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Old 12-09-2011, 07:45 AM
 
14,250 posts, read 17,849,693 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Manolón View Post
I live in a very touristic town and I've never seen any serious language issue.
The last issue was when some English asked for "brown sauce".
Most tourists are very predictable after you see 100.000 of them, they always say the same things in their language.
If you know 500 words, that's more than enough for get your messsages in five languages.
Of course, few waiters know good English, German or whatever.
As to bothersome tourists, English and Americans are bothersome no matter how educated they are because they don't know how to walk, they take one step and stop in the middle of the street, stop traffic, a mess. Americans walk like an aircraft carrier, with cameras, belt straps, tennis shoes with white socks and they are rather heavy, pedestrians bump into them. I guess they are used to malls but not to medieval towns or cities.
Same problem in New York City with tourists from all over the world. It is a phenomenon which is, unfortunately, not confined to the Brits and Americans.
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Old 12-09-2011, 09:35 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,618 posts, read 86,592,874 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neuling View Post
Of course almost everyone speaks English - IF they want to. In many, maybe even most, countries English is just another standard subject at high school, often taught from 5th grade on.
Some people will simply not speak English for various reasons (for instance because they simply don't like English, after all students are forced to learn it, they don't choose to; or because they think foreigners who don't speak their language shouldn't go to their country in the first place) while others are just waiting for a chance to talk to anyone in English.
That is a huge over-generalization. I was surprised in India how few people speak English, and Hong Kong and Malaysia as well. It is very common in such countries for uneducated people to not really know any English at all. And school attendance is by no means universal. In Africa, either English or French is the language of instruction in schools in most countries, but at least half the population has never been to school and speaks only the native African language of their tribe. Those who cannot speak a European language are often encountered working in servile jobs in the city, and you don't need to trek into the bush to find them.

You will be in for a big surprise if you go to Latin America expecting that almost everyone speaks English. Get on a South American bus, and there likely won't be a single person on board who can form a simple sentence in English. Even in Canada, where French is mandatory for the full 12 years of school, not one English Canadian in a dozen can so much as ask simple directions in French. My English-speaking co-workers in Canada were amazed that I, an American immigrant, could speak French better (although badly) than any of them. (Canada is a rare exception, where people actually do refuse to speak a language that they know, but that is much less the case nowadays than it used to be.)

In my experience, it is extremely rare to encounter a person who CAN speak English, but refuses to do so for any reason. Outside the USA, bilingualism is pretty much taken for granted as a positive and useful characteritic of socialization, and I'm fairly certain that at least half the world's population is comfortably bilingual. Speaking either of two languages is as easy as walking and chewing gum, and refusing to speak a language that you know would never even occur to them. It would be a shameful social gaffe to treat strangers with such open contempt. Aside from Westerners, people just don't behave that way.

You, as a traveler, are the worldly and educated one. Learn their language. Don't expect chambermaids to learn yours.

Last edited by jtur88; 12-09-2011 at 09:57 AM..
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Old 12-09-2011, 09:48 AM
 
Location: West Coast of Europe
25,915 posts, read 24,577,314 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
That is a huge over-generalization. I was surprised in India how few people speak English, and Hong Kong and Malaysia as well. It is very common in such countries for uneducated people to not really know any English at all. And school attendance is by no means universal. In Africa, either English or French is the language of instruction in schools in most countries, but at least half the population has never been to school and speaks only the native African language of their tribe. Those who cannot speak a European language are often encountered working in servile jobs in the city, and you don't need to trek into the bush to find them.

In my experience, it is extremely rare to encounter a person who CAN speak English, but refuses to do so for any reason. Outside the USA, bilingualism is pretty much taken for granted as a positive and useful characteritic of socialization, and I'm fairly certain that at least half the world's population is comfortably bilingual. Speaking either of two languages is as easy as walking and chewing gum, and refusing to speak a language that you know would never even occur to them. It would be a shameful social gaffe to treat strangers with such open contempt. Aside from Westerners, people just don't behave that way.
I was mostly referring to countries where Americans tend to go. Few of them ever go to Africa, and even there a lot of people speak at least some English, increasingly even in francophone and lusophone countries.
Of course in developing countries such as India, the more remote the place you go, the less educated people tend to be, the less likely they are to speak English fluently. In such a huge country it also depends a lot which state you go to. In Tamil Nadu for instance people prefer speaking English to Hindi.

In France for instance you can easily encounter people who do speak English, but refuse to do so, for instance because they simply don't like Americans and Brits.
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Old 12-09-2011, 11:11 AM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
26,764 posts, read 37,673,521 times
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I must confess that I sometimes pretend to not speak English when I sense that the ensuing conversation with a particular person is going to be extremely annoying or problematic.
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Old 12-09-2011, 11:18 AM
 
Location: West Coast of Europe
25,915 posts, read 24,577,314 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
I must confess that I sometimes pretend to not speak English when I sense that the ensuing conversation with a particular person is going to be extremely annoying or problematic.
That is a big advantage when you live abroad, you can always pretend not to understand Have done it myself
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Old 12-09-2011, 11:22 AM
 
Location: Sacramento, Ca.
2,441 posts, read 3,415,444 times
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We shouldnt expext people in other countries to know any more english than we know of their language while visiting their homeland.
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Old 12-09-2011, 11:41 AM
 
Location: West Coast of Europe
25,915 posts, read 24,577,314 times
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I sometimes I wonder why people visit places where they don't understand locals. If you just wanna see stuff, well, nowadays there are giant xx megapixel photos of almost anything and anywhere on flickr and google. In any decent city food from every corner of the world is available...
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Old 12-09-2011, 12:32 PM
 
Location: Boston, MA
14,462 posts, read 11,204,851 times
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Here's an idea: Let's stop generalizing about people. Some Americans are extremely gracious tourists, some aren't.
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Old 12-09-2011, 01:15 PM
 
Location: Viña del Mar, Chile
16,401 posts, read 30,813,805 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Joshua View Post
Here's an idea: Let's stop generalizing about people. Some Americans are extremely gracious tourists, some aren't.

Agreed, I love how so many people talk about how Americans are so ignorant, completely ignoring the fact of how much ignorance it takes to generalize an entire country..
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Old 12-09-2011, 02:10 PM
 
Location: Sacramento, Ca.
2,441 posts, read 3,415,444 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neuling View Post
I sometimes I wonder why people visit places where they don't understand locals. If you just wanna see stuff, well, nowadays there are giant xx megapixel photos of almost anything and anywhere on flickr and google. In any decent city food from every corner of the world is available...
I don't see that as a problem. Many people love travel and enjoying new places, scenery and cultures in person. But some, not all, may forget that reality extends even beyond familiar borders.
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