I was stunned. The guy running the meeting, a dour, no-nonsense Norwegian, replied, “Maybe it’s because the official management language of the company is English, everyone in the room speaks English, but I and pretty much everyone else in the room DON’T speak French!!!”

Interestingly, I’ve heard other Europeans complain that the French won’t speak English to them. A Swede I know complained about this some months ago, saying “What educated person in the world today doesn’t speak English?”

Thanks for the input.

I called a bank in France three times and got transferred from person to person, all of whom told me me in halting English that they would transfer me to someone who spoke English. On my fourth call, I pulled out my “Est ce-qu’il y a un person qui parle Anglais?” [sic](a little rusty) and the operator whom I had spoken to twice before suddenly spoke fluent English, and I was immediately transferred to a person in the correct department who also was fluent in English.

I repeated this experience with Spanish and German banks, though I have to admit not with all of them. Sometimes, they want us to try….

You’re a very funny person. And I’ve heard the same about the way knowing a foreign language provides a different framework from which to see the world. Unfortunately, I have no firsthand experience with that because I’m not fluent in any language whatsoever.

Euphrosyne:

Thanks for that.

I once stopped at a Hardees in West Virginia. On the door was a sign that read “If you cannot read, picture menus are available upon request”. I was going to bring it up with the staff inside, but I was genuinely afraid they weren’t going to see the absurdity of the post.

While learning a foreign language is handy for speaking to others in their native tongue, my favorite aspect is that it forces you to think a bit differently. You don’t tend to notice the constraints that English puts on the way you think until you see it from the outside.

Given the low status that Americans enjoy in other countries, perhaps we’d be better off learning how to properly use profanity in 30 different languages, rather than attempting to become fluent in one.