[fxtentacle]

Having lived in Asia and Singapore for a while, I can assure you that they don't infantilize their people.

In fact, some of the government reminders can seem cruel to westerners. For example, public signs that count the number of drunk driving deaths per month.

The reason why everything important in Singapore has to be in picture language is because they have so many nationalities living together.

If I remember correctly, the subway signs were already in English, Malaysian and Chinese. But there's also plenty of Indian, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Thai citizens. And of course Japanese tourists.

An 8-language sign starts to be unwieldy, so I applaud their approach of using graphics instead.