New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
50% odd percent of the French speak English to at least a basic level, but your going to have a tough time getting them to speak it in their own country.
@taipres i've been to many asian countries. you'll be surprised how low the density of english speaking. this is why there are so few options for U.S. based companies on where to put up call centers/bpo's.
@Taipres on a serious note, please remember the idealistic view that the earth should be led by one government, one set of laws, one language, one leaders led to Hitler.
@vld Not too good
@rds100 i think its more expensive to make them speak English than bulgarian
Unless you invade their country, then they'll happily do whatever you want.
Hi everybody,
Suffering from the damned curse of being French, I must disagree. I don't think that finding people able and willing to help foreigners in English is such a pain. It may obviously be harder in rural parts and small villages.
I guess that foreigners trying to learn and speak the basic words in French will be more welcomed. Doesn't seem so hard to say "Bonjour" before "Do you speak english ?".
I believe that anyone going to a foreign country should make the effort of learning at least Hello/Bye/Please/Thank you/Sorry/Yes/No in the local language.
Cheers,
That seems like a very reasonable request, and will probably turn up many more willing to try helping in English if you try, and fail, in their native language first.
It was in Paris, I guess your right about learning the basic local phrases, but anything more then that and I have to use English.
During Echo training, we were taught that if our familiarity with a native language was not sufficient for the task, appearing to embarrass ourselves (and them) by butchering said language was the quickest way to have the native convince themselves to use English.
No culture? A locale with 100% ethnically British population would have a proud culture that goes back several thousand years.
DO NOT gamble with the British troops
DO NOT fight with the British troops
The first two may be true, but we're 2-0 when we fight you :-)
Not quit that far back, England was a part of the Roman Empire and I remember something on BBC4 I think, not that long ago pointing out all the Roman influences that are so prevalent even today.
At least we have something to back it up with :P.
Don't back up too far, that's a small island
I now know why images like this exist
/thread
@Daniel Considering how much of the U.S. was rural and mostly disconnected up until 2001-2003 when internet access and cable subscriptions took a huge upturn, it makes sense. I think people often forget just how new global and even national communications for average people in the U.S. are. Prior to the surge in the mobile phone market, most people didn't even want to dial out to 2-3 towns over. It wasn't that long ago that a lot of us had only one tether to the outside world...the evening news. This has all taken place in a a relatively short time span. It is a very recent occurrence in America that we think of community as something larger than the city we live in. Kids in their teenage years right now just missed it entirely and think this is the way it's always been. Plus, who pays attention in school?
I was fairly clueless to the happenings in the rest of the world for the first 15 years of my life, my years with dial-up do not count. Sure there was information available, but it's not like I wanted to go out of my way and make it a lifestyle to learn about other cultures (when you can't even interact with them, what good is it?), there were other pressing matters throughout those years. It came through the extended community brought through the increase in internet availability and the availability of international media sources that previously were not accessible by me through any reasonable means. Not everyone had the middle class or above income to even get in on it that early.