically has a very large number of i’s. You can also find ì, é and à. Most words will end with a vowel.
NOTE: The Italian word for street is ‘via’, and can be found on most street signs.
Directional signs are blue with a white arrow. All letters on these signs will be capitalised.
Italian kilometre markers are white squares with a roman numeral on top and an arabic numeral on the bottom. The arabic numeral gives you the number of kilometres and the roman numeral gives you the number of hundred metres from the start of the road.
Italian road numbers will normally begin with the letters “SS”, “SR” or “SP”.
The second letter can be used to identify the type of road.
"S" when it is a State road, so the number is unique within the country.
"R" when it is a Regional road, so the number is unique to the region.
"P" when it is a Provincial road, so the number is unique to the province.
These signs, featuring a “no parking”-sign with the text “passo carrabile” are commonly found in urban areas. At the top of these signs you will typically find the municipality (comune) name.
The region of South Tyrol has a German majority, and as such uses German bilingual signs.
French can be seen on signs in the Aosta Valley. Most notably, street signs often use both the Italian word “via” and the French word “rue”.
Close to the Slovenian border you can find Slovene bilingual signs.
Japan consists of three main terms used to identify land, groupings and borders: Islands, Regions and Prefectures.
Islands: The four main islands that make up the country of Japan. From the top they are: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu.
Regions: Some islands are further broken down into groupings of prefectures.
Prefectures: These form the currently 47 different subdivisions within the country.
Many of these names are used in this guide, on maps, and when referring to areas of Japan. Therefore, it is recommended to learn and become comfortable with each category, and the titles within.
Japanese is written with a mixture of three main systems: kanji and two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana. Formal signs and texts will mostly use kanji and hiragana. The kanji system is directly borrowed from Chinese and thus looks very similar, while the syllabic scripts are more loosely inspired by Chinese. Hiragana generally looks simpler than Chinese characters, many of the symbols have loops, which are not present in Chinese. The shapes are also typically slightly softer than the shapes present in most kanji.
You can learn more about hiragana, katakana and kanji in the region guessing section, learning frequent terms and names.
Katakana is mainly used for loan words, and are thus common to find in commercials. They are generally quite simple, with a lot of geometrical shapes rather than the more artistic shapes present in hiragana and kanji.
On the left hand side you can find the pronunciation and meaning of eight of the most commonly featured kanji in town and city names. Learning to recognise these can make finding cities considerably easier.
On the right you see the shape and pronunciation of the cardinal directions and the shape of some kanji commonly found at the end of place names. If you see the kanji for prefecture or city, chances are you will be able to find it fairly quickly. Wards are typically findable granted you know the city, while towns are often fairly difficult to locate.
NOTE: Most of these kanji have alternative, less common pronunciations.
Japan usually uses simple white bollards with circular reflector(s) on the top. However, sometimes these bollards are black, or have other extensions. They can also have the city or prefecture written on it in kanji.
You can learn more about the bollards and kanji in the region guessing section.
Prefecture roads are identified by their hexagonal-shaped shields. The prefecture is often written under the road number in kanji. While the shield design remains, other variations can be found:
On prefectural highway shields (with kanji).
On directional intersection signs.
Or on small, directional arrow signs.
As multiple prefectures can have the same road number, it is recommended to first find the prefecture you are in.
You can find these ‘Shisa’ guardian lions and house plaques with these specific characters in Okinawa. The colour and shapes of both can vary.
Cyrillic can be found on signs in the cities of Wakkanai and Nemuro, in northern Hokkaido.
The official language used in Jordan is Arabic and can be identified by its lines and dots.
NOTE: Unlike the UAE, Jordan does not have English writing on most commercial signs. This can be helpful to distinguish the two countries.
Kazakhstan uses both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.
Though sometimes, Russian is used monolingually.
The following letters are found in the Kazakh but not Russian alphabet: Ә (Ä), Ғ (Ǵ), Қ (Q), Ң (Ń), Ө (Ö), Ұ (W), Ү (Ü), Һ (H), І (I).
Kazakh is related to Turkish, so the Latin text can appear similar.
Street Signs in Kazakhstan are often attached to buildings and are blue in colour, with white intricate patterns on the top and bottom. They are usually bilingual or trilingual and can also contain a QR code.
NOTE: They are often inconsistent, with many designs being found in a single city.
While rarely possible, being able to read the letters under a QR code on a street sign will give you the region.
These street signs attached to buildings are generally quite inconsistent, but there are some worth knowing.
Aktobe has compact signs where half of the space is taken by the QR code.
Petropavl uses white signs, with a blue semicircle below the street names.
Astana consistently uses this fairly generic design.
Zhetisay also uses a fairly generic design, but it is not found in Turkistan or Shymkent.
Upon closer inspection of signs, billboards and posters, you will notice that the county name is often written. Therefore, knowledge of Kenyan counties can be extremely useful in region guessing.
You can practise Kenyan counties using the quiz in the resource section.
The Kyrgyz script is similar to Russian. However, the Cyrillic script used for Kyrgyz includes additional characters not found in Russian Cyrillic, such as:
Ө
Ү
Ң
Lao script is compact and curvy, with some diacritics on top and below characters.
