Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you go to Spain, it's pretty likely they'll understand you. English is taught widely across European schools, much more than foreign languages are taught in our schools. Especially in the Netherlands, I have seen 12 year olds that are close to being fluent in English
Absolutely not! They have terrible English skills!!
Terrible??!! Are you nuts? How many languages can you speak then?
I am 10000% certain that the average Spanish/French/Dutch/German person can speak English and another foreign language 100x better than the average American/British person could speak a foreign language.
Location: Northern Ireland and temporarily England
7,668 posts, read 5,257,582 times
Reputation: 1392
I've been to Spain 6 times all over. Even in towns like Alicante their level of English is poor, all they would know is the basics like: hello, thank you, how are you?
In rural Spain its even worse! No one will speak English there.
I have to agree with this. We just came back from a trip to Madrid, a large, so-called cosmopolitan city and we were amazed at how few people understood a word of English, let alone speak it to any extent. We found it very challenging to order in restaurants, ask questions at museums, etc. Even in our highly-rated hotel, which was in the heart of downtown Madrid, only 1 desk clerk spoke fluent English and a couple of others partially understood us.
I don't know if they can speak, I'm almost sure that they don't want to, even if they can. During a trip in Barcelona a few years ago, the feeling I had was that they could understand english, they preferred to reply in spanish however and this was not very helpful-sometimes it was simply annoying. I have a couple of incidents to recall from that trip with the language issue which, now that I think of them, make me laugh. Or maybe I happened to come across the wrong people, who knows!
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
3,094 posts, read 3,573,159 times
Reputation: 1036
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sickandtiredofthis
I've been to Spain 6 times all over. Even in towns like Alicante their level of English is poor, all they would know is the basics like: hello, thank you, how are you?
In rural Spain its even worse! No one will speak English there.
W
h
a
t
e
v
e
r
Are you able to speak few basic words in either Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, French, Dutch or Italian?
While the older generations don't speak much English, many young people have at least a basic level of English, but if they might feel comfortable speaking in English, it's a different thing. Most people are very welcoming and pleasant though.
In a few years time, English will be widely spoken in Spain for sure. Children go to bilingual nurseries, study in private language academies since they're 4 or they start studying in school at 7 or 8 years old.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
