So I guess this is a question of both general English competency of people outside of cities as well as a cultural one about general attitudes toward foreigners who don’t speak the language trying to learn the language and integrate with a small local community.
I don’t mean to imply anything about anywhere in Europe, I ask because in my country (USA) you would not get very far without knowing English in a small town. And the culture in rural America is……something I’m not getting into here.
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Could you survive, yes. Have a good social life, no.
Just travelling or getting by? Yes.
Integrating into the community? Wouldn’t count on it. Integrating requires you to put effort into learning the local language.
Obviously no, they can’t. You can’t expect to go to another country and get by without speaking the local language. To a certain degree you can survive in the cities. Still you are an outsider. If you want to part of the society, be able to have a social life, be well informed about the country, politics and so on you need to speak Dutch.
Getting by? Yes. Have a social life? Unlikely. It’s already hard enough for a Dutch speaking person to move to a small village and have a social life in said village, since most people who live there have known each other for ages.
Get by? Absolutely unless you end up in some hick town whose populace doesn’t interact with the outside world. But integrate into the society in English? Not going to happen. That’s hard even if speaking finnish.
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Yes, I would say so. I myself live in a small town and most people here do know English, but the degrees vary. Most people under 50 I would say know English really well or just enough for you to hold a conversation with them, and those 50+ usually only know the basics- but there are exceptions. I myself know people over 50 who are fantastic at English, and know people my age who can barely say one sentence so, it all depends but generally *yes*, you can.
Oh yes, I know quite a few people who do. Normal life is very doable, rhe social bit is more of a struggle but still achievable
I’m going to ignore your question about English and assume that you are an immigrant from Senegal who speaks [Serer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serer_language) or [Jola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jola_languages) as a mother language, Wolof as the lingua franca of Senegal, and French as a language that they learned in school, and who has moved to a small-ish seaport town in the South Basque Country of around 8 000 people, without speaking any Basque or Spanish.
With help and good will from locals, and a small community of other Senegalese immigrants, yes: you can get by. I chose this specific example because I know several Senegalese people who have done precisely that, and who are now working on fishing boats or in canning factories. They also speak great Basque.
If someone is younger than 40 years old and doesn’t look like they have a face not defiled by a single thought, chances are they can speak english
You could get by anywhere in Denmark, but being part of the community will be a lot easier if you speak Danish.
Still, I have had friends here who spoke English and only understood a little Danish.
Depends
In all the English speaking areas sure
In the Gaeltacht? Massive hit or miss situation. You could probably buy stuff but socially you’d have big issues, and you’d bump into people on occasion who’d refuse to speak English or who might not have fantastic English and then you’d be stuck
And then there are bits and pieces where if you show up speaking English you’ll get a hell of a lot of side-eye
Maybe. Even in small towns you can find people under 45 that are likely to know some English.
Not much chance of that in small villages.
You won’t have much of a social life.
Impossible. We had a Chilean exchange student and she had to learn Dutch. For an exam she had, she had to write the word for ‘a slice of bread’ which is ‘een boterham’…
The problem was that the only times she heard someone refer to a slice of bread in our dialect it was as ‘stutn’ and not ‘boterham’ so she wrote that down.
IIRC she wrote about 10 more huge mistakes(?) like that… so yeah it can be difficult coming to our town, learning our dialect and then trying Dutch 🙂
You would be fine in Poland. Attitute towards foreigners is rather positive (unless you’re Rusian, naturally) so you’d be fine and people most probably would try to take care of you somehow and try to guess what are you up to. But of course socializing would be next to impossible.
Yes.
Even if you count Scots as a language or live in a gaelic speaking region, you will always be fine using English and we will always understand you. You understanding us is sadly not a guarantee
How do I add the little flag marking my nationality?
Yes, you’ll be adopted as the village “guiri” and learn Spanish in no time at all.
As a tourist, sure. Almost everyone who works in tourism or grocery shops/restaurants/coffee bars speaks English at least on basic level but they would probably have no social life, especially given that mostly older people live in villages and they are not really fluent in English or opened to outsiders. Even if person from bigger town from Croatia moved to the village they would have problems integrating because those people have known each other their whole life.
Could survive – yes, if you speak with younger people, especially teenagers.
Live there – no way.
If you are just passing through or want to visit the small town, yes; but if you plan to live there, speaking only English, it becomes a bit tough. Villagers are already very wary of non-locals, and without knowing the language, integration becomes virtually impossible.
Depends what you define as a small town
For Norway, usually yes, especially for the under 40 crowd. If you’re looking for older friends it might be more difficult.
In 2000s Germany, not really. I lived in Meerbusch and a lot of people had full social lives only speaking Japanese though (attended Japanese international school, parents worked at Japanese MNC in Düsseldorf or Neuss.) I spoke English and Chinese and while I could survive with the basic German I did know, I don’t think I had a fully functioning life
It’s basically a requirement for most towns and villages.
I would say most definitely yes. It will not be optimal and with lower social expectations, but you will get by sufficiently.
With the caveat, however, that you might sometimes run into a person (e.g. old or immigrant) that cannot communicate in English. For example; my coworker from Afghanistan who directs all English speaking foreginers to me.
Approximately 90% of the population state that they can have a conversation in English, which should includes most people born after WWII.
Villages no, tourist areas in the summer time yes but outside of that probably no, big cities yes. A lot of people here want foreign friends (who are not poor), that would be easy
Your love life as a woman would be like how it is everywhere else but if you are a male it would likely be butt outside of the tourist season, even if women know English most of them wouldn’t know enough to express themselves the way they want to so they wouldn’t date you
Business wise absolutely not, you need a plumber or electrician again no, the police will even hang up the phone on you if you speak English, if you go there they will bring someone though
Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Sorry.
(Knowing Spanish, however, is quite useful here.)