NOTE: It is very similar to Thai script, but (in most fonts) Lao script has fewer straight lines.
Stop signs feature the Lao script. Sometimes, the sign features the word ‘stop’ in Latin script below the Lao script.
NOTE: In Laos, stop signs only have 2 characters, compared to 3 in Thailand.
Latvian belongs to the Baltic languages. The other major member of this branch is Lithuanian, to which it is closely related.
Within the Baltic languages, the following letters are unique to Latvian:
Vowels with a macron (horizontal stripe): Ā Ē Ī.
Consonants with a small hook: Ģ Ķ Ļ Ņ.
NOTE: Estonian is not a member of the Baltic languages(despite the name), and therefore looks significantly different.
The Latvian word for street is iela. This word is unique to Latvian.
Very rarely, you might see ‘gatve’ in Riga (abbreviated as gat.). This word is also the standard word for street in Lithuania (usually abbreviated as g.).
These brown street signs with a font reminiscent of traditional German typefaces, along with a white border, are found in Vaduz and the northern towns.
Lithuanian belongs to the Baltic languages. The other major member of this branch is Latvian, to which it is closely related.
Within the Baltic languages, the following letters are unique to Lithuanian:
Vowels with small hooks: Ą Ę Į Ų.
Ė with a single dot.
Y (also in Estonian, but only in loan words).
NOTE: Estonian is not a member of the Baltic languages (despite its name), and therefore looks significantly different.
The Lithuanian word for street is gatve, often abbreviated as g. on signs and Google Maps.
This word is almost entirely unique to Lithuanian. However, very rarely, you might see ‘gatve’ (abbreviated as gat.) in the Latvian capital of Riga.
Many Lithuanian place names end in -ai.
Rarely, you can see bilingual signs with Polish language in a small area southeast of Lithuania.
Note that this is by no means very common, but it can help with getting very close guesses if you do see bilingual Polish-Lithuanian signs in an otherwise obvious Lithuanian setting.
Luxembourg is a highly multilingual country. It has three administrative languages: Luxembourgish, French, and German.
French is the language that is mostly used for public communication. Road signs and advertisements are usually in French.
Presence of German on signs is less common compared to French, but certainly not non-existent.
Luxembourgish is closely related to German and can look very similar. Like German, it uses umlauts (dots over vowels). In addition, it uses a fair amount of double vowels, and sometimes an é with an accent.
Most town names have their origin in Luxembourgish, German, or both.
Town entrance signs are also yellow and surrounded by a frame.
Most of these signs have bilingual versions of the town name. They frequently have the road number on the top, along with a speed limit sign.
Street signs are almost always short and usually have a white background. The exact designs vary from town to town.
A very common design is the one pictured on the left in the example image, with slanted blue corners.
NOTE: Belgian street signs often appear short as well, but can have other background colours – not just white.
In addition, Dutch street signs almost always have a blue background and tend to be much longer than they are tall.
Due to Macau’s history as a Portuguese colony, Portuguese language can commonly be seen, especially on storefronts, along with Chinese.
These white street signs with a blue border around the Chinese and Portuguese text are unique to Macau.
BERHENTI stop signs and BERI LALUAN yield signs are both unique to Malaysia.
The Malay language uses the Latin script. It is very closely related to Indonesian. These two languages are practically indistinguishable for people who do not speak either.
In contrast to neighbouring Indonesia, Chinese characters are often seen in Malaysia. In fact, 24.6% of the Malaysian population is of Chinese descent.
Black stickers with the text ‘TEL TNB’ at the bottom, are only found in Johor.
Trash bins with this logo featuring a sunny landscape, saying ‘Alam Flora’ are found in Pahang, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. The logo will occasionally be absent, and it will just say ‘Alam Flora’.
The Maltese word for street is “triq”, which can be seen on almost every street sign.
English is the primary language of Malta.
Apart from English it is also common to see the Maltese language. Maltese uses the Latin script, but with unique letters, which include:
Ċ ċ
Ġ ġ
Ħ ħ
Ż ż
Mexican directional signs have a distinctly large, all-caps white font.
Mexico uses the word “ALTO” on stop signs.
NOTE: All of South America uses the word “PARE”.
Many place names in Mexico are of Nahuatl origin, featuring a lot of ‘x’ and ‘tl’ as well as ‘-ec’ and ‘-tlan’ suffixes.
Jalisco bollards will sometimes have a crown and the text ‘Jalisco’ written on it. These are usually barely legible unless very close, however no other Mexican bollard will have writing on it.
Poles in Chihuahua city occasionally have a strip of white pole paint with the street name written in black or blue text.
Mongolia primarily uses Cyrillic script, though Latin and traditional Mongolian script can also occasionally be seen. Mongolian Cyrillic contains the letters Ɵ and Ү, which do not exist in the Russian alphabet. Additionally, the use of double vowels, such as aa, ƟƟ or ЭЭ, is common in Mongolian.
NOTE: The letters Ɵ and Ү also exist in the Kyrgyz and Kazakh languages.
