This is one of my favourite subjects, living as I do in a city with many bilingual people, and having travelled in various countries where I speak the language (Spain, Italy), a small amount of the language (Germany, Austria), and none of the language (Netherlands, Portugal, Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden).
. As you can imagine, in Quebec (and particularly in Montreal, where there is a high proportion of bilingual people), in social and commercial situations there is a stately dance with complicated but tacit rules as to what language you will end up using.
The chief rule is generally “attempt to divine whether English or French works better for the other person and use that.” As a result, it is far from uncommon to have two Anglophones who don’t know that the other is Anglophone speaking French to each other, or a Francophone addressing an Anglophone in English and the Anglophone responding in French, and continuing the conversation like this for some time.
Anyway, because “try to speak the other person’s language” is so common, I get into a certain amount of trouble in other countries where the rules are different. When I was in Germany, owing to my Quebec training, I would start in German. The problem was that, again due to Quebec training, I was anticipating (without realizing it) that the person would realize that I didn’t speak German very well and switch the English. So I would be flummoxed when they would continue in rapid German. (“Okay… okay… okay… okay… look I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s start over.”)
I asked an acquaintance about this, and he looked at me, bemused, and said, “But we would never switch into English if you spoke German to us! It would be like saying your German isn’t good enough.” I was like, *I know my German isn’t good enough. *
As a result, I finally inured myself to compromising by starting with Bitte, sprechen Sie englisch? when the question would be more complex than Ein Currywurst bitte. Naturally, the first time I was able to hold an actual conversation was on my train leaving Austria.
(Still, I’m mindful of the Eddie Izzard bit where he talks about going into a shop in the Netherlands and saying, “Speekt U engels?” and having the person answer, “:dubious: Yeeeees…” “because I realized that in Holland it was like going up to him and going, ‘Excuse me, can you count up to three?’”)
I really don’t understand how people consider themselves equipped to go to a country where they don’t speak the language without at least “I’m sorry,” “thank you,” and “Excuse me, do you speak English?” and preferably “Where’s the gents’/ladies’ room please?” I memorized these phrases in Czech and Danish, not knowing a single other word of that language, and it made my experience much less awkward than it might otherwise have been.
Conversely, even as an English speaker, it gets my back up when I speak to someone in French and what I get in response is not, “I’m sorry, do you speak English?” or even “Anglais?” but rather “English!” in a tone usually reserved for upbraiding schoolchildren who have spoken out of turn. It’s not unreasonable to hope that someone may speak English, but it is unreasonable to expect anything at all out of anyone you’ve just barked at.