I say get out there. If you have 2 words of German go and speak them.
It's an adventure, don't you know?
Anyway with the inmiment fall of the American Economy and the full anglo-saxon western civilisation with it, english will be soon forgotten.
Moreover, Chinese or Hindi will take over and those are well chinese to me... and not so musical.
I vote Spanish, Italian or French as lingua franca.
[/ trolling]
[/procrastinating]
""""
I wonder why swisscom do things in English as a 4th language if it sso unpopular and other languages are more widely spoken here
""""
and clearly stated that English, according to him, is unpopular here. It may have been a joke, but he wrote it, and so it stands
Ok's
For the exact same reasons people on this board say that most Swiss police stations should have English-speaking personnel, most American police stations can and should have somebody who can speak Spanish---but there is no guarantee that they will.
When in a foreign country I am quite blase, I just ask if anyone around can speak English and say what has happened. I often get someone, I just want to get a description of the person out ASAP.
Italian is useful if you are travelling in say, Italy. Otherwise it's as about as widely spoken as Finnish or Hungarian (nothing against those two languages either, my point being it's not necessarily about number of people speaking it rather geographical range of the language). As for French, well let's not start all that about French being a world language again, just because the UN has it as one of the official languages - that could be regarded as a sop to the French to stop them getting stroppy about not really having an empire any more. As for Spanish - here I agree with you, extremely widely spoken and a good sounding language - apart from the problem of sounding a bit, how shall I put this, Gay? "una cerveza" with the lispy bits done properly sounds a little well, gay. (no offence intended :-) )
So what are we left with? English, Spanish? Except of course if Western Civilisation is indeed about to fall as you predict, Spanish would have to go with it, being a clear product of that Western Civilisation.
I vote Sanscrit!
But that's just my experience.
One of our neighbours is a Kantonspolizist who is married to a lawyer who both speak fabby English. I bet no-one puts a foot wrong in that household...
Tom
When you find a portuguese policeman that, once you try to communicate in a foreign language, responds with "O quê? Não falas português? Vai para o raio que te parta. Vai para casa e volta quando aprenderes!" you will get a second well deserved medal.
I agree 100% that a person living in a foreign country should learn the native language. But I also believe that learning English is a necessity in the modern world: it's a necessary tool to travel, work and communicate in general. Speaking English in a stress situation or when you do not dominate the native language in Germany, China, Japan, Finland, France, Brazil is not rudeness, it's life. English has become a global language: you get into a museum all over the world and a high percentage will have the information about the piece displayed also in English. It's not because the museum is bowing to the imperialistic will, it's not because they gave up on fighting for the native language. It's for the common cortesy of all those people that took their time to come to enjoy the beauty in that museum, but do not speak the mother tongue. The probability this person will speak English, though, is probably quite high.
Same goes for Zürich. It's a melting pot of different nationalities in a country where there are 4 official languages and, when I talk to my colleagues, almost no one knows more that one of them. Policemen are not forced to speak English. But there should be someone that is able to speak Engllish to help tourists and ex-pats from all over the world that, due to numerous reasons, have not yet managed to dominate the local language. Not for the sake of the millions that are native English speakers (that are branded as arrogant because they were cursed with English as a mother tongue) but all those that learnt English on their home country to be able to communicate all over the world. I am very happy to know English: I can communicate with interesting people all over the world. I am very thankful I was able to speak English to Italians, French, Polish, Estonians, Finnish, Norwegians when I visited their country and had to speak to policemen and state workers alike. But I only know 2 places in this world people took offence that I did not speak German and they mistreated me because I was asking for their help in English. They made it somewhat clear that my English was worthy of death penalty.
My home country is not perfect. But I am proud that many people make an effort to know a foreign language, and that I was brought up in a country where people will try their best to pick up that broken French just to be able to help a poor French tourist.
I had the luck to meet 2 extremely nice policemen from Stäfa. They spoke very bad English, but they were nice enough to try to calm me down in a foreign language when I needed it most. But when I read how other people have to deal with situtations of "learn German or we don't help you" and people actually defend this position, I am afraid for the good people in this country.
It is ok to be proud. But I find offering a helping hand to someone in need much more important.