The desert town of Zamiin-Uud on the border with China has unique sailboat lamp posts featuring a golden flower pot around them. Often, white signs with Mongolian folded script can be seen attached to these lamp posts.
NOTE: The other desert towns of Choir and Sainshand look similar to Zamiin-Uud and have the same Street View car but use different lamp posts. Choir can be identified by its blue lamp posts and Sainshand by its white lamp posts.
Namibia used to be a German colony, and as such, you can still notice the German influence, most notably in their place names. Some older buildings can have a German style as well.
Nepal uses the Devanagari script, which can be recognised by the line going through the top of each word and the straight vertical lines found in the majority of all letters.
NOTE: The characters ङ and especially ङ्ग are much more common in Nepali than in Hindi/Marathi. It is also quite common to find native Devanagari numbers on signage in Nepal, which is very rare in India.
Districts can show up on addresses, often in English as well.
Dutch is a Germanic language. It features a lot of double vowels. Typical letter clusters are ij, ieuw and oe. “IJ“ written as one capitalised letter is also unique to the language.
NOTE: Dutch is also used in the region of Flanders, which comprises the northern half of Belgium.
Street signs are almost always blue with white lettering. Very rarely, you can find yellow, white or green street signs.
The Dutch word for street is straat. Other common road name endings are -weg, -laan, -pad, and -plein. However, if you see a blue sign with the word ‘fietspad’, do not search for it; it simply means ‘bicycle path’.
NOTE: Street signs in Belgium come in a variety of colours and usually mention the municipality, which is rare in the Netherlands.
Dutch town entry signs are blue. The signs sometimes have very elaborate designs, often with frames and additional signs.
NOTE: Often, these signs list the municipality they are in, after the word ‘gemeente’ (gem). Many municipalities are named after larger towns or cities in the vicinity, which can help a lot with scanning.
In the province of Friesland, the Frisian language is commonly spoken. While Dutch language is still most prevalent on signs, a lot of town entry signs will feature bilingual town names.
Some street names in Friesland uniquely end in -wei or -strjitte.
NOTE: Frisian has vowels with circumflex diacritics (“little hats”): Â, Ê, Ô and Û. Dutch does not have these letters, except in loanwords. In addition, the Y is significantly more common compared to Dutch.
Amsterdam street signs feature the city district in a smaller font size below the actual street name.
NOTE: This design is very uncommon in the rest of the Netherlands.
Poles near Timaru often have a tall rectangle of orange paint on them with the text “DANGER LIVE WIRES”.
City and state names are often found on storefronts or banners in Nigeria, so knowing them can be quite useful.
Direction signs in North Macedonia are typically yellow with biscriptal text: town names are written in both Latin and Cyrillic script.
NOTE: Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro have similar signs. Serbia is the only one that will have biscriptal text though.
Macedonian is a Slavic language which uses the Cyrillic script. Road signs have Latin on them too, although most other signs are fully in Cyrillic.
The letters ‘Ѓ’ and ‘Ќ’ are unique to Macedonian. ‘Љ’, ‘Њ’, and ‘Џ’ are only in Serbian and Macedonian.
East Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and even Russian are common to see in the Northern Mariana Islands.
NOTE: This is also the case in Guam.
The Norwegian language contains the special letters Æ, Ø and Å.
NOTE: The special letters found in Norwegian can also be found in some of the other Northern Germanic languages:
Danish uses Æ, Ø and Å.
Swedish uses Å, but not Æ or Ø. Norwegian also uses more E’s than Swedish, while Swedish uses more A’s instead. Norwegian uses “kk” where Swedish uses “ck”.
Icelandic uses Æ, but not Ø or Å.
Finnish uses Å, although it is viewed as a Swedish letter.
Norwegian pedestrian signs typically have four stripes and a very simply drawn person. Note however, that there is a version with five stripes and a version where the person is more detailed and wearing a hat.
NOTE: While Finnish pedestrian signs have five stripes, Swedish pedestrian signs have four stripes. However, the person on Swedish signs is detailed, but without a hat.
White signs with the text “Sone”, generally featuring a speed limit, are common in urban areas.
Bilingual signs with Sámi can be found in several northern areas in Norway. While the Sámi languages are very different from Norwegian, the best way to recognize them are the letters Á, Đ and the use of several vowels in a row, something which is uncommon in Norwegian.
Note that not all signs in these areas will be bilingual.
Russian can sometimes be seen alongside Norwegian on signs near the Russian border. It is mostly found on roads E6 and E105 near Kirkenes.
The official language in Oman is Arabic.
NOTE: Due to high tourism, signs in Oman often have English writing alongside Arabic. The same also applies to the UAE.
Directional signs are blue with white text and are usually in Arabic and English.
NOTE: The UAE and Qatar use similar signs.
The vast majority of garbage bins in Oman are either black and made of plastic or metallic and grey, with a three-leaf logo and the text ‘be’ah’ below it.
NOTE: Garbage bins in the UAE will occasionally have the text “bee’ah”, with two E’s. The bins are often more colourful too.
