you’re SOL if you’re as dumb as that! that’s right! i can’t stand people who travel abroad and bitch’n whine that they were piss’d that Parisians didn’t understand English, the Italians couldn’t give a flying *uck that you’re an American! So if you’re not gonna learn the basics of foreign language when considering traveling abroad, stay home… really, save your dignity and stick to the hicks in Texas or the doons in Indiana, but don’t shame the rest of us!!!
I thought English was the universal language, but really, when people have as hard a time as they do getting verbs to match tenses, isn’t it a bit much to expect them to have a grasp on some gobbledy-gook from overseas?
Once in Paris, there was a big, boisterous Texan (I could tell by his accent and by the way he was dressed) having breakfast in my hotel. At one point he was yelling at the waiter,
"PAR-LAY-VOO, BOY, PAR-LAY-VOO!!!
I could only surmise that he was treating the waiter to a Foghorn Leghorn impersonation.
As my first and greatest boss (surly British fellow of the old school) told me during a ‘due dilligence’ trip to Venezuela, “Of course I speak Spanish. But if they don’t speak English, they are not worth speaking to.”
I keep having to say to Americans that no, we do in fact not accept US Dollars, as this is not the US. I’ve never had an English person try to pay with pounds and only a few instances of people thinking we accept Euros, which is fairly understandable, though.
There are languages you just can’t be expected to learn and people in the tourism industry worldwide really should speak English, so I have no problem with Americans or whoever else just speaking English. The tourists are paying to be here, after all, so learning a language as easy as English is the least we can do. The only nationalities I’ve found not to speak English when travelling abroad are Italians and the French, and many of them only speak their native language, which is just stupid when travelling (no; I don’t speak French and have no intention of learning it just for a few ungroomed, smelly, loud and rude dwarves).
Americans’ apparent inability to convert currency is a mind-boggler, but they are far from being the most asinine tourists and don’t hold a torch to the old European masters.
Well, there’s asinine and then there’s the woman I overheard at Versailles(does that have a “s” at the end?).
We got off the bus and scattered to enjoy the splendor that is French nobility’s way of life etc.
Afterwards, she and her companion (both wearing track suits and white athletic shoes, this was 1994) couldn’t comment enough…not on the history of the place or the beauty of it’s architecture or the significance of it’s position to Paris etc…nope. Their deepest concern was that there was no gift shop!
“you’d think that something like this would have a gift shop. Why, I had to go all over it and I still didn’t find one.”
Now, I am baffled that it didn’t have a gift shop either (because I think by now, even heaven has a gift shop) but I was more amazed that that was the focus of their visit.
Perhaps those Dopers who live in places where a lot of tourists go could tell me is this is true.
The author Robert Heinlein once had a character in one of his books say that the secret when traveling is to learn how to say “thank you” in as many languages as possible. She knew tourists could be seen as rude and exasperating, but if they at least made the minimal effort to learn those words, a lot could be forgiven, and that those in service industries appreciated that simple acknowledgement.
That being said, I’ve only lived outside of the US once, for 13 months in Korea, and that wasn’t as a tourist but as a member of the US Army. But part of my specialty required me to know basic Korean, so when off post I could get by, doing things like order in a restaurants, speak to merchants, ask directions and so on. It sure did help, especially when I went on a trip by myself to Suwon, to a national cultural exhibit there. And once when I was eating, and asked for chopsticks instead of Western tableware, I had people really surprised.
It is lazy, but so many places do accept dollars that it becomes a habit of not bothering. C’es la vie.
Smiling Bandit - who’s taken classes in Russian, French, German, and Japanese.
When I went to France, I spoke French. When I went to Guatemala, I spoke Guatema–er, Spanish. When I went to Denmark, I spoke English.
Really, how many languages do I need to learn? Am I forbidden from travelling to a location until I learn the language, even if all the travel books (accurately) state that most people in that country speak English?
The only difficulty I had in speaking English was at one Chinese restaurant, where the host didn’t speak English; they got us a specific waiter for whom English was probably a third or fourth language. We were very grateful.
matt, during college we were very tempted to drive up to British Columbia and be the world’s worst tourists: speaking loudly and slowly so that the foreigners could understand us, always asking cashiers, “Okay, but how much is that in real money?”, taking pictures of the quaint locals, etc. We eventually decided we’d hate ourselves too much, and gave up on the plan.
That’s my grandmother’s method, and she swears by it.
Personally, I’ve always found that a remarkable amount of what you need to say as a tourist can be condensed to a half-dozen or so phrases: “Thank you,” “Excuse me,” “Do you speak English?” “I’d like a one-way ticket to ----,” “Where is ----,” “Do you have any vacancies?” “One large [food or drink item], please,” and it’s not that hard to memorize said phrases, so I’ve always wondered about the people who don’t bother at all. (Of course, then you have to deal with the people who assume you can actually speak the language because you’re a complete master of the art of ordering kebabs, but my accent tends to be bad enough that I don’t have that problem.)
