During the Middle Ages, how common was literacy among peasants...

During the Middle Ages, how common was literacy among peasants? How did they handle signs and business names if people couldn't read?

Well, for one, you could look at something and generally tell what it was

secondly, signs typically had an emblem or picture of some kind

and third, people didn't travel all the fucking time and they knew what their shithole village had in it.

I vaguely remember that signs were made into recognizable symbols, especially for pubs.

People that lived in towns had greater literacy than peasants in the field. Shops tended to have a picture on their sign as well as words. So "Inn" along with a picture of a mug and a bed, for example.

Peasants in the field rarely navigated anything more than the local village, where they likely knew everyone by name. You didn't need a sign saying "Bill's Blacksmith" to know that that was the place to get new horseshoes because you're friends with Bill.

>implying this isn't a thinly veiled racebait thread
I mean really, what does this topic have to do with Veeky Forums and what does that image have to do with it? Geez OP, you're quite the nitwit aincha?

>Peasants in the field rarely navigated anything more than the local village, where they likely knew everyone by name
Really? What do they spend all of their time doing if they don't go to towns or anything.

Drinking, building, crafts, and family stuff [especially fucking]. Maybe gathering, fishing, and hunting, depending on the laws and what was available.

Don't forget going to church.

It was a peaceful, but hard life. At least during times of peace.

In English, at least, things weren't standardized yet. Hence the myriad accents and such in places like the UK. You get the people from one city saying "The pirates are coming!" and the other saying "tha pyrates er'r come!" Or some such odd thing, essentially it was just phonetics, everyone tried to do it how it sounded to them.

Depends on what point of the medieval era and what country. England always had a higher literacy rate amongst the lower classes than France, particularly during the High and Late Medieval era. Different parts of Germany were the same, where as subgroups like Jews were near universally literate in every country they lived in.