Just west of ميتان, only labelled in Arabic on Google Maps, literally translating to methane, there is a stretch of road, which has a uniquely light-coloured pavement. To the north, you can see sand dunes.
While many languages are spoken in Pakistan, Urdu is considered the National language and most commonly found on signage. It is written in the Urdu alphabet, which is closely related to the Arabic alphabet and may appear almost indistinguishable, however Urdu often uses softer and curvier fonts.
Notably, English is also an official language in Pakistan and is fairly common on signage.
Panama uses the Spanish word “ALTO” on stop signs.
NOTE: Mexico, Costa Rica and Guatemala also use “ALTO”, but the font is thinner.
Although Filipino is the official language of the Philippines, English is extremely common to find on signs. It is the only major Southeast Asian country where you’re likely to come across English.
These black or white boxes are commonly seen on utility poles. Most of the time they feature a three letter abbreviation of the municipality you are in. The abbreviations will either have all three letters stand for the municipality, or the first two letters will abbreviate the municipality while the third letter indicates the province.
In the first image the "GMI" and "GMU" stands for the town of Gamu in the province of Isabela while the second image the "BGE" stands for the town of Bangued.
NOTE: Most towns do not have any standardised abbreviation so you might find many different abbreviations for the same place.
Province names are very common to find on signs and can thus be very useful. However, they do not appear on the map, meaning they’re necessary to memorise in order to use them.
It is worth mentioning that Davao de Oro changed its name from Compostela Valley in 2019.
Poland has two town entry signs: a green one with the locality’s name, and a white-and-black one with a stylized urban area.
NOTE: Like direction signs, town entry signs use a distinct font.
Polish is a Slavic language. In contrast to other slavic languages, the Polish alphabet includes:
Ł with a stroke through it (unique to Polish)
Ą and Ę with a small hook (also found in Lithuanian)
Ć, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź with an acute accent. Of these, Ń is unique to Polish. In addition, the only other language with Ś and Ź is Montenegrin.
Ż with a small dot (unique to Polish)
Polish is very consonant-heavy, with lots of consonant clusters. Polish does not use V. Instead, it uses W a lot, the only Slavic language to do so. Other unusually common consonants are the Z, K, and C.
When it comes to Polish place names, the -owo ending is mostly limited to the northern half of the country, and the -ów ending mostly to the southern half. You may also encounter -ino or -yno, mainly in the northwest, and -ew near the centre of the country.
NOTE: A good way to remember this is that Kraków is in the south of Poland, and most other towns ending in -ów are too.
While rare, bilingual signs can be found in the highlighted regions.
Wszëtczi lëdze rodzą sã wòlny ë równy w swòji czëstnoce ë swòjich prawach. Mają òni dostóne rozëm ë sëmienié ë nôlégô jima pòstãpòwac wobec drëdzich w dëchù bracënotë.
German is mostly found in the Opole Voivodeship.
Lithuanian can be found around Puńsk, near the Lithuanian border.
Belarusian is found near the Belarusian border.
Lemko, another Cyrillic language, can be found in the southeast.
Portuguese is a Romance language that is closely related to Spanish. Unlike Spanish, Portuguese includes the letters Ç, Ã, Õ, Â, and Ê, while it does not include the letter Ñ, which is very common in Spanish.
NOTE: You can also find Ç in Catalan.
The Portuguese word for road is ‘Rua’.
NOTE: In Galician, the word for road is ‘Rúa’, with an accent on the ‘u’.
Spanish, instead of English, can commonly be seen on signs around Puerto Rico.
Speed limit signs in Puerto Rico are identical in shape and size to speed limit signs seen in the mainland US. The major difference is that these signs will always be in Spanish, instead of English.
Stop signs in Puerto Rico say ‘PARE’ instead of stop.
NOTE: ‘PARE’ is also used in all of South America as well as the Dominican Republic.
Romanian is a Romance language similar to Italian, containing the following special letters:
Ă ă
Ș ș
Ț ț
These letters are also found in some other European languages:
 â, used in French, Portuguese and Turkish
Î î, used in French, Turkish and Italian
Bilingual signs with Hungarian are mostly found in the central regions of Covasna, Harghita and Mureş, but also less commonly near the Hungarian border.
The Russian word for street is улица (ulitsa), sometimes abbreviated ул. (ul.).
NOTE: Bulgarian and most other Slavic languages also use улица / ulica. The Ukrainian word however is вулиця (vulytsya), abbreviated вул. (vul.).
The Russian word for city is город (gorod), abbreviated г. (g.).
NOTE: The Ukrainian word is місто (misto), abbreviated м. (m.).
Some republics of Russia with minority languages use bilingual town entry and directional signs, such as in Bashkortostan and Tatarstan displaying Bashkir and Tatar respectively.
Town names written in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are common near the Baltic border and around Moscow, and to a lesser extent in federal subjects on the Finnish border.
These blue signs are only found in Moscow and usually feature English translations of important tourist points.
St. Petersburg street signs include a transliteration of the street name on a black background. They are primarily found downtown.
Saransk has an exclusive circular street sign design with the street name being written in up to 4 different languages.
