As an Irish person who speaks English and basic French, when I am in other countries in Europe that don’t speak English as a first language people speak to me in English. This happens even when the other person’s English is limited (Not knocking it I respect it) and I was wondering if this is the case if you are for e.g Swedish in Italy or Romanian in Spain if English would be used by both parties to communicate?
23 comments
I use English when I’m placs where I don’t understand the local language
It’s used like that here in Portugal a lot.
English *is* the “default” language. There’s probably not a single country across EU where you wouldn’t switch to English if you realise the other person doesn’t understand the local language.
Most people don’t speak English to a decent level, except in the Netherlands, Sweden, and other such countries, and of course well educated people. I’m the proud founder of perhaps the only Dutchman who didn’t speak English, forcing me to upscale my Dutch game.
For a small stay it may be ok to use English, but usually people speak the language of the place or a related one (Spaniards would go to Portugal and Italy and manage without speaking the local language, and vice-versa).
It’s extremely rude however to assume or expect people will speak English in most areas. The minimum courtesy is to greet in the local language, and ask if they speak English or other language the speaker knows. It’s common for people to speak other languages, specifically in bilingual areas.
Storming into places just speaking English may grant you a bad interaction.
I’d say it really depends. There are a lot of holiday regions where waitstaff speak surprisingly good German, especially places popular with Germans like northern Italy (well Südtirol of course) and the Adriatic coast of Croatia, Italy, the Balkan, some Greek, Portuguese and Spanish islands. But also places surrounding Germany like Czechia and Poland.
So I often use German as a “bridge language”, especially in summer hotspots. Other than that English.
If no one speaks English my wife always miraculously finds someone who speaks Spanish, which seems a popular third language option in many holiday spots for some reason I can’t really figure out.
generally yes, but people from same language families may try with their own languages and figure stuff up with hands.
So Poles and Croats may try with their own langs, Romanians and Italians or Swedes and Germans.
But generally nearly everyone speaks english nowadays so even close language speakers chose broken english as a base.
(or 3rd lang if it happens to click)
/eidt: oh and there’s also free-for-all with creating Frankenstein sentences with bit of every language you can think of – tvo gross piwa s’il vous plait
Yes, I’m Hungarian so there is no chance of encountering a language similar to my own. Even Finnish and Estonian are about as distant from Hungarian in the Uralic family as English is from Russian in the Indo-European family. I’m glad my Mom had been teaching me English since I was a toddler, and I was learning English in school. I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like if I was a monolingual Hungarian speaker.
Genuine question: What else would they do? Both speak in their mother tongue?
Honestly yes, I am czech and even in Poland I prefer speaking english rather than czech. I also use it to establishe myself as a tourist, especially in the off season in Greece, because when I enter with my basic Greek, people speak greek to me and I don’t understand, so even the plesentaries I usually deal with in English.
Usually yes. The only time I had to use another “bridge language” was when I went to Portugal, because a lot of older people didn’t speak English but they understood Spanish perfectly.
I also have some friends from around Europe with whom I speak in Spanish, despite the fact that we all speak English better. But that’s cause we met in Spain and we’ve always spoken Spanish together, it’d feel weird to switch now
I’m Irish too. I speak Irish and English fluently but can get by in a few other European languages just from a language learning hobby. If going to a new place, I learn off basic phrases in the local language and always learn “can you speak English?” in said language.
But yes English would be my main language of use outside of Ireland and France.
But if I meet a fellow speaker of the 3 Gaelic languages (Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic), I will always try to see if we can communicate effectively in our own languages.
If you are in Croatia, like Porec, better use German or Italian.
I’m English, and there’s been a couple of times when I have communicated with someone in German outside of Germany. One was in Transylvania, where German is a common second language, and many people do not speak English particularly well. The other was in a pizzeria in the outskirts of Paris! Not sure if the people there were Italian or French.
Yes, if I don’t know the local language.
Although, German has been very useful in certain parts of central and eastern Europe, where it might be spoken by some older people who don’t know English.
I always do try to learn some basic phrases in the local language when travelling, though.
Yes, I shortly lived in Poland and I learned a few Polish words but I relied on English daily whenever I needed to interact with people beyond simple greetings etc.
I’m from Alsace and frequently go to Basel in Switzerland and I try to speak some German there but my English is better than my German and people usually speak it just fine, so English it is.
In the last decade or so, I have never had an issue speaking to someone in English except in rural German-speaking Switzerland. French and Italian Switzerland, though, I had no problems, even in rural areas.
Of course! That’s the main reason most people learn it here. Not just to use in English speaking countries but because its the default language to communicate between cultures/languages. Its done on personal level as well as corporate. E.g. you’re Czech and your company has other branches in say France, Poland, and Germany? Everything above local level will be in English.
Yes, well, Finnish is of little use out of Finland (although some people think that “perkele saatana vittu” is conversational Finnish and teach that to every foreigner they meet, heavy metal, right?). I try to learn some tourist vocabulary and basic grammar to go with the words. But really for most part I fall back to English.
Yes, it’s definitely the default bridge language. I do the same even if I’m not in a foreign country but talking to a foreigner who doesn’t speak italian.
I use Spanish in Portugal and sometimes Italy
Lingua Franca is English
>Romanian in Spain
Hmm I do wonder what most Romanians would do, because personally I would switch to English, simply because I’d feel weird to not speak grammatically correct. But Spanish is easy to understand too.
But yeah, I think this applies to most countries, English is the default. Unless you speak the same language or similar (Germany + Austria and the German part of Swiss, Denmark with Sweden, you get the point)
Yes, English seems like the one language most countries learn in school.