Rosemary

We went to Gandia for an hour or two this afternoon and visited The Yorkshire Linen Company near Carrefour which is well worth a visit as they have a good range of linen at good prices.

I wanted something from Casa in La Vital and could not find it so we asked one of the assistants who was very helpful and sorted out from our descriptions in Spanish what we were looking for but thought that they would not be having any more in. She decided to ask one of her colleagues who said that she could order the item for us if we paid a deposit, which we did.

Fine, no problem, she then went on to apologise for her bad English, I am always staggered when they apologise. In fact it was quite funny because whenever she managed to think of the English word for something I said it in Spanish to her to make sure we were on the same wavelength.

Anyway the real reason that I have started this thread is to ask if other people have had the same experience as I have had today and also a couple of times in the past, with people apologising for their lack of English.

Can you imagine any shop assistants in UK apologising to Spanish people for their lack of or bad Spanish?

Rosemary

crispy

Hi Rosemary

Yes we have experienced this in our Branch of Banca March, the people who work in there are always apologising to us for their poor English, I am always gobbed smack at how sorry they are for not being able to speak English more clearly. I can tell you we always come out of there very embarrassed about our lack of Spanish

Bri and Katee

We too have had Spanish assistants apologise to us, notably in Ikea. Karen was trying to describe the piece of furniture we required in our poor Spanish and the girl just smiled and in very passable English gave us all the help we needed.
And again in Leroy Merlin, the Spanish guy in front of me seemed to be in mid argument with his wife/partner and stepped back onto my foot, he turned and offered a 'Perdon' before returning to his argument

Where I do find them to be not apologetic is the street markets, there it seems to be every one for themselves, you get shoved out of the way so that the Spanish shoppers can get to the front of the queue. We have stood back and watched them do it to each other so I don't think its just because we are foreigners. We have even been deliberately ignored by the sellers at markets once they realise we are not Spanish.

Mitzyboy

You must have been there about the same time as us today We go in Casa a lot, last bought a parasol from there and they were extremely helpful.
Haven't had anyone apologising for not sepaking English though

Fortaleza

To be fair though UK shops, businesses etc do not set themselves up to recieve a Spanish speaking market whereas Spain, as a country in general, but obviously moreso on the costas set themselves up to deal with the foreign market. If the demand was not there, would there be a need for so many banks, estate agents, furniture stores, linien stores etc.

I've had this short sighted argument thrown at me so many times. I live in a town where 99.999% of the people can't speak English but are recieving each year more and more foreign tourists. Many places justify their lack of English saying that anyone wishing to visit our village should speak Castellano or not bother coming. Therefore, going by this argument, a day-tripper must have a command of Spanish to visit the town. When you suggest to them what would the country do if you took away ALL its foreign tourism, they smugly snort that they'd be better off. Thankfully not all think the same but it's funny how they shift the blame of their own inadequecies and immediately use attack as the best form of defence.

Whichever country we visit, we try to learn a few basic phrases including the vital, I'm sorry but I don't speak [insert language]. Do you speak Spanish or English?

As these two languages account for around a billion of the world's population, there's a pretty good chance that someone will.

silverchick

will you PLEASE stop talking about shopping?? i'm trying to go cold turkey !

Rosemary

The places where people have apologised to me about not speaking good English have not been tourist places but ordinary Spanish towns with ordinary working people. Todays incident admittedly occurred in a town with many English living in it and visiting it.

We never hear English spoken in the towns that we go to regularly and do not expect Spanish`people to speak English just because we have chosen to live in their country anymore than I suspect a Spanish person would expect to walk into a bank, shop or any other business in the UK and find staff that could converse with them in Spanish.

Whilst I agree with your argument regarding the Spanish speaking English on the Costa's I do not think that it is relevant in the area that we live. We moved from Eastbourne in East Sussex which has many language schools encouraging people from Spain, France, Italy and others but I will bet that they never get the helpfulness and apologies that we had today.

Rosemary

Rosemary

Did you not have the sign above your head saying 'I am Mitzyboy from Expats'? Silly boy we would have spotted you and run a mile if we had sussed out who you were.

Sorry to have missed you.

Rosemary

rugbymatt

Just look for an ex-hippy.

Rosemary

Did not see anyone resembling an ex-hippy so obviously not in Casa at exactly the same time as Mitzy. Shame because afterwards we had a lovely cappichino in the Italian coffee house and would have welcomed a chat.

Rosemary

Mitzyboy

You should let us know when you are coming down next ..... I usually go to the canel roll place as the coffee is excellent there

And theres none of those horrible do it yourself places there either

Rosemary

Will do. We will be there probably in a couple of weeks when our order arrives.

Rosemary

Fortaleza

Where I disagree with you Rosemary is that your comparison is not a real one - it is not like for like. Saying that you prefer Burger King to McDonalds is a fair comparison but to say I get much better service at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons than I ever get in McDonalds is not a fair comparison (and, of course, stating the bleeding obvious!!!!). One country - as a whole - actively encourages tourism in all its unpleasant glory whereas in the other it is simply a byproduct (albeit a very rich one)

I am not at all surprised that a Spaniard trading his wares apologises for not speaking anything other than cristiano but a Brit not apologising for not speaking Spanish, German, Chinese, Japonese, Turkish, Catalan, etc....... is frankly an irrelevance

Rosemary

Cannot be bothered to waste my time or intellect on someone who uses this tone and language at me.

Rosemary

Fortaleza

Rosemary - it was not aimed at you, I was highlighting the ridiculousness of the extreme example I provided. Hence the exclamation marks to make it known I was trying to be humorous whilst putting my point across. Maybe an emoticon would have illustrated that better, so my bad.