Tatar bilingual signs use “урамы” (ур., abbreviated) for street instead of “улица” and are unsurprisingly found in Tatarstan.
Bashkir bilingual signs are found in Bashkortostan and use “урамы” for street, the same as Tatar, but are often not abbreviated.
Chuvash bilingual signs, found in Chuvashia, use “урамӗ” for street.
Mari bilingual signs, found in Mari El, use “урем” for street.
Komi bilingual signs, found in the Komi Republic, use “улича” for street.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon, officially the Territorial Collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, is an overseas department and region of France, south of Newfoundland in Canada. As such, for country streaks purposes, it is counted as France.
Portuguese is the main language used on São Tomé and Príncipe.
On top of the language, the Portuguese influence can also be seen in infrastructure, such as ladder poles and pedestrian signs with the same design as in Portugal.
Some wooden poles are painted blue on the bottom. You can also read the letters CST on them.
The official and most common language seen in Senegal is French.
NOTE: The other sub-Saharan countries with street view coverage use English (Rwanda being a minor exception to this – however landscape should be sufficient to always tell the difference).
Serbian is a Slavic language which uses both the cyrillic and latin script. These letters are unique to Serbian:
Ђ ђ
Ћ ћ
These letters are found in Serbian and Macedonian:
Љ љ
Њ њ
Џ џ
When written in the latin script, Serbian uses the special letters Č, Ć, Đ, Š and Ž. Note that all of these letters may also be found in Croatian and Montenegrin.
Bilingual signs with Serbian alongside Hungarian can be seen in northern Vojvodina, where there is a Hungarian majority.
Directional signs are also green, with white letters and English writing.
NOTE: Expressways each have a three-letter code (e.g. TPE), making them easy to spot on signs.
Slovak and Czech are mutually intelligible Slavic languages with several similarities such as acute accents above vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý). However, they both have some distinct letters:
Slovak uses the letters Ľ, Ô, Ä, Ŕ and Ĺ;
Czech uses the letters Ř, Ě and Ů.
NOTE: Acute accents on vowels are not found in South Slavic languages.
White street signs with blue text and a thin red border are by far the most common in Slovakia.
NOTE: The same design can also be found in Czechia, near the Slovak border. However, Czech street names never feature the word “ulica”.
Slovak cycling signs use the letter C as their symbol, unique to the country. They’re visually analogous to the Czechoslovak hiking markers mentioned in step 1.1, including the yellow post on directional signs.
Several areas in southern Slovakia have a Hungarian majority, with bilingual street and information signs.
In the northeastern parts of the Prešov region, you may find bilingual town entry signs in Rusyn, a Cyrillic based language closely related to Ukrainian.
Skalica, in the northwestern corner of the country, has red street signs, similar to the ones commonly found in Czechia. However, the somewhat stylized font distinguishes it from the Czech signs.
Slovene is a Slavic language featuring the special letters Č, Š, and Ž. It is closely related to Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin.
NOTE: On top of having the same letters as Slovene, Croatian also has the letters Ć and Đ.
Slovenian street signs are most commonly white with a metal border attached to signposts, or red and attached to house walls.
NOTE: Czech street signs are also typically red and attached to walls. However, Czech street names will not contain the word “ulica”, which most Slovenian street names have.
Italian bilingual signs can be found in the westernmost region.
South Africa has 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans, and various Bantu languages. English is the lingua franca and therefore appears most often on signage.
Afrikaans is a Germanic language that is closely related to Dutch. Common Afrikaans place name suffixes are -fontein, -kraal, -kop, -dorp, -nek, and -berg or -burg. While Afrikaans is most commonly spoken in the western half of the country, you will find Afrikaans place names all over South Africa, meaning that it is not useful for region-guessing.
NOTE: Afrikaans is rare to non-existent in Eswatini and Lesotho. It is also abundantly rare in Botswana, but has some limited presence in the form of place names.
The Korean writing system (Hangul) is very unique and recognizable. One of its standout features is the presence of circles in many of its letters. This sets it apart from most other East Asian writing systems.
Direction signs in South Korea have white text on a green background.
Korean buildings have very distinctive house numbers. They are blue and usually are shaped quite literally like a house. The full address of the building is written on them, in both Hangul and Latin script.
Some places have unique house numbers, which you can use to region-guess. More information about this can be found in the spotlight section.
In rural areas you will often find hunting signs. There are two versions, both of which are unique to Spain. One is a simple white sign with a text starting with “coto” and ending in “caza”. The other one has a diagonally divided black and white background.
NOTE: These signs have an identifying code that can sometimes be read. In this case “Ex” stands for Extremadura.
Spanish stop signs have a distinct small font.
NOTE: These are mostly useful to distinguish Portugal from Spain: Portuguese stop signs have a noticeably larger font.
Spanish is the main language in most of the country. It is a Romance language that is closely related to Portuguese.
Spanish and Portuguese can look very similar. Some key differences between the two:
Ñ is unique to Spanish.
Ç and lh are unique to Portuguese (Ç is also present in Catalan).
