One of the benefits that accrue to Americans living in the spill-over of the American century is that, if and when you travel to major cities - at least in Europe - there are a lot of people who speak English.
We're in Berlin, and it's certainly the case here. It's not 100%, of course, and if you walk into a pharmacy on a side street and try to ask for eye drops, you may, in fact, have to resort to some combination of German-primitive and mime (point to eye, say "das Auge", and make dropper motion with fingers).
But what really strikes me is the easy, automatic assumption that American travelers make that, as long as they speak English, they'll be understood.
I saw it in action yesterday morning at the Munich airport, where we had to go to the Lufthansa Service Center to get boarding passes for our flight to Berlin.
We approached the clerk with a "Guten Morgan", and she cannily decided we were just another pair of bleary-eyed Americans and answered us in English.
Most of those around us, however - also Americans - just walked up to a service rep and started speaking English. Sure, they were right that they were going to be understood, but it still seems to me to be just a tad presumptuous.
I am not one of those folks (volks?) who believe that Americans are lazy, evil or stupid because so few of us have a second language. I am certain that, if Massachusetts had its own language, which was spoken by its residents and not that many others, people in Massachusetts would at least have a smattering of, if not fluency in, the border languages: Rhode Islandian; Connecticutch; New Yorkese.
The plain fact is that if you live in the United States, you can travel far and wide, and experience different geographies and cultures, without having to know another language. Far less true in Europe. If you want to see something different, it's a pretty sure bet the native tongue there won't be yours. Learning another language, then, is not moral superiority. It's common sense.
That said, I find travel so much more enjoyable if I at least make a teensie, weensie attempt to go native.
Thus, I can say please, thank you, good morning, goodbye, how much, I speak no x, do you speak English, and toilet in quite a few languages.
In Budapest, I was able to order red wine (voros bor),and in Prague I ordered white (vino bila). The Hungarian waitress broke into a wide smile when I ordered voros bor. "It's so wonderful," she told me, "That you are learning Hungarian." She seemed so genuinely pleased that I did not have the heart to point out that if I were going to learn a language, it would be one that was spoken by a few more people than speak Hungarian. No, my Hungarian was strictly confined to what was in my Central Europe phrasebook and the Lonely Planet.
Once in the Gaeltacht in Ireland, I tried to order apple pie . I don't have those words quite at my fingertips, but as I recall it was pronounced pee-gone-ool. I did not, in fact, want apple pie, but it was one of the few things I remembered from my Irish tapes. The waiter smiled and said, "I know you're trying to order something, darlin', but I'm not sure just what." I checked the tapes later, and my pronunciation was spot-on, but it seems that my dialect was not Connemara at all, at all.
This week, I am trying out my faltering, halting German. Why, just last night I got a smile out of the host in our hotel's restaurant when I tried to make dinner reservations for 20 years rather than 20 hours.
As I said, it is most fortunate that most people that we're encountering have English that is serviceable or better. Vielen dank for that.
But I never make the ugly American assumption that everyone in Berlin will speak English. It is their country, after all, and the language is German....err, Deutsch. When I hear an American start right out in English, I always cringe. Please. Thank you. Toilet. I don't think that's too much to ask of anyone.
I am genuninely delighted that English is the world's lingua franca, the esperanto that people will actually learn and speak.
Still, the world is a more interesting place when there are different cultures, peoples, and languages. Verstehe?
I strongly believe we should at least make the effort. If nothing else, it's amusing to others. I think one reason I didn't ever meet one of those "rude french people" on my two trips to Paris is that I at least tried to speak French (Bon Jour, etc.) and I made sure to say please and thank you when they helped this ignorant American order salad instead of - say - snails.
ReplyDelete(I'll be in Budapest this fall, maybe I should borrow your book...)
Mary - I'd be happy to lend you my handy-dandy phrase book. Budapest is really interesting. (You can still see bullet marks from WWII and the Hungarian revolution pock-marking buildings.) Sit out in a cafe on the Corso and plan on a lot of walking around. Like everywhere else on the face of earth,you will run into American chains. Not that I don't welcome a Dunkin Donuts occasionally... Anyway, the language is inpenetrable but the city and people are great.
ReplyDeleteSchöner Beitrag. Grüße aus Berlin! :-)
ReplyDeleteMy father sold insurance and won a trip one summer to Boston for the family. I was 13.
ReplyDeleteI tried to order a milk shake and couldn't be understood. I didn't know the word "frappe". We just called them milkshakes in Columbus, Nebraska.
Even here in the US there are foreign words to learn!
I'm with you on trying to learn the language. It is a matter of respect while being part of the adventure of visiting a foreign culture.
On a biz trip to Germany I used all the German I could remember fromw a year of it in high school.
Thanks for telling us about your trip and the observations you're making.
Keep creating,
Mike
Maureen, you are so right. It is if nothing else, a matter of common courtesy.
ReplyDeleteI remember at the 25th anniversary of my company, held in our Barcelona office (back more than a few years), we were hosted at a reception at the 14th century town hall by the Governor of the Autonomous Province of Catalunya, Jordi Pujol.
He spoke haltingly about his appreciation for having an American company there, and then paused. He said, "I must apologize for my English. I realize that English is the language of the future."
"But," he continued, "you must recognize that the English of the future is my English, not your English."
Touche.