British Complaining!

aqua111

I am on Holiday in a lovely Hotel where the Staff are eager to help with any queries.
I cannot believe how many British people are complaining when the Spanish people do not always understand every word they utter.
How many of us can speak a second language?

forgotmyname

All British people speak at least 2 languages, you speak to them in English if they do not understand you SHOUT in English.

pendragon_arther

I live in the Philippines and never a truer word was said, but that's us Brits. We expect any other country we visit or reside in to speaky the Henglish. I have a Filipino wife and she's very patient with me and we get on fine, even extracting the urine out of each other in the nicest possible way. But the Americans are just as bad, and the Aussies.

JP08

The flip side to this is that English is the second language of choice practically everywhere where it isn't the first language.

So, as a non native English speaker, you have to learn one second language.

As a native English speaker - what language do you have to learn to get by everywhere ?

Spanish is a good world language, for example, but the chances of finding a Spanish speaker when lost on the streets of Tokyo is slim. If you are a Spanish speaker, there is a fighting chance that you speak English, and that the Tokyo citizen you approach does too.

It's one of the reasons why this country is so popular for immigrants. Many already speak, to varying degrees, the language. Rarely the case when they land up in Slovakia, for example.

balletshoes

aqua111 wrote: »

I am on Holiday in a lovely Hotel where the Staff are eager to help with any queries.
I cannot believe how many British people are complaining when the Spanish people do not always understand every word they utter.
How many of us can speak a second language?

i can - but its not Spanish .

whitegoods_engineer

I get irritated at the same old line of 'the British don't bother learning a language'.

Like it or not, the British Empire meant that English became the dominant language of trade.

If you're from France, Germany or practically anywhere non-English speaking, you'd do well to learn English as it is a true international language.

It's just plain fact. We British already speak the world's most important language so it isn't lazy not to learn another. However, it could be said that it would indeed be lazy for a non-English speaking European to not bother learning English.

Johnnytwostep

Typical English person taking to Spanish waiter on holiday,

'Ill have egg and chips please'
'Que'
'EGG AND CHIP'S'
'Que'
'Bloody foreigners don't speak the laaaaanguage'

Bollotom

I speak five languages but not Spanish. Any smart-!!!!! want to tell me I should learn Spanish. If I go on holiday to Spain, I expect tourist service people to at least have a smattering of English. Aqua 111 must be a disgruntled Spanish waiter who didn't get a tip. On the other hand he/she made me smile so not all bad. Que? :cool:

Elsewhere

In the '50s you could still sort of get by in Latin in some European countries. Back in the Middles Ages all educated people in the European area spoke Latin...

So we Brits shouldn't be so smug - in another 100 years I suspect everyone's second language will be Chinese.

LOL - if you'd like to see a real curiousity here's a film in Esperanto starring William Shatner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHUfHj2lTaM

Hedgehog99

I'd never go without a phrasebook. Hopefully I'd have enough notice of wherever I was going to actually do some preparation. I like to see how far I can get before they guess I'm English. Definitely appreciate their help when I get stuck on something more complicated than a hotel booking, travel tickets, directions or menus, but I also think it's up to me to equip myself with the tools to get by - at least, if the worst comes to the worst, a phrasebook can be used to point at phrases to tell a doctor your symptoms. On Tenerife, we caught out the bakers who'd claimed the date on the cakes was the date of manufacture when we found one dated two days ahead.

cono1717

I think the mantra of learning another language is dead now - especially when you consider all the places you can go where they speak a different language, Japan, China, Spain, New York. etc.

Whilst I think a resort that caters to English people should speak English, I do think it's nice to learn some basic phrases if you venture out into towns and cities even if just to get you by. "Yes", "No", "Which way is the...", "No, that's not the bowl where you throw your keys" and so on.