Portuguese uses the -ao word ending, and -nh- instead of ñ.
Spanish uses de and del, while these are often contracted to da, do, das and dos in Portuguese.
NOTE: Spain also has several regional languages, some of which are more common than Spanish in their respective regions. These languages are discussed in more detail in the region-guessing section.
The Spanish word for street is calle.
You will often find no parking signs in front of garage doors and gates. They will usually read “Vado permanente”.
These signs will very often have the name of the municipality after “Ayuntamiento de”.
NOTE: Italy uses signs that read “Passo carrabile”.
Spain has several regional languages. The ones that are most useful to GeoGuessr are Catalan, Basque and Galician.
Some other regions, such as Asturias, also have their own regional languages. But there, non-Spanish signage is much more rare.
Catalan is a Romance language that is closely related to both Spanish and French.
It is spoken in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands. In Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, it is (much) more common than Spanish on signage. The Valencian Community is more bilingual.
If you are unfamiliar with Romance languages, it can be hard to distinguish between Catalan and Spanish.
The Catalan word for “and” is i, compared to Spanish y.
The grave accent (à, è, ò), is exclusive to Catalan within Spain and very common to see in words, especially on à.
The c with cedilla (ç) is also exclusive to Catalan within Spain.
The Catalan word for street is “carrer”.
No parking signs in Catalan speaking areas will read “Gual permanent”. Most municipalities use “gual” in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, while it’s more common to find a mix of Spanish and Catalan signs in Valencia.
Basque is a language isolate that is spoken in the Basque Country and northern Navarre. In these regions, you will find a mix of Spanish and Basque signs (often bilingual).
Basque is not related to any other language, so it has a unique look. Z and K are common letters.
NOTE: Basque is also used in the border area of southwest France.
Streets in Basque-speaking areas are sometimes called “kalea”. However, Spanish “calle” is also still common.
Road signs in the Basque Country and Navarre often have these distinctive bilingual sub-signs with a thick black border.
Generally you will find Basque on top in the Basque Country, while it is more common to find Spanish on top in Navarre.
Galician is a Romance language that is closely related to Portuguese. It is (unsurprisingly) spoken in Galicia. Compared to Catalan, it is less dominant, meaning you will still find a lot of Spanish-only signs in this region.
Galician can look very similar to Portuguese. Some ways to tell them apart is the use of ñ and the lack of ç in Galician.
Streets are commonly called Rúa in Galicia, whereas in Portugal they are called Rua (without an accent). However, you can sometimes find signs without the accent in Galicia.
Many Galician town names start with A, O, As or Os articles (examples: “A Pena”, “O Burgo”, “As Cruces”). This is both very common and unique to this region, and rarely over the border in western Asturias.
Galician towns frequently use signs with a green or blue strip at the top featuring the name of the municipality.
NOTE: “Concello” is the Galician word for municipality, and exclusive to the region.
In Catalonia and sometimes the Balearic Islands you will find huntings signs in Catalan, usually reading “Àrea privada de Caça”.
In Sri Lanka, you will see two scripts: Sinhala and Tamil. You will also sometimes see English, written in Latin script.
Sinhala is most common, and can be found throughout the entire country. It has a very curvy, ‘rounded’ look.
Tamil is more regionally limited. It has straighter lines. For an exact distribution, see the region-guessing section.
NOTE: Sinhala is unique to Sri Lanka. However, Tamil can also be found in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
The presence of the Tamil script is strongly correlated with the distribution of Hinduism (though not all Tamils are Hindu and vice versa).
There are two groups that use the Tamil script:
Native Sri Lankan Tamils, who predominantly live in the north and the east.
Indian Tamils, who mostly live in and around the central Nuwara Eliya district.
Note that it is not uncommon to find bilingual Sinhala and Tamil signs far outside the area where Tamil is the predominant language. However, Tamil-only signage can be a strong indicator for one of the Tamil-majority areas.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Russian can sometimes be found on signs.
Swedish is a North Germanic language that is closely related to Danish and Norwegian. The Swedish alphabet contains the special letters Å, Ä and Ö.
NOTE: The special letters found in Swedish can also be found in some of the other Northern Germanic languages:
Danish uses Å, but not Ä or Ö.
Norwegian uses Å, but not Ä or Ö.
Icelandic uses Ö, but not Å or Ä.
Finnish uses Ä and Ö. Å is also used, but is treated as Swedish. Finnish words are typically longer and often use double vowels, which are very rare in Swedish.
Swedish street names most commonly use the suffixes “vägen” and “gatan”. They are often shortened into “v” and “g” respectively on street signs. Street names can also use “väg” or “gata” as a separate word in a street name. Additionally, the suffix “gränd” can be found near city centres.
NOTE: Norway uses veien or vei, gate or gaten, and gata attached to the rest of the street name, rather than as a separate word. Denmark uses vej and gade.
Some place name endings are limited to a certain region. This map shows some common and useful endings.
Place names are not limited to just villages and towns: local farmsteads and other geographical points of interest are also included.
The distributions shown on the maps are not 100% definite. Some exceptions exist.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Sámi bilingual signs can be found inland in the northern parts of Sweden.
