Just why are we so bad??

[scarey55]

Oh that used to get RIGHT up my nose when I lived out there.

People who had been there for years couldn't even manage "bonjour, parlez vous anglais?" - they just rattled off in anglais and expected the person they were speaking to to keep up.
After 6 months there I had better French than a frightening number of Brits who'd been there much longer.

I quite agree - that is just rude and it makes me .

Unfortunately, I hear that too many times here. They just speak loudly and slowly in English expecting the French to understand them. The thing is that they probably do understand them but why should they bother to speak English if "they" won't try and speak French.

[taff]

I find it difficult to learn languages enough to string sentences together because I don't use them all the time.
My mother is Italian but never taught me italian, I went to lessons for years as a child, but the teachers didn't speak in italian, just gave me a load of books to learn by, which was no help at all.
Luckily, I can understand almost everything,I just can't get the hang of stringing sentences together. henever I go there, my family speak dialect, which is even worse because they have completely different words to the ones I've learned.'Girl' in italian is 'ragazza', 'girl' in their dialect is 'fiola',so it can be a bit of a bugger.
And I also get confused in languages, if I can't find the right word in italian,I end up using spanish or french, and mixing them together because the words are so similar.

[bobleponge]

I would just like to state here and now that I'm not criticising anybody else, either in particular or in general.
I moved to France for my own reasons, the same as everyone else. I have made the effort to learn the language as its what I chose to do. People who move to a country and dont want to learn the language, have every right to do so, if they choose.
My original question wasnt so much to criticise people who have moved to a certain country and dont speak the language, more, why are we as a race so bad?

[taff]

Probably because for most people, there's absolutely no need to.

[organic]

Nicos - there's a difference between making an effort and struggling and "can't be bothered".
I actually asked some of those people why I never heard them speak French and the answer was (in similar words) "they all speak English anyway", "there's no need" and "I can't be bothered".
Sheer laziness.


Scarey - I used to bartend over there and in one instance even I took the "non, je n'parlez pas l'anglais. Parlez vous Francais? C'est la France, ici." route (I know that's probably appalingly bad French - but as far as he knew I was a native and I knew for a fact he'd lived in France for years)
I've had a bit of fun with the slow-speaking tourists but only before being helpful, teaching them a few useful phrases and suggesting they try to learn a bit more "you'll get to see more of the real France if you put the effort in with the language."

"Yess, ah spik... littul... anglais... ow can ah 'elp?"
"Ah yess, yew go, ah, comment dire en anglais... strait 'head, until ewe see ze Safari bar... then turnez... *best northern english accent* left, head strait down't road, cross t' railway and tek yer next right..."

It never failed to get a laugh and a conversation going about languages and effort.

[Jeanied]

So maybe some people have a finite capacity for language, Bob.
The English language has a huge number of words - I think it has the most of all languages. It also has a high proportion of irregular grammar and spellings.
When one looks into say Hindi, Urdu and Bengali one finds that there are quite a few common words and grammatical structures and people frequently understand all three. Same with Swedish and Danish, German and Dutch.

[scarey55]

I'm not sure how it fits in to the general thread but I had to laugh yesterday when I heard an obviously French woman at the supermarket telling her small child to "sid daun" in her push chair. Perhaps she was trying to start her speaking English from an early age!

[Pumpkin Becki]

I would just like to state here and now that I'm not criticising anybody else, either in particular or in general.

I don't think anyone has taken it in that light Bob - just a healthy discussion going on

People who move to a country and dont want to learn the language, have every right to do so, if they choose.

It does see a bit odd (just to me personally) that someone would move to a foreign country and then almost refuse to learn the language...it must make daily life so awkward.

[Alison]

I see that quite a few of you have stated that you don't think it's a lazyiness thing but I genuinely believe that we learn language to communicate. If we can commuincate with the language we already have the need to learn another is greatly reduced and it easy to not bother. I was in a meeting last Wednesday with a number of Brits, some Belgiums and a couple of Dutch. We all spoke English, OK the meeting was in London but even if it had been in Brussels, it would still have been conducted in English as it was appropriate to the business environment and meant that everybody could participate.

However, I do think that if you're living in a country or even visiting you should make some effort. I always try to learn the standard hello, excuse me, thanks etc before I visit anywhere and can manage a great deal better in French (although not from school, despite getting the O'level I learnt very little useful vocab and picked most of it up in later life). It did annoy me a few years ago when in Paris (OK, not the most representative example!) when I ordered some food in a restuarant and asked a couple of questions of the waiter. He would have reaslied I wasn't a native speaker but was making an effort (my friend who is fluent confirmed what I said was correct although my accent was rather off) rattled back in rapid French and (according to my friend as I was lost at this point) said something very impolite about bleeding foreigners. Appalling service and enough to put anybody off trying!

[Nicos]

At night school, I managed to learn about 20 words a week.
Over here, I've really no idea- but we have friends who now live in Sweden. He was already fluent - Mrs had no Swedish at all. She decided to self teach and was learning 200 new words a day

I could never ever be capable of that- but it does show that some peeps are more capable of learning a new language!

[bobleponge]

I think its the Michel Thomas stuff that said in a survey carried out, the New York Times, for all its size, only had about 600 different words in it.
Thus, if you can speak 600 words in a foreign language you can get by.

Thats clearly simplistic, as probably a third of those words were verbs, and thus each different tense etc needs to be conjugated, (unlike Chinese actually HW, where the majority of verbs arent conjugated at all) but 600 words doesnt seem to be an inordinate amount to me.

I'm just intrigued at the linguistic ability, or lack of it, of the average Brit.

[Jeanied]

Define average Brit, Bob! Am I one?

[bobleponge]

Ok, I shall rephrase the last line, having reread it, it wasnt how I intended it to read.

I'm just intrigued at the linguistic ability, or lack of it, of Brits in general.
Thats both ways, some who excel and others who dont, and I wonder for the reasoning behind it.

For those Frenchies with Canal plus, there is a Brit who presents his own TV show, Fabulous Sport, who speaks the French of my dreams.
My local radio station has a Brit with his own show, accent somewhat dubious but great French.
There are Brits that speak languages and others that dont, and I am intrigued.


Perhaps as been said, the majority of Brits simply dont need to speak a foreign language, and thus dont, even when they go abroad for a couple of weeks sun and Sangria.

[OverWyreGrower]

I did both French and German at GCSE level, and got a A in both of them...

However, after going on both French and German exchanges, I realised that my language skills were almost worst than useless. I couldn't speak with people my own age, and only knew 'tourist' phrases. I could ask for directions and food, but couldn't hold a conversation with a native speaker, other than 'my name is...' type stuff.

I knew how to conjugate verbs etc, and what gender things should be, but realised when I was out there that half the native speakers didn't know/didn't care. Just like I'm a bit rubbish with British grammar rules - they just happen!

I would love to be able to speak fluent French, German or Spanish; and would really love to live in France or Spain, however I wouldn't dream of moving out there without rudimentary language skills!

Language skills should begin much earlier than 11, IMO. Mind you, saying that, half the kids nowadays can't speak, read or write English properly, so what hope have they got of learning conversational Spanish!?!

[Nicos]

Define average Brit, Bob! Am I one?

Oh no definately not...you're spesh!!!!