With locals, in shops, restaurants etc

34 comments

  1. I live near the Czech border and I would start with English just to be polite, but chances are the person I’m speaking to speaks German anyway.

  2. Depends where I go. In the north-west of Germany close to the Dutch border I can get away with talking my Low Saxon dialect (Gronings) since it’s very very similar to their local dialects. And they usually understand it better than my German. Which I btw, do use in other parts of Germany. Although younger people in Germany usually speak decent English too, and if that English is better than my German, I usually talk English. More than ofen it turns into a conversation with mixed English and German on both sides 🙂

    In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium I just speak Dutch (obviously) and in the French speaking part I speak French. I’m by no means fluent, but it’s good enough to hold a simple conversation. And again, if they speak better English, we’ll just switch to that.

  3. It’s funny, because I know Swedish and would probably be fine with it, but because it’s not as strong of a language for me as English is (and Swedes speak English very well), I always speak English instead of Swedish. I’m terrified of sounding dumb, even though they’d probably just appreciate me trying.

    I would use English in all of the neighbouring countries, probably. Also, I don’t know Norwegian, Estonian or Russian.

  4. Norway: Swedish.

    Denmark: will naively start with Swedish, will quickly move on to English.

    Finland: depends. If in Swedish speaking areas, Swedish. Otherwise English.

  5. I speak Danish when I’m in Norway and Sweden, and in return Norwegians and Swedes speak, respectively, Norwegian and Swedish to me. Sometimes, if the communication seems to struggle, we might switch over into English, but I make a point out of at least trying to communicate in our national languages when visiting the other Scandinavian countries.

    If I’m south of the border, I speak German, or Danish, if I’m with some of my friends from the Danish speaking minority. But generally I speak German to the German speakers, also those in Austria and Switzerland… That I don’t understand what the latter say to me in their _ChuchichĂ€schtli_-dialect is another thing altogether.

  6. Depends on the country. In France, I try to get by on my terrible French.

    Everywhere else, I try English first.

  8. Everyone understands Slovak in Czechia and almost everyone understands English in Austria. In the other ones I first try English and if it doesn’t work I try to speak a slovakized version of their language, I speak enough Hungarian to order something in shops and restaurant and Slovak is similar enough to Polish and Ukrainian in those settings.

  9. France: French and then English, depending on the other people’s answer

    Switzerland: Italian or French

    Austria: English

    Slovenia: English or Italian

    San Marino and Vatican City: Italian

    Malta: Italian or English

  10. Depends on the country I’m visiting. If it’s Bosnia, Serbia or Montenegro. I’d speak in Croatian. If it’s Slovenia, I might speak Croatian, depending if the other person understands me, which they usually do, but sometimes I use English. In Hungary, I only use English. In Italy, I’d start with some simple Italian, just to “open up” the person, and change to English.

  11. In France I tried to speak French but my girlfriend speaks French as second language, so I was not really necessary; in South Tyrol (not another country but they speak German) I tried to speak in German but they replied in Italian. I’ve not visited other neighboring country on my own, but I would speak in English because other than English, elementary French and a little bit of German, I don’t know other languages (Latin beside).

  12. English. I could speak Danish in Sweden but the point of language is communication, and a Swede will get 100% of my English and less than 100% of my kamelÄsÄ.

    The problem with using my old school German in Germany is that then I get a reply in German which I’ll understand half of, so English again.

  13. Slovakia – Czech

    Germany and Austria – German

    Poland – shops and restaurants are easy enough to handle with some random mix of Czech and Polish. English in case of more complicated situations.

  14. Shoutout to the Netherlands where I speak German and they speak Dutch and we still understand each other perfectly (this only really works near the border, but its still fun)

  15. I speak French in France, Belgium, Tunisia etc.

    Spanish in Spain, rather better than my French!

    I used Italian a little in Albania, but nowhere else in Europe really.

