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I once accidentally spoke french to a waitress in Greece then apologised and said I wasn't actually french. She went on a ten minute diatribe about how french people are the bane of her life because they refuse to speak English with her and just get louder and louder in french 😂
As a Belgian, I noticed that people usually get warmer when they learn I'm not French.
Hopefully the cliche will change over time.
It's like the Canadians when they don't want people to think they're Americans. Some Americans even pretend they're Canadian for the same reason. I'm French and I knew about these for a long time but never thought of the parallel with France/Belgium. Damn I might start using this and just say I'm Belgian haha.
Ca marche aussi avec les Suisses, mais alors ils vont penser que tu es riche ha ha
This would happen in Austria as well.
Seems strange to have Italy and Spain here, the English proficiency is usually at the same levels than France.
It's not that they can't speak English, the cliché (at least in the past) is that they refuse to speak it. Spanish people are probably worse when it comes to English proficiency these days.
Spanish people are probably worse when it comes to English proficiency these days.
Probably, people are always surprised that they have to speak Spanish even in some touristy areas.
same levels ~than~as France.
FTFY
(Sorry, can't help it when it's about language proficiency)
But Spanish and Italians will try if you approach them in English
I live in Montreal, my experience is that French people speak great English while most Quebecers can't ask for the bathroom in English. Of course, the French people coming here are generally open minded compared to Jean-Guy from Brossard who not only shoots you a "yes-no-toaster" when you ask him if he speaks English but also thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever said.
My experience with the French is that they're happy to speak English if you say something like "Excusez-moi, perlez vous anglais?" but may pretent to not understand you if you just start in English.
Which is actually pretty fair when I think about it.
Very true. English speakers are sometimes taken aback, but it's usually a way to show respect to the local language, and acknowledge that you are asking them a favor to speak a second language.
Montreal is an exceptionally nice place.
I couldn't stop in the street to look at a map without someone coming to see if I needed help. I didn't I just needed to look at it, but in 10 seconds it took me someone would offer help.
I actually considered trying to movie there but I realised I need to also be fluent in French.
That's up there as among the greatest cities I've ever been to. Sydney is my number 1 but Montreal can't compare to the surf in Sydney so it's not a fair comparison.
Idk about the rest but Spanish people suck at English.
Italians have more or less the same level.
It is probably due to the fact that Romance languages are further from English than Germanic languages like Dutch and German.
Portuguese can speak english just fine.( I'm clearly biased since I am portuguese.)
I think a major difference is that Portugal has the original audio on every movie/show except kid shows, which improves our english accent.
Finnish and Estonian are basically completely unrelated to English yet the native speakers of those languages are pretty good at English for the most part.
Yet for some reason, in Hungary, it's either Hungarian or bust (guess what, it's related to the two languages I mentioned at the beginning). So... honestly I have no idea what's happening here.
Also, Germany and Austria speak the same native language; German, yet there are more L2 English speakers in Austria than in Germany. It's the same as comparing France with francophone Belgium.
Portuguese is also a Latin laguange and Portuguese are much more proficient in English than Spanish, French and Italians. The main reason, imo, is that these countries dub all movies, series, etc, so they basically never listen to English nor are they interested to. In Portugal we rarely dub anything and just use subtitles. So it's much easier for us to understand and speak english because we're much more used to listen to it. It's probably the same thing for the eastern countries as mentioned above. Now, why do these countries dub everything I don't know but if they didn't we'd probably be on the same level
Dubbing is usually a thing in countries with large populations. I assume it started when English proficiency was much lower and someone thought it was worth doing it instead of subtitles and then they just kept doing it. These days in Germany the big cinemas offer showings of some movies in the original language, in the past (well, for some movies still today) you had to go to special cinemas to see a movie in the original, so things are slowly changing.
Now, why do these countries dub everything I don’t know
Keeping the language alive and available to other people outside of face-to-face conversations.
One of the frustrating aspect of learning a language has a lower number of speakers (let's say under 20 millions) and dubs everything is that you can't really find content in that language to learn it. I learned Dutch for many years, and it's always kind of frustrating to not being able to find that many content (e.g. Youtube video essays for instance) as Dutch speakers would naturally produce that content in English to have a broader audience.
Which makes sense for them, but then brings the question of how relevant the language is. The Netherlands are experiencing the progressive disappearance from Dutch even more as more and more people are coming to Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, and aren't motivated to learn the language, as English is so widespread everywhere. Young Dutch speakers also tend to use more and more English in their slang.
I kind of have the same situation as I'm learning Catalan, as most of the Catalan Youtubers produce content in Castillano rather than Catalan to reach a broader audience, but then the language becomes less and less relevant. That's one of the reasons Catalans want to keep movies dubbed in Catalan, as it is a way to keep it relevant.
I'm really torn between the two approaches. I get people who say that everyone in Europe should just use English and be done with it, but at the same time, Romance languages just hit differently. It's part of the local culture, and I think it would be a waste to just let all of that disappear. Another example I have is someone I know who's perfectly proficient in English (lived in an English speaking countries for many years), but still wants to raise their children in Dutch. So at the end of the day, is that language still relevant or not?
English has French in it eh 1066
Italians outside of Italy maybe, or young people. Older Italians won't talk in English even with a gun pointed to their head. Had a bus driver tell me to talk to him in English and he would answer in Italian, wth
Kun kiom bela estas Esperanto kaj ni uzas la anglan kiel barbaroj
Ne ĉiuj de ni! Estas ribeluloj ĉie.
What's funnier is when the american cousins come to visit and all sound like old people because they learned the local language as it was before national standardization
