While I am trying to teach myself French, not much is happening except that I can read bits and pieces. However, back in the 60's I had 3 years of Spanish and still remember some. Am I likely to encounter people in France who might understand Spanish if we're not able to negotiate in French and English?

i dont know what the passport officer was telling me.for all i know he could have been asking me if i was a member of the taliban.
i asked him politely to repeat the question in english and he just gave me my passport back and shaked his head.that was my welcome to France.
Sam

So, he "shaked" his head? Maybe he was commenting on your english skills.

Makes me rant about the snobbery of the OP got1tieI...
Please realize that you were in FRANCE, which is not an English speaking country.
English is not my native language (neither is French), but actually I make the effort to speak English when going to America. I also would not expect anybody in Denmark to speak anything else but Danish. It is their country, their language and their damn right to speak it.
Ridiculous thread...

When I was young I lived in France. I went there with absolutely zero French, but I did speak English. My life started with a dictionary and hundreds of little peaces of paper where I wrote questions: "How much?", "Where is?" and so on. On the other side of the paper was the same in Finnish so that I knew which paper I showed to people. I gradually learned French and could forget the pieces of paper, but I never even tried to communicate in English, even though I was in a schooled university crowd.

About Scandinavian languages: No, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes usually communicate in so called "Skandinavska", which is sort of a mixture. Swedes and Norwegians usually understand each other's languages plus written Danish. What makes Danish trickier is pronunciation. I participated once in a guided trip in Greece. There was no Finnish-speaking one, so I took a Swedish-speaking. Then it turned out that there were also Norwegians and Danes, and the guide said that the trip will be done in "Skandinavska". While I understand Swedish perfectly well, I was in trouble. Native speakers understand Skandinavska, but my Swedish is learned from school. There was a Swedish woman who translated in Swedish the parts I didn't understand.

And whoever mentioned Finnish was right in that it is nothing like the Scandinavian languages. It is not even Indo-European (it is Finno-Ugric), English and Farsi are nearer to each other that English and Finnish. The only relatives Finnish has are Estonian, Hungarian, Karelian and many little language groups of some little nationalities of Siberia.

Every member country's official language is an official language of the EU.

This thread makes me think of an incident we had in France. We were travelling through France to Spain and made an overnight stop at one of the service areas on the Route du Soleil. We were late arriving and the carpark was jammed with cars and a queue forming at reception.

The german couple in front of us requested a room in english. They tried a couple of times ( getting louder on each attempt ) but were simply waved away with 'ne parle pas anglais.'

I stepped up to the mark and in my very rudimentary school french 'une chombre poor doo person, silver plate' and lo?there was room at the inn!

As this motel gets travellers from many european countries some might argue that it would make good business sense for the motel owner to speak a bit of english. But its not a lot to ask really is it ? to be able to ask for a room in the language of the country you are staying in. ( And before anyone jumps on me I know this doesn't directly address the comments of the OP )

And, no, the motel owner did not even bat an eyelid at my butchering of their wonderful language!

Elina, interesting post about Scandinavska.

And you remind me what I heard about Finnish-Hungarian language relation.

Fi_UK's story reminds me of an incident in Provence some years ago. The fact that most public officials outside the capital do not speak English can sometimes be an advantage:

We were part of a routine, mid-afternoon spot-check by highway police at the motorway entrance (mid-afternoon = post-lunch, hence lots of drunkenness on the roads)

We hadn't consumed but they were stopping and quizzing -- at length -- every driver.

As a Canadian government executive, I actually have to maintain a prescribed level of fluency in our other official language, which fluency is tested regularly. I can't even get my performance pay if I don't meet the language requirement. So communicating in French holds no terrors for me. But we were in a hurry and were not guilty of anything.

When the officer came to us I just held out our passports and bellowed slowly and loudly in my best tone of britannic befuddlement:

"Voiture lou-ay, voiture loo-ay."

I love the French. But NO petit fonctionnaire wants to admit incapacity or ignorance, as I well knew. The officer looked disgustedly at us and waved us through ahead of all his concitoyens....

The woman who ran the bed and breakfast where we stayed in Denmark last month told us that Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are essentially dialogues of the same language. She said that she can understand about eight out of ten words in Swedish, but that she has more trouble understanding people from Western Denmark.

It sounded to me as if the variation in the language proceeds along geographical lines. The closer two people live within Denmark/Sweden/Norway, the more likely they are to understand one another.

That said, almost everybody we met in Denmark spoke excellent English, especially the young people.

Larry,

Thanks for your reply. I'll check out the books you suggest, but should also relate the reason for my trip. My french mother recently passed away and I was taking some of her personal items to family in France. Being raised by a french woman, I have been well coached in proper etiquette and the french way of life.

If I kept my head down, perhaps it was the in respect to soldiers with automatic rifles. I felt it was better to keep quiet than to draw attention to myself.

Au revoir et merci!

I never had any occasion to speak with a customs official in Paris. The only time they spoke to me was when the official noticed my birthdate, and it was the same as his! He spoke French, but I understood him. :)

Tedgale, your comment about not being able to get your performance pay if you don't meet the language requirements of your position illuminates one of the less well-known aspects of Canadian society and it's federal public service. I had been thinking about this recently when reading the post on languages in Belgium, a country which appears to have its share of linguistic tensions. While some people criticize the expense of ensuring an appropriately bilingual public service in Canada, I am always in awe when I attend meetings where the conversation moves back and forth from French to English.

