You know, the general tone here sounds like people have little understanding of linguistics. This isn't an issue of someone in Paris refusing to speak English with someone due to their oafish assumptions. When you hear pilots on frequency struggling with aviation English, it is nearly always because those pilots speak a native tongue that is tonal in nature and spoken completely differently to Indo-European languages. They have almost certainly passed the TOEFL test, which can be hard for native English speakers, and can read and write the language flawlessly. Throw in the sometimes rapid fire nature of ATC and it can become ugly. I actually really empathize with the pilots when I hear them on frequency, because I know they are trying their best to be able to speak as clearly as possible. Thankfully, SoCal TRACON are very good at noticing and slowing down their cadence to help them.
I mean, I hear Americans speak on frequency with terrible tone, cadence and phraseology all the time, skipping even basic readbacks like "cleared to land" in favor of "roger" or some other ridiculousness. Those are the folks I have no time for.
I thought that only happens in France. Actually, almost 4 years ago my wife and I went to France and Belgium for our 10 year wedding anniversary. I was completely expecting the French to be rude and overbearing, and was completely surprised about how polite and accommodating they were. My wife taught my a few words of French, mostly a polite greeting, and then they spoke English at least as well as I do.
Maybe its the younger generation. They don't resent Americans coming over and pulling their butts out of the fire after the Germans had occupied France in WWII.
We ended up getting a top floor room at the Madeline hotel, and the only room in the building that had a view of the Eiffel tower, and our first day their was Bastille day. I swear they had an hour's worth of fireworks; probably longer than the actual Battle of Bastille. And, it was my late mother's birthday, so it was nice of them to celebrate her birthday with so many fireworks.
The only issue the French have is with people who think they will automatically speak English to them. In France. It is a lot like the theme of the semi-misguided basis for this post. Once they know you're trying to not be an ugly American, they'll be happy to speak English to you.
Quebecois - now they had some attitudes to non French speakers back in the ‘70s. Any better now?
In Montreal, the city is totally bilingual and they switch pretty freely. In Quebec City, they tend to be more like the French in wanting people to make an effort. The real issue I have in Quebec, as someone who is fluent in French, is that their accent and slang can be impossible to penetrate.
Why do I bother pressing 1 for English when the person who finally answers doesn't speak it?
Except they always speak it, and often better than Americans. When you get a call center in India, you are talking to someone in the largest English speaking country in the world - don't forget that.
I wonder if phones in Mexico have......press 1 for English? lol
Yeah, probably. That's a free market capitalist way of appealing to a larger audience and doing business more efficiently.
What surprised me the most was Denmark. EVERYONE spoke English quite well. We were there a week, and encountered only one person who didn't speak English - a grocery store clerk. I asked someone about that. They start learning English in elementary school. "You see," she tells me, "There are only five million if us. Danish isn't spoken anywhere else. If we're going to have an economy, we need to be able to speak the language of business. So we speak English in addition to Danish, and a lot of us speak other languages, and now they're teaching Mandarin."
In Germany we could almost always find someone who spoke enough English to get us by, since my German is so marginal. Great accent, I'm told, I sound like a native, but very limited vocabulary. You forget stuff you learned in the 1970s. The hilarious part is, I took three years of German in high school -- but I learned the accent well before that, from watching Hogan's Heroes.
Danes are aided significantly by the fact that their language structure is essentially a blend of the various stages of Germanic language evolution. Danes can nearly flawlessly converse with Swedish, Norwegian, German and English speakers in their native languages, because Danish is quite close to each of those. It doesn't take much study for them to become strongly fluent. It is, however, quite difficult to understand them due to their tones.