    English everywhere else…

  16. I used to be one of those people who spoke Finnish in Tallinn but since learning Estonian I am now starting to speak Estonian over there. About the only foreign place you could conceivably speak Finnish in!

    In Stockholm I tried my hand at school learned Swedish and everybody spoke English back. Tack sÄ jÀvla mycket.

    Everywhere else I just speak English.

  17. German when I go to Austria, broken italian when I go to Italy, very broken croatian when I go to Croatia and english when I go to Hungary 😀

  18. Generally English.

    In Sweden, I try to manage with my Swedish. With alarming regularity, the service personnel in Sweden notice my accent and switch to fluent Finnish (Sweden has a large population of Finnish descent).

    In Estonia SOMETIMES Finnish, but my experience is it’s less useful these days. Visiting Estonia 20 years ago lots of the adult population would know some Finnish, I understand from covertly watching Finnish TV broadcasts during the Soviet era. But with the younger generation it’s English.

  19. If I go to Spain I speak Spanish if I go to France is a mix of French and English any other country I speak english

  20. Norway: Swedish

    Denmark: Swedish (works better with older people, people under 25 seem confused by hearing Swedish)

    Finland: haven’t been but I would start with Swedish and switch to English if needed.

    Funny note: on the Faroese islands I managed with Swedish everywhere, didn’t expect that.

  22. If it’s a francophone country then I speak francophone except if someone does not speak francophone or does not want to speak francophone despite speaking it really well (looking at you Flemish guy in Brussels who understood the questions in French perfectly but answered them in Dutch).

    In Italy I speak Italian.

    Elsewhere I just speak English.

  23. Austria – German

    Italy – English

    Hungary – English

    Croatia – either Slovene or English

    But it really depends on where I go. If I visit southern Carinthia or Gorizia I could probably get away with Slovene

  25. Norway and Sweden: Danish, but i will pronounce numbers in the admittedly saner way they do there, and speak a little slower and clearer. In my experience, I will only have to switch to English in a few occasions, mostly when speaking to teenagers and immigrants.

    Germany: German

  27. Sweden: Norwegian

    Finland: English

    Russia: Never been there but would be English

    Denmark: Not been there since I was a child. I would attempt Norwegian first even if English might actually be easier. I’m kinda for Scandinavians speaking our mother tongue to each other. Younger people sometimes give up very easily and just switch to English because they speak it virtually fluently but it sounds incredibly dumb if a Norwegian speaks English with a Swede imo. I kinda like trying to preserve and make use of the fact that we have such close languages.

  28. In Estonia and Finland I use the local languages as both are my native languages. In Sweden, depending on how difficult the convo is (asking for directions or ordering food vs. having a full on conversation) either Swedish or English. In Russia I unfortunately have to use English as well since my Russian is too shitty, I’m still learning tho. Waiting for covid to hopefully calm down a little so I could go visit family again over there and practice.

  30. Russia – Russian

    Belarus – Russian

    Poland – English

    Slovakia – English

    Hungary – English

    Romania – English

    Moldova – Russian

  31. Haven’t visited Sweden or Finland yet surprisingly, but have visited Denmark. In Denmark, I try to speak my native language, but if there’s too much trouble understanding each other, I switch to English pretty fast.

    If I were to visit Sweden, I would speak my native language too, but since I understand Swedish a lot better than Danish, there’d probably be much less of a chance of any of us switching to English.

    As for Finland: if they speak Swedish, it’d be the same as in Sweden. If they speak Finish, 100% switching to English.

  32. French in France, Spanish in Portugal. Valencian (catalan) has sometimes helped me in France as well as Italy though.

    English if anything else fails.

  33. English everywhere. I don’t speak Russian or Norwegian, my Swedish it atrocious, and I’d feel uncomfortable just expecting that someone speaks Finnish in Estonia. If they start with Finnish, sure, but I don’t want to assume.

  34. I live in Iceland, so when I flop around in the cold, cold sea immediately outside the borders, I just say „glub glub” and then drown.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like