By the way, I guess you can figure it out: I'm one, too.

Anselm

Hi all,

A few comments

>..Am I likely to encounter people in France who might understand Spanish if we're not able to negotiate in French and English?<

The farther South you go, the more likely it will be.

>... the lingua franca among the young educated classes is Basque! I thought myself lucky if I found someone willing to speak ANY form of Indo-European.<

AFAIK, Basque is an Indo-European language.

>...no one ever actually stamped my passport; they just looked at it. Did they quit stamping? <

In most countries, Yes.

OOOPS

>AFAIK, Basque is an Indo-European language.<

Belay that last remark.

To "hopingtotravel", "Am I likely to encounter people in France who might understand Spanish if we're not able to negotiate in French and English?":

Give it a try, it might work. Say, "Parlez-vous anglais? Parlez-vous espagnol?"

While I'm recommending books, anyone interested in multiple Romance languages would do well to check out "From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts", by Peter Boyd-Bowman. It traces the many quite regular changes that occurred as the major four Romance languages evolved from vulgar Latin. The four languages considered are French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (as usual, poor Romanian gets left out). Among the five major Romance languages, Italian is closest to Latin, and French is the furthest removed.

Regarding the original post, the many replies in this thread have made most of the points I would have made. I'd just like to call attention again to the common assumption that "everyone" really speaks English, so if they don't, they're purposely being difficult. Without that assumption, there would have been no reason for got1tiel to have characterized the incident as "French snobbery". There was obviously no "snobbery" if the passport control officer simply couldn't speak English (which actually sounds like the case).

Recall that speaking a language is NOT an all or nothing matter; people can speak a language at various levels. I've sometimes seen the following interaction between an American and a French person: The American tries to speak in English, but the French person does not respond in English. With the peculiar conceit of Americans that "everyone really speaks English", the American believes that the French person is just being difficult or a snob. In fact, the French person speaks SOME English, but is reluctant to try it, since he is afraid his English is poor, a fact he doesn't want to reveal.

The American keeps trying to communicate by various means, including fractured French, and eventually the two establish some sort of rapport. At that point the French person, who is now more at ease, and who sees the American going out on a limb by trying some really awful French, becomes willing to attempt some of his own awful English.

The reaction of the American? "See, he really spoke English all along, and was just being a pain."

What I see in the original incident is a passport control officer who doesn't speak much English. Perhaps he got the job because he speaks fluent Italian, Spanish, Romanian, and Catalan. But like Kasja, I see no indication of "snobbery".

- Larry

Tedgale, your story reminded me of my high school French teacher's similar story. She was driving in France and not wearing a seat belt. (This was 15 years ago or so.) She was pulled over and when the policeman told her the problem she looked at him with wide eyes and said loudly, "What? I don't speak French. I am Amer-i-can."

The policeman gave her a disgusted look, mimicked putting on his seatbelt which after a few seconds she "got" and mimicked back, and then waved her on her way.

PegS reminds me of a talk I heard decades ago at a conference on bilingualism. At this conference, being a "perfect bilingual" meant having the ability to speak two languages without an accent in either one. This definition was given by a French-English perfect bilingual, who then added, "That doesn't mean that I CAN'T speak English with a French accent".

He then turned on a horrible French accent in English, and said (roughly), "Pardonnez-moi, offeesair, weech way eez Boston, een front or een back?"

I recall that the conference speakers revealed that if children are raised in a bilingual environment, most of them pick up both languages without any trouble. But about ten percent of the boys seem to get confused, in the sense that they exhibit delays in starting to speak. For some reason, which was not at all understood at the time, this virtually never happens with girls.

Kansan, thanks for the clarification. Given your circumstances, my guess at what might have been going on in your interaction with the customs officer was off-target.

- Larry

Nice pictorial work easytraveller, it deserves a place in the Orsay: l'arc-en-ciel de passeport controlle .

I still think it would have been wrong not to show the passport officer I wasnt understanding him & to ask for english to be used. I was not ordering a crepe here, I was in front of the person who in the end decides whether i can enter france or not.
Sam
f.y.i. the visa/passport is just a document to *apply* for entry in a country. The ultimate
decision to let you in is made by the passport officer at the airport.
They are mainly looking for evidence of how likely you are to violate the
terms of the visa. For example, you are considered a potential immigrant
until you can provide evidence to the contrary, e.g., a return ticket.
Also, for visitors, since they are not allowed to work, they have to have
enough funds to live during their stay in the country.
The officer will verify orally that the purpose of your visit is a)
consistent with the laws of the land, and b) consistent with the visa
you've applied for (if needed), and that you intend to leave the country
when stated, that you don't have immigrant intent. There are lots of
questions and possible ways that these can be checked. It is why you
need to be very careful about how you answer questions on entry. Idle
conversation can reveal things you didn't really mean in the
immigration context that the officer means,and could get you into unneccessary trouble.

Hi easytraveler!
The Yankee and I will be in Portland Oregon at the end of September :)