TexanScot

I remember once sitting behind two British people on a subway in Berlin who proceeded to spend the entire journey listing in excruciating detail all the things they hated about Germany and Germans, completely oblivious to the fact that - based on the looks on the other passengers faces - most of the people in the train has a sufficiently good grasp of English to understand what my two fellow Brits were saying about them.

scrubbedexpat096

Similar story, I was once holidaying in France and came across a young boy who had lost his parents and tried to assist him with my poor excuse at the French language, Before a teenage German teenage girl approached with her parents, spoke to me in perfect English and then in turn assisted the boy in French and then back to her native tongue.


Not all have such a closed view on other languages.....


Mandarin and French is being learnt by my eldest in early secondary school and French is being taught at primary school from the start nowadays.

scrubbedexpat099

I was in Paris and very early Sunday morning was walking around trying to clear my head and approached by 2 Spanish guys looking for directions, happy to help, they did not speak French but were impressed with my English.

Pulaski

It's one of the downsides of speaking English - there isn't anywhere on the planet where you can safely assume that there is nobody who has at least a basic grasp of English.

Every time I visit Italy (20+ times), at some point during my visit, someone will come up to me and ask me if I speak German! And once, when I was in the Netherlands someone approached me and asked me if I spoke Dutch.

I remember being in a gift shop in Oberamagau, in southern Germany, and I noticed an Italian family (Italy is less than 50 miles to the south) were at the counter trying to ask the shop assistant something, and between the Italians and the shop assistant, they eventually settled on English as the most effective way to make themselves understood. Brexit won't change that, and I hear that increasingly the Swiss are using English when talking to other Swiss who are from a part of Switzerland that has a different native tongue.

scrubbedexpat091

No doubt, my parents during my time in school frustrated them as much of the school work was not something they learned, and now my sister is going through the same, her kids are pretty much on their own with most work as my sister can't help them, but my niece is learning Spanish and German, her school offers 12 different languages, back in the 90's only options I had was Spanish and French, neither of which were taught by teachers fluent in the language.

One reason I don't go back to school, my high school education is nowhere close to what it needs to be for college of 2020 and basically have to redo high school from scratch.

I wouldn't have minded learning another language, but I struggled with my native language so learning a 2nd wasn't in the cards, language isn't something I pick up easily, now my wife her brain is like a language sponge, she knows English, German and Portuguese. But no formal education in German or Portuguese, she picked up German as that is what her parents primarily spoke, and Portuguese from living in Brazil for a year.

Yankashire

I remember my Russian visa and numerous Russian stamps earning me a sceptical eye from a federal police officer staffing the booth at one of the airports in Germany 😅

Yankashire

In Berlin, you would think that would go without saying 😬. And one also wonders why they bothered to come...

Yankashire

This has actually become a touchy issue, as the linguistic balance in Switzerland has been carefully maintained for hundreds of years. There have even been suggestions to make English Switzerland's fourth official language.

You may also have had the experience traveling in Europe (or elsewhere) that some people are very sensitive now about the steady creep of English words into the local language. I know this is happening in Germany. For example, I would see "Customer Service" desks, without the equivalent German term. You also find cafes, bars, and so on where the staff will only speak English. I think it's difficult and disorienting, in particular, for older people whose English is not great.

Yankashire

Also, related to the original subject, we do have at least two cases here in the UK when last I checked. The government has also set up a quarantine facility on the Wirral, where they are keeping British and Irish citizens who have been flown back from Wuhan. I'm not aware of any travel restrictions here, but that may have changed since last I checked.

Edit: I just saw on the news that Hainan Airlines has suspended its flights from Manchester Airport to China until late March, effective today. So it does seem that customer choice is playing a role over here...

Pulaski

There are even some Dutch who have woken up to the fact that they are marginizing their own language, and there are some moves to protect it from further marginalization.

I know it is now relatively common for Dutch parents to raise their children to speak English from an early age - I recall when visiting a model village in the Netherlands around 30 years ago that a Dutch woman with three children in the range of 5-10years old, on hearing a complaint from her youngest child that the children's guide/work book she had bought for them was in English, she spoke to him and said, "Today we are speaking English!"

Yankashire

The Netherlands (and the Scandinavian countries) are great examples, because their populations have been subject to compulsory English for many decades. I have a Dutch acquaintance here in the UK who complains about how "Anglicised" Dutch has become, when she returns and speaks with friends and acquaintances. Of course, most young people speak English almost as well as they speak Dutch. And with the very high immigration rates that the Netherlands has seen, you find whole communities of migrants (including most of the Brits living there) who haven't bothered to learn Dutch, because they find they don't need it.

I have to admit I find that a bit sad, both from the language and cultural perspective, as well as from the perspective that, as an English speaker in the Netherlands, you will need to be able to communicate in Dutch to get the most out of your time there. Yes, most Dutch speak English, but they speak Dutch amongst themselves... and you won't be a part of their community unless you can understand them in their own language and respond in the same. Why would any English speaker there choose not to buy in to that community?

I'll add that, as a German (and American) whose native language is English, the same applies in Germany. No matter how "international" and cosmopolitan Berlin or wherever might seem, the nation's language is German. If you don't bother learning it, you will miss out on a tremendous proportion of what makes it unique. And the language isn't that difficult to learn.

kimilseung

My favorite was on arrival in the USA, . being asked why I had visited Libya, based on my Lebanon visa.
I said I had never been to Libya, the immigration official flipped again through the pages and proudly pointed to the Lebanon visa.
I think he would have asked about Lebanon, but was a bit embarrassed when I pointed out the error, and waived me through.

Yankashire

Ha, interesting. Do you have a US passport? I have to say, the US authorities rarely ask me any questions... I was asked if I was a dual citizen last time I entered, but that was about it. My impression is that they generally focus their attention on non-US passport holders, but I could be very far off-base there...

Pulaski

That wasn't my experience at all.

I was at a conference in the Netherlands, sitting at a table when a woman approached and placed her hand on the back of the chair next to me and asked "Is this one free?" Except she wasn't talking to me, she was talking to our Dutch colleague sitting on the other side of the empty chair and had asked "Ist dit een vrij?"

kimilseung

GB passport, they saw Arabic and the letter L.