How good can someone get by in your area without speaking the native language?

34 comments

1. There’s a lot of students here who only speak English and everyone else speaks English as well so I think you’ll be fine

2. Well in my village it would be kinda impossible and probably pretty hard in the nearby towns and city as well.

3. I think in the city, you can get by pretty well without speaking Italian.

   In fact I know some foreigners who have lived here for years and can barely do more than order a beer!

   Supermarkets, you don’t necessarily need to speak.Bars and restaurants generally have at least one person who is used to dealing with tourists,so can speak English.Public transport, you don’t necessarily need to speak either.

   Accommodation may be the toughest area, but if you work for (say) a language school in the city,they will usually help you out with finding that.

   Of course’getting by’ is not the same as having the kind of social and cultural life that people who can speak Italian can have here.But quite a few foreign residents seem happy enough to stay in their own groups.

4. since I was a child I’ve a few met people who lived here for 15+ years who had trouble with “Hoe gaat het?”.

   You can create a whole life without being able to speak Dutch here.

5. Here in Paris? Definitely. My stepmother only speaks Vietnamese and can’t say a word in French or English and she gets by. There are a lot of language communities.

6. Get by, yes. Most working age people do speak English, though in 60+ it is rather rare. I think you could find entertainment and such, too.

   But you will always be seen as temporary. Hard to get any real friends. Inviting you anywhere means the whole group has to switch to English and (other than a few groups of uni students that constantly hang with international people) most people are put off by that idea, even if they are fluent in English.

7. I live in a touristic city and even here the level of English is awful. Spain has one of the lowest levels of English in Europe, so you won’t go far without some knowledge of Spanish. If you come for vacations you can get by with the little English that is spoken in some shops or restaurants.

   But no way you’re able to live here without Spanish, unless you go live in some British community.

8. If you live in a big city and speak English, it’ll likely work just as fine as speaking Swedish, but I know it’s hard for foreigners to get Swedish friends and such (we’re pretty reserved until you get to know us).

9. In Germany? You will get by until you need to go to the doctor/ city hall/ even foreign office. Then you will start to have problems. In the university where I did my PhD , there wasn’t a single English speaker in the foreign office, for example, and finding an English speaking doctor can be a challenge. Also, having German friends is very hard if you don’t speak German, most people won’t willingly speak English outside work, especially if you are the only English speaker in the group. This was the same in Belgium, too. I was lucky because we were 50-50 natives vs foreigners, but any less and people would just speak Dutch. Getting by otherwise was no problem in Flanders, though, everybody spoke English. Same in the Netherlands.

   In Turkey you’ll find much fewer people who speak English, but I have heard from foreigners that Turkish people are generally very eager to communicate. I still think it would be difficult.

10. In my area you’d struggle unless you spoke English, the only exception is maybe Polish as there is quite a large Polish community so in a lot of shops, bars, restaurants etc you might find someone who speaks Polish.

    In the UK as a whole there are lots of areas with foreign populations where you could get by in say, Urdu, or Punjabi or Bengali depending on the area.

    Lots of people in the UK speak a small amount of French, German or Spanish too, but it’s likely to have been learnt at school and very basic.

11. In larger cities you will get by just fine with only English. In the countryside you’ll manage with younger people, but older folk won’t know English or anything apart from Finnish or in places on the West coast only Swedish.

    If you plan to stay for the long term you really need to learn even the basics in either Finnish or Swedish depending on where here.

    Here where I live you kind of have to know Finnish, but we do have quite a bit of immigrants. Some use English but a lot more use Finnish even if it’s not very good (just trying is great).

12. Fairly well I’d say. If you speak French without even bothering to speak Dutch you might get a dirty look but they’ll most likely answer back in French.

    With English you should be fine as long as you avoid the elderly because their English is atrocious.

13. Well since most dutch people know english youd be fine speaking english

14. Do you mean getting by with English in your country?

15. You’d have no chance where I am, with the exception of accessing healthcare as the NHS will get a translator as required.

16. If you talk about living for an extended period rather than a tourist holiday, in smaller cities you can’t do a lot. Most of entertainments are only in italian, you don’t always find restaurant or bar staff that speaks English. For supermarkets you just just pick stuff and pay. If you need a rent and utilities it can be harder, but real estate agents can help you.

    But we are curious and we try to communicate, so even if you learn a few words we do our best.

17. I live in a small town in Eastern Europe and there are some immigrants from the East, e.g. Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. I’m case of most of them it’s not only about few friends, connections or entertainment possibilities. It’s about communicating with locals anywhere.