Meänkieli is a language closely related to Finnish, which is found close to the Finnish border. One of the most common occurrences on signage is for river names, which will end in “väylä”. It is also possible to find trilingual signs with both Meänkieli and Sámi.
NOTE: As a general principle, if you encounter Finnish sounding place names, you are also likely to be fairly close to the Finnish border.
Street names ending in gattu or gatu are found in central Dalarna, near lake Siljan. Notably, gattu is found in the south of this area, while gatu is found in the north.
Sundsvall is known as Drakstaden (the Dragon City) in Sweden, which can be seen referenced in the form of dragon statues in the central parts of the city, and on signs.
Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, which are spoken in the regions shown. Note that some areas, mostly near the region borders, are bilingual.
NOTE: Unlike Germany and Austria, Swiss German does not use the letter ß.
The text on the speed limit signs varies depending on the official languages in the region.
The first digits of Swiss postal codes are a good way to regionguess the country. The general pattern is that the numbers increase from the west to east.
Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese. It is one of the most complex scripts visible on street view, with intricate characters that consist of many strokes.
NOTE: Hong Kong also uses traditional Chinese characters on signage.
!!Japanese uses some Chinese characters (kanji), meaning the script can look somewhat similar. However, Japanese will also have a considerable amount of more simplified looking characters (katakana and hiragana).
These signs indicate Township roads, with the character written before or above the road number indicating the county.
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Thai script is compact and in many fonts has tiny circles within most letters.
NOTE: The Cambodian (Khmer) script often has longer lines and more accents underneath the lettering, as opposed to the Thai script. The Lao script looks similar to the Thai script. Make sure to check the driving side before guessing.
Directional signs on smaller roads are white, and are composed of two signs: one with an arrow at the bottom, and one with the information at the top. These can have place names. When they do not, you will see them as just the road number with a Garuda. Moreover, highway signs are green, and frequently feature the place names in Latin script below the Thai name.
Stop signs in Thailand feature the Thai script, instead of Latin.
NOTE: Stop signs in Laos feature the Lao script, similar to Thai, but they have just 2 characters instead of 3.
Waystones and road signs on provincial roads will often provide a two-letter abbreviation of the province in Thai script. They will not appear on waystones or road signs for national roads.
You can use this site to view and practice all province abbreviations.
The majority of Muslims in Thailand live in the very south of the country. In these areas, you will often see Islamic religious attire, Jawi script, based on the Arabic script, on signs and mosques.
Street signs with a smaller green section underneath a blue section are found in Bangkok and Nonthaburi.
In Tunisia, both French and Arabic are common. The Arabic script can be identified by its lines and dots. You can often see bilingual signs.
NOTE: The UAE and (more rarely) Jordan use English and Arabic.
Most direction signs have a white background with towns listed in Arabic and Latin script. The font of the Latin script is usually quite distinctive.
NOTE: Many direction signs include the capital Tunis, but this does not necessarily mean you are anywhere near that city.
Tunisia has a fairly unique stop sign with Arabic and Latin script.
NOTE: Similar stop signs can be found in Jordan and the UAE. However, Israel and Palestine use a different unique stop sign with a hand instead of text.
The Turkish language has a fairly unique look. It uses the following special characters:
Ç ç and Ş ş with a cedilla (“hook” below the letter).
Ö ö and Ü ü with an umlaut (two dots).
Ğ ğ with a breve.
Dotless I ı. This letter in particular is noteworthy, as it is essentially unique to Turkish. In case you are confused: this is similar to the letter i, but without a dot when written in lowercase.
Capital İ with a dot.
Direction signs use a very distinct font that can often be recognised by the noticeably wide letter spaces.
Stop signs have the word “DUR” written on them. This is unique to Turkey.
The Ukrainian language uses the Cyrillic script.
These letters are unique to Ukrainian, compared to Russian:
Є є (not to be confused with Э э in Russian and Belarusian.)
Ґ ґ
І і
Ї ї
NOTE: Other European languages that use Cyrillic include Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian.
The Ukrainian word for street is вулиця (vulytsya), abbreviated вул. (vul.).
The Russian word is улица, abbreviated ул., without a в at the beginning.
The Ukrainian word for city is місто (misto), abbreviated м. (m.). It can be used both to differentiate it from other cyrillic languages and to quickly find the city name in addresses.
The Russian language can be found in Ukraine, particularly in the east and south. While there are several differences between Russian and Ukrainian, these are some of the most noteworthy:
The letters Ы ы, Э э are only found in Russian.
The Russian word for street is улица, abbreviated ул.
The Russian word for city is город, abbreviated г.
Bus stop shelters with a vibrant yellow-and-green paint scheme, featuring sunflowers and the name of a local brand (Оліс), can be found in the Mykolaiv and Kherson oblasts.
The area near the border with Hungary is majority Hungarian. As a result, you will see a lot of signs with Hungarian language on it – bilingual or even monolingual.
The official language in the UAE is Arabic. Its script can be identified by its lines and dots.
