I know a few people who shop in my local Polish shop in Cardiff. EDIT: Woops double post, oh, and they're not Polish people obviously, otherwise that is the most pointless comment ever.
Dunno, there are parts of the southern US where you can't get by without being fluent in Spanish (the Cuban inner-tube tip of Florida, for instance). Technically the US doesn't have an official language but even still...
If they look asian, walk in and pretend to talk french, polish or german. Use words like Dumkoff, yabana bapcha & pepe le piu. If they look european, walk in and pretend to talk asian. Use phrases like Do mai mo.
You are soo wrong on that one.. I live and work here in France as Tech support and have a number of "English Shops" who sell baked beans hobnobs and such like to the english residents, the amount of french spoken by the majority is zero! I even have an english PC shop that calls me to sort out the French XP and Vista machines as it is too hard for them! matt
I think you have to look at it both ways, If you live in a foreign country its stupid not learning that language, it does not make sense. However English is the most spoken language in the world and i would think that not even grasping the basics is silly. Hell even in India the poorest of poor can atlest mutter some sentence together.
For the english it seems that as we speak english then the rest of the world MUST do so to converse with us, native english speakers largely are lazy when it comes to learning other languages we just tend to shout loudly in english as this seems to negate the language barrier.
I can understand your view point but this has todo with largely with history. As Britain has/had soooooooooooooooo many colonies those countries have largely become English speaking. Have a look at places like India, HK and the Caribbean. Same goes for Spain as the they too had many places. Thats why Spanish is the 2nd most spoken in the world.
But if you go to Spain and talk to someone under 35 they can also speak english to some degree and maybe others as well. do that in the UK and it would be hard for some to speak their native language to a good standard let alone others
I'm sure the workers in the store laugh at the controversy and pages of debating they have sparked If they are really smart, they'll learn english, so by the time everyone knows that's the shop that doesn't speak english, they can put up a new sign "We went to school and learnt english!!!" That should make passers by become happy customers, everyone likes it when others conform to thier standards don't they?
Personally i think some people are missing the point a little. Take Polish as a random example in the UK: There's a huge difference between opening a 'Polish shop that sells Polish things' and 'Polish shop that will refuse to serve anyone that isn't Polish' First thing isn't that bad at all, second option is exceptionally bad.
There was a similar incident at a pub in the amazing town of Weston-Super-Mare (god, what a sh*thole), where the Polish owners put a sign in the window saying, "No English Welcome". The day after, a load of English folk kicked off, and smashed in the window. Next day after that, they put up a sign saying "Everyone Welcome". Job done.
I took the sign as "We don't speak english", but if they actually meant "We wont serve english speaking people in here, so don't bother coming in and just pointing at what you want, or worse yet, saying the english word for the item you desire as you point, in an attempt to teach us your foul language!" then they deserve to have a few bricks thrown through the windows i guess.
Yup! http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm English is the universal language of the world. I unfortunately wasn't raised the way my parents were with languages. My parents raised me as an American and english was to be my native tongue. If I learned all the languages of the family in the past 2 generations plus my own choices, I'd know 12 languages. Russian, German, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Welsh, Arabic and Japanese. Dad: Russian (native), Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish and English Mom: Italian, Latin, Hebrew, Yiddish and English (native) Dads Parents: Russian, German, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish and English Moms Parents: Italian, French, Welsh, German and English My dad's uncle was fluent (read/write) in 7 languages.
Half the time I can barely understand British Eglish. But I have Wikipedia and Google. We have several sections of Denver where English is barely supported. Blocks and blocks of stores all labeled in Thai/Vietnamese or Spanish. According to the census people who track that stuff - white Anglo Saxon is a minority in Colorado. john
One of these opened near me - I just strolled in, asked where something was to the screamed reply of "No Eenglish!!!" So i just switched to Welsh, merrily gibbered away without the poor dab understanding a single word I said. Eventually, after much "shud-mae-heddi" and "trio 'fe to"'s she said. "OK, maybe little english..." Joe