    For example, I work in a pharmacy and a couple of days ago there was a Georgian guy who wanted something. No Polish, no English, not even Russian (lol), and all he could do was to talk with his hands or use a translator on his phone that gave weird translations. Not to mention that I spent about half an hour explaining to him over and over again that I can’t give him any antibiotics without prescription. It was a nuisance to both of us.

    Or one time there were two Azerbaijani guys but they at least tried talking some basic English and knew Russian. Thankfully I was able to help them. But overall in my town even with English you can have a problem because for example at my work only I can service patients in English.

18. I am a foreigner in Austria. I’ve lived here for more than 3 years and I do not speak German. It works for mostly everything! I am just trying to learn German for social reasons (although I have plenty of friends with which I can speak other languages other than German)

19. Without Basque? You could live your entire life as an adult immigrant without needing to learn a single word of Basque in the Basque Country. Most Spaniards/French who move to the Basque Country never learn Basque.

    Without Spanish/French? Difficult, especially with respect to the social life and the administration and doctors etc, but not impossible. For example I know people who have immigrated from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Morocco etc, and the elderly rely on their kids or family or friends for translation purposes. If you need to go to the doctor, you bring your kid along, or someone who speaks Spanish/French.

20. Luxembourg’s capital is very multicultural and not speaking Luxembourgish wouldn’t be much of a hassle there. In the rest of the country you could still get by but definitely stand out more then amongst Luxembourg cities anglophone bankers and Francophone commuters. In general though connecting properly to locals is harder as casual conversation are all kept in Luxembourgish despite the emphasis on multilingualism.

21. You could definitely get by, but you’d essentially live in a bubble. Some people don’t seem to mind that though (the “expat community”). Portugal is very acommodating (perhaps too much so in some areas) to non-Portuguese speakers. If you can’t find someone that speaks English, you’ll at least find someone who can speak Spanish or French (even if poorly). The exception would be older generations. My grandparents, for example, have a few foreigner neighbors now and the latter can only communicate with the former via google translate.

22. In the city everywhere
    In the countryside the chance is more scarce but it is doable probably

23. I would say people speak better German than English in Alsace (Eastern France). Middle aged people at least, now younger people are getting a bit better in English and worse in German, but only knowing English is probably still not enough to get by without it being a challenge I think.

24. They can.. not easy but possible. But only if they speak English. If they don’t speak any English nor Slovak then I would say impossible.

25. You can certainly live just fine given everybody is fluent in English but you’ll always be a bit of an outsider without Icelandic and its much better for your prospects in every way to learn it.

26. You can 100% get by and even have a pretty good social and cultural life while knowing only either English or Russian.

    In some parts of the city, the above is true also for those who also only speak French or Arabic.

27. Pretty good in Denmark (and around the Nordics in general). We all practically speak English, so as long as the visitors do too, they should be fine. If they plan to settle, though, people would expect to begin to learn Danish

28. Practically, nearly everybody speaks English so you could get by without learning a single word of Dutch. Socially, however, you’ll probably get judged for living in our country and not at least *trying* to learn our language, either silently or vocally depending on the person.

29. With young people it depends. With “boomers”.. good luck

30. Depends on the language you speak. If you speak Polish, whatever the Romani people here speak, Urdu/Hindi, Punjabi, Kurdish then you will probably be able to find a lot of people who speak your language to socialise with and be able to find places like barber shops, travel agents and supermarkets. Your employment options will be limited to small businesses from within your language community (eg food places, small shops), assuming you’re not doing some online work in your own language.

    You’ll be able to access some government services and healthcare services, but you’ll need an interpreter (either a provided professional or just someone you know) so booking an appointment won’t be as simple as if you know English. You can’t just go in without English.

    You won’t know what’s happening with your kids in school, most likely. Not sure how they pay bills – I know if people have kids they might get their English-speaking kids to sort out the bills.

31. You can get by easily with English as a tourist in most places.

    Living will be troublesome, though, because all the legal stuff and contracts and insurances and doctors and workplace and clubs and so on and so forth are in German (no surprise, I guess).

32. All services will be available if you speak English, due to pretty much everyone speaking conversational English.
    The degree of English proficiency drops off greatly, and becomes far less common once you start speaking to people older than 50.
    Germans also tend to speak German when going to touristy areas.

33. great. as long as they speak english, they’ll be able to have a at least a simple conversation with almost anyone under the age of 50

34. Too easily. It’s kinda annoying how often you hear in stores “sorry, English please”. And I’m not talking about the customers.