NOTE: Due to high tourism, signs in the UAE often have English writing alongside Arabic. While this is also common in Qatar and Oman, it is not common in Jordan.
Direction signs in the United Kingdom can be blue, green, or white. Look for the letters A or M, as these are the major roads in the country. Smaller roads start with B.
NOTE: Irish direction signs are typically bilingual, with Irish names in italics, making them easy to distinguish from the UK ones.
UK yield signs feature the phrase “GIVE WAY”.
NOTE: Irish yields signs just have the word “YIELD”.
Bins in urban areas often have the city name on them.
Welsh is a Celtic language that is spoken throughout Wales. Road signs in Wales are usually bilingual English and Welsh. Towns often have Welsh names too.
Welsh uses the letters D, W, and Y much more commonly than English. The double LL is also very distinct.
NOTE: Scottish Gaelic and Irish are both also Celtic languages. They can look somewhat similar to Welsh.
In Wales, markings on the road are in both English and Welsh. One of the best examples of this is ‘Araf’, which means ‘Slow’. This marking is only found in Wales.
NOTE: Araf is not the only Welsh language marking you can find, it is just the most common. Whenever you see an obviously non-English marking next to an English one, consider guessing in Wales.
Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language that is closely related to Irish. They have a very similar look and use accent marks commonly. Common and recognizable letter clusters include bh, dh, fh, mh, ai, ea, eo, and ui.
Scottish Gaelic on road signs is found most commonly in the Scottish Highlands, and is almost always found north of Glasgow.
NOTE: Scottish Gaelic on road signs will often be in green or yellow text. This will not happen with Welsh or Irish on road signs.
London street signs have a distinct look. They usually feature the street name in black, followed by the postcode and borough in red.
Signs with green text underneath the street name, indicating the townland, can be found in the western part of Northern Ireland.
Especially towards the north of the shaded area, there may be a metal divider between the two lines.
Most street signs in the Wakefield council are black with a white outline and letters. They use the Monotype Rockwell Nova font.
Speed signs with green borders with the text “Twenty’s Plenty” are mostly found in and around Glasgow.
The US uses American English spelling (e.g. center, color).
In addition, the US primarily uses the imperial system for measurements. For example, speed and distance are measured in miles. You will also often see feet and inches on signs, indicating the height of bridges.
NOTE: This is useful to distinguish between the English-speaking parts of Canada, where British English spelling and (usually) the metric system are used. For example, Canada measures speed in kilometres.
Road signs in the US tend to use more words compared to their Canadian counterparts. A good example are railway crossing signs, which feature the literal words ‘railway crossing’ on them. In Canada, these signs are typically blank.
This tendency is also noticeable on yellow diamond warning signs. In Canada, the words will usually be on a rectangular sign below the yellow diamond, which would have a diagram on it instead.
The US uses the phrase ‘Speed Limit’ on their speed signs.
The numbers on American speed signs are usually lower than that of Canada’s, since they use miles instead of kilometres. In addition, speed limits ending in 5 are more common in the US.
NOTE: Canada uses the word ‘Maximum’ on their speed signs.
Speed signs in Oregon often simply have the word ‘Speed’ instead of the standard ‘Speed Limit’.
Interstate 19 in Arizona from Tucson to the Mexico border uses kilometres on the exit and distance signs. This is the only part of the country that uses kilometres instead of miles for highway signs.
NOTE: Speed limit signs in this area still use MPH instead of KPH.
Owing to its former status as a Danish colony, some streets and localities still have Danish names (e.g. gade) or display bilingual signs. This is most common in the historical downtown areas.
The Vietnamese language uses a modified version of the Latin script, but with a far larger number of diacritics than any other script found on Street View. Words are generally somewhat short, typically consisting of a single syllable.
Addresses on signs are _extremely _common in Vietnam, in particular on storefronts. These addresses follow a hierarchical sequence that usually goes from specific (house/building) to general (city/province). These can be tremendously helpful to find your exact location.
Usually an address will contain all or some of the following elements, from left to right:
House and street number
Ward/commune:
District:
Province/City
These words are often abbreviated. For example, huyện can be abbreviated as just H., thành phố as just TP., etc. Additionally, sometimes the province itself may be abbreviated, for instance here Thái Bình is abbreviated as TB.
The provinces are the most useful part of an address. They are easy to scan for on the map, but it is recommended to learn them by heart to find them even quicker on the map.
Often, the names of provinces are abbreviated. For example, Tien Giang is abbreviated TG. These can be especially useful to learn by heart to get an edge over your opponent.
It is important to note that Vietnam underwent an administrative reform in 2025, combining most provinces into larger ones and reducing the number of provinces significantly. This makes learning the (old) provinces by heart even more important: The overwhelming majority of coverage will be from before the reform, meaning that you cannot simply scan the map for some of the provinces’ names.
There are lots of resources available to learn the province names and abbreviations. We recommend https://helloquiz.app/.
Some place name prefixes, meaning the start of a city name, are regional within Vietnam.
Near the beach resorts just east of Phan Thiết city, most signs will have Cyrillic text alongside Vietnamese, catering to Russian tourists.