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Locals that do not know English? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ilcommunication Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6492 days ago 115 posts - 162 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 36 14 December 2011 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I found that Moroccan touts and salespeople can pull off lots of languages in their attempts to get money out of you. Rest assured, people who speak English will find you if you look "western" enough (anything vaguely European or North American, basically). Istanbul, Belgrade and Bangkok seemed to be the least Anglophone cities you mentioned. Of course, you can certainly find English speakers, but I found that those three cities have many people who don't speak much (plus, if you learn Turkish, BCS/Serbian or Thai to a reasonable extent, I imagine most people there would be extremely happy to help you out with those languages, since foreigners rarely learn them). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5073 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 10 of 36 14 December 2011 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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If you're going to learn Spanish and speak it in Madrid, go in the next ten years. At the
moment, outside of hotels and tourist hospitality, most people will do anything to avoid having to speak English in public and will be happy to speak Spanish with you. But the language education policy has changed, and the little kids are getting more and more bilingual. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5203 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 11 of 36 14 December 2011 at 3:29am | IP Logged | ||
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In Belgrade you'll find loads of English speakers. As well as in most northern cities in
Serbia. In my town which is near Novi Sad almost all teenagers and young adults speak English to varying degrees, but very few adults do. I had the same observation about people from Belgrade and Novi Sad. I'd say about two thirds of people between 15 and 25 speak English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5073 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 12 of 36 14 December 2011 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
I'd be interested in seeing how many people in Pirot and Raska speak English well. I wonder if it's a geographical thing (proximity to the EU, although actually Bulgaria now is technically that just as much as Hungary) or it has more to do with the Internet/media. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4856 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 13 of 36 14 December 2011 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Wellcome to Russia! Most adults do not speak English. Young people are not very good at
it either. The same is true for all the former Soviet Union. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5951 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 14 of 36 14 December 2011 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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My primary aim for learning languages is to converse with locals when I'm travelling. As others have mentioned, most of the places you've mentioned are high profile tourist destinations, and the locals will have varying degrees of English. The main places I found English lacking were in South America, mainly Cuba and also Argentina.
If I was to advise learning another language for travelling it would be Spanish, as it's possible to develop a proficiency in a reasonable time frame. China also lacks English speakers, but the language requires a serious degree of commitment to get to a very basic level. As Mapk mentions, Russian is a widely spoken language. While St.Petersburg is English friendly, I've heard Moscow can be challenging for non Russian speakers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5203 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 15 of 36 14 December 2011 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd say they speak less English than people in the north, but it has less to do with the proximity to the EU. For instance, Slovakia is in the EU and very few Slovaks can speak English (as a Lowland Slovak coming from a non-EU, war-devastated country, I was almost shocked when I went to Slovakia for a month at how little and how few of Slovaks can speak or just understand English, compared to my "primitive" countrymen). Bulgarians and Romanians too speak English poorly. Hungarians are somewhere between them and the Serbs, well northern Serbs. It has more to do with culture and lifestyle rather than education. We here in the north watch a lot of English TV, from Cartoon Network to the History Channel and Fox. In the south they stick more to traditional Serbian TV. We are also much more modern (north votes liberal, south votes conservative), and we always make fun of southerners being backwards and primitive, the same we say of Bulgarians, who are in the EU as I said. Plus the general multilingualism of the north. Vojvodina has six official languages so people are more open to learning new ones and value the usefulness and new experience of knowing more languages. EDIT: Oh, and the internet. We use a lot more of that. I wonder if they even have any cable internet down south. Edited by Delodephius on 14 December 2011 at 1:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mad Max Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 4851 days ago 79 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Russian Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 16 of 36 14 December 2011 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Spanish is useful in South America, The USA, Caribbean, Mexico, Spain, etc. But
it's also useful in Morocco, Portugal and Italy. Last year I was in Rome and I spoke in Spanish, and Italians spoke in Italian or even a Spanish-Italian mixture. We could understand each other perfectly. The same in Portugal and Morocco. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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