People’s reaction when a foreigner tries speaking their language – How accurate is this map for your country?

by SpecificBasil7850

30 comments

  3. Nah, some of the countries in dark blue are not accurate. Depends on your ‘class’ in their eyes.

  5. In Switzerland it maybe true in cities or for younger people. But many older people don’t speak English so you better learn your der die das. Swiss german is a different topic.

  7. No, not true. They always speak Finnish if they live here. No matter if they are from America, Latin America, Africa, Arab World, Asia, Europe. Believe it or not, hundreds of thousands people with migrant background speak good Finnish. It is normal.

  8. As a Romanian, I can confirm that any foreigner who says good morning in my language will automatically become my brother or sister.

  9. As a matter of fact, we French people know how terribly bad we are at speaking other language and are always pleased to see people speak in French.

    Something terrible happened to France though. For some reason you could be seen as a showoff if you tried to speak another language, especially English. That changed a lot since EU and streaming services, but French boomers usually speak with an awful accent.

  10. That’s legitimately the situation in Croatia.

    I think that – at least on some level – we are very self aware with regards to our relative cultural insignificance so it’s never expected that you learn the language, but it’s always welcomed.

    If you have good pronunciation or manage to get a good grip on declension, then brother you are one of us.

  11. The French “please don’t do that” is when you speak English.

  12. i think Danish and Dutch are the hardest. Then Polish and Hungarian

  14. My examples as someone who always spends weeks/months to learn the basics of a language when visiting a country. I speak English, German and Hungarian fluently, also A1 spanish.

    Lived in CH – people really appreciate it in Zürich, they are indifferent/appreciative in other areas

    Lived in Austria – people like it in Vienna, they are quite negative if you are not near perfect + the local dialect in other areas

    Lived in Hungary – if you utter a single word and appreciate our cuisine, you are our BFFFFFFFF forever

    Travelled very extensively in Northern Italy – ppl didn’t seem to care, but mostly were appreciative

    Travelled extensively in Spain and Portugal – they absolutely loved the effort and helped, corrected me in a really friendly manner

    Travelled through whole Iceland – ppl absolutely don’t expect it and they usually make it to a funny game to make the pronounciation right – friendly and funny people

    Honorable mentions:
    Malta – loved the effort, were really helping and appreciative
    Croatia – loved the effort, drank a lot of rakija
    India (Hindi) – they loved the effort, REALLY friendly people
    China (Mandarin) – loved the effort, found it funny, were really helpful and appreciative
    Japan – patient and polite reactions, not really caring to be honest

    Edit: i hate typing on the phone and it’s quite late, grammar and spelling errors

  15. I’ve lived a shortwhile in france and have the exact opposite expierence. Coming on stage asking ” hey can I get blablabla ” will get you foul looks, but jus trying to speak a bit of french will go a long way.

    I had nothing but compliments for 5 months and believe me, I butchered it.

  16. I think a lot of Irish would react somewhat confused if a foreigner addressed them as gaeilge. A considerable number would be embarrassed as many don’t remember much of it from their school days.

  17. Yes but i usually just turn to english after a few words.
    Or just one if they reply “gracias” instead of “obrigado”.

    I dont try dutch.
    Never.

  18. As a Scot who’s spent a fair bit of time working in Germany.

    I always found I got a much better reaction fumbling through in very broken German than “Ich kein spreken Deutsch, du spreken English?”

    I remember the first time I was out there, nipped into an Ikea to get some stuff for our work site, namely a bin, picked up a display model by accident, had a very angry German woman shouting at me at the till. Try to say I don’t speak German and just get “Ich kann kein English – Proceeds to talk faster & angrier in German”.

    Iceland on the other hand, was directly told “Don’t try to speak to me in Icelandic, I’ll understand you better in English” by the woman working at my hotel when my mate tried it on.

  19. Completly false for France, always spoke a few french word to be polite then switch to English.

  20. And in Japan if you say one Japanese word, then they will give a polite smile.

    Two words and they think you have studied Japanese and starts to talk a lot.

  21. usually if a tourist tries to speak portuguese with me, I’ll answer in english and they will keep trying the portuguese and so we have a weird conversation. I love it

  22. As a Lithuanian, we’re definitely in the dark blue category. We’re generally impressed when foreigners say one word in our language.

  23. As someone from the Netherlands who learned Romanian for funsies, I definitely got the first (red) reactions almost all the time.

  25. My experience with German people is they speak German back. Austria has strange German, so I preferred to switch to English and they were accommodating, wouldn’t say they cared either way. Luxembourg prefer German, French wasn’t very useful, didn’t use English. Most French people spoke French back, a few switched to English. I was glad I spoke a little Spanish because a lot of people didn’t speak English. Northern Italy very helpful when you try to speak Italian, but will switch to German or French if you struggle, English less so (and continue teaching you Italian if you sit down for a coffee). Belgians hate Belgians who are not from their part but will speak any language they know, just not to Belgians. You will need to tell Dutch people if you want to practice the language because switching is easier.

  26. To be fair to the French, I once had a conversation here in Ireland with a Frenchwoman entirely in Gaeilge. Needless to say, I was both very surprised and very impressed.

  27. This is true for Portugal, but only if you try to speak with our Portuguese accent. If you speak with a Brazilian accent and use many Brazilian slang words, you won’t get such a nice reaction.

  29. Sadly, in my recent experience, Germans should not be in the same category as the scandinavians and the dutch here, Germans are not nearly as eager to speak english in general. They are often somewhere between the british and the french in this categorization.

  30. Actually, the british and irish like to say “Omg your english is so good.” whenever they meet a foreign person.

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