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You can be in Spain and then drive to France and its a different language. While there are similarities its still not as mutually intelligible as say Spanish with Portuguese. If you continue driving and reach Germany its now a completely different language.
There are other ways to communicate. Never used your hands, or a paper &pen to describe your basic needs? Or what about a dictionary?
It's pretty silly to expect everyone to speak English, or - at least Europeans know better than to demand it.
People also learn few useful phrases before they travel. Nothing wrong with that. It shows respect for other cultures.
Historically, people didn't travel as much as they do today. Most people lived their entire lives in a small area; some were naturally bilingual in their own dialect and the dialect of the next region over, or the languages of both of their parents if one parent had come from a different country. Otherwise, most didn't need a second language.
But within the past ~300 years, many upper-class people learned French or, less often, German, as a common language to use in Europe. There was a time when you could more or less count on finding someone who spoke at least rudimentary French in many European countries. Or people traveled in groups with a translator.
Go back farther than that, and educated Europeans communicated in Latin.
Before around 1940. Europe had two linguae francae -- English and French; those two nations also wielded most of the power in that portion of the world under colonial rule.
In addition, since the replacement of Feudalism with the concept of the nation-state and expansion to the New World, one nation has usually dominated. Spain was first, but lost that position with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This created a power-vacuum, which the French filled for about a century. The French then gradually lost ground to the English -- possibly due to the weight and stridency of the French aristocracy.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 07-07-2021 at 04:48 PM..
The only people who had to communicate with foreigners were merchants, academics and diplomats. They usually spoke the languages they needed. A merchant doing a lot of business in Italy may speak Italian, a diplomat at a court would have spoken French, a scholar would have spoken Latin and Greek etc.
Latin and Greek were generally taught in the high schools attended by the elites. Not for practical purposes but to read the classics. As international trade and exchange of knowledge increased in the 2nd half of the 19th century, French and English became more commonly taught in schools.
In the old days, only the merchants, the aristocrats and the rich traveled widely.
Their children were tutored in other European language(s). I am guessing, Latin was a "must" to acquire.
Another example: Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" was written in both Russian and French, a preferred language of the Imperial Russian aristocracy.
People used not to travel as much as today, Until the early 1900s local dialects were still prefered over the national language in most countries (still true in parts of Italy).
In the old days, only the merchants, the aristocrats and the rich traveled widely.
Their children were tutored in other European language(s). I am guessing, Latin was a "must" to acquire.
Another example: Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" was written in both Russian and French, a preferred language of the Imperial Russian aristocracy.
Oh if we are talking about THOSE times, then FRENCH was the lingua franca in Europe - no doubt.
It was the language of diplomats, "higher circles," international relations and so on.
In Russia of Tolstoy times in particular ( and Napoleon invasion) it was even more bizarre.
In "War and Peace" book there is an episode, where the Russian nobility decides to boycott the French, and that meant boycotting French language as well.
So they try to boycott it, and then they have problem communicating with each other in Russian, because they were all raised by the French governess, being taught to speak French from their childhood, and hence the result.
They probably had little need for it, & those that sold items to other countries, would have had language specialists available.
Native tribes here in the USA also managed to communicate with each other, even though many spoke different tribal languages.
I have travelled in countries where I did not speak the language, & communicating with non English speakers can be fun!! Try it sometime.
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