NorCalif

... hit send to soon. And the reason they would expect someone on the tourist office staff to speak English is not just for native English speakers - but for the myriad of other-language speakers who have some competence in English - it's the language most likely to be understood to some degree by people from many different countries.

The reason the medical center in Amsterdam gave all their seminars in English was not to indulge visiting Americans (I believe DH was the only one last year). Or Brits. Or Aussies. It was to form a bridge between the French, Russians, Greeks, Chinese, etc.

Hans

I quite often work in project teams with members from several European countries. My experience is that in such cases English is always chosen as project language. One can be pretty sure that team members for example from Scandinavia will speak a good English. But this isn't always the case with Latin countries, as France or Italy.

There's also little chance that you can conduct "normal" business in English. People expect that companies have local organizations with native speakers and accept English only in special cases (for example experts with specialized skills).

NorCalif

walkin - yes, I agree English as the lingua franca has taken on a life of its own - and you're right - it isn't about America - it's used importantly as a bridge between non-native-English speakers. And I've seen a huge change from my first trip to Europe 35 years ago when I was touristing about as a college student. Our DD was doing a university year in Paris last year, and had a job provided by the French government teaching English in a Parisian high school (she is fluent in French, btw). She said the eagerness to learn English is quite pronounced among the high school students she encountered - she said of course some of it is music and entertainment and youth-culture based, but it's there and seems to be growing.

nochblad

Just a few comments from OP.

Sarkozy speaks very good English but chooses not to - at least in public.

For those who are interested I am male. My daughters went through the Italian educational system and were taught English throughout their school years. They also were taught French and Latin. One daughter who specialised in languages also was taught Spanish.

The language capability is there not, unfortunately, in the tourist office.

My intention - misguided or naive - was to solicit a response so as to encourage the development of language skills in tourist offices or at least the recognition that it should be a prerequisite of staff skill sets.

walkinaround

>>>>>
At some point, Mandarin will probably rise in importance
>?>>>

nah, don't count on it...mandarin is not insignificant today but it will not grow in importance but rather will decrease in importance as china further opens up. i've done a lot of business in china and the chinese business elite were educated at harvard, mit, yale, chicago, etc. mandarin is for barking out orders to the workers. english is for making the big deals and for professionals collaborating with the rest of the world. the global elite chinese educated at these american institutions spit on their provincial brethren who speak only chinese and aren't western oriented enough. the chinese understand the importance of english because they wish to do deals with americans, british AND the french, spanish, japanese, etc, etc. and chinese scientists, businessmen, academics, etc have been using english for donkey's years.

get with it.


>>>>
Italians aren't fully bilingual. Should some jobs require it, sure.
>>>>

yes 'some jobs' do require it. how about working at generali, fiat, iveco, pirelli, etc. less capability in english is a negative factor in italy's global competitiveness. do you think it's not? do you think italy should not try to improve english skills? do you think it's ok for a society trying to be competitive to not worry about english skills today?

Jean

I'm reminded of an episode of the recently completed season of "The Amazing Race" televised here in the U.S. Several teams stopped at a tourist office in the Champagne region of France to ask for directions. The staff spoke English fluently but still directed the teams to the wrong place.

Pvoyageuse

"Sarkozy speaks very good English but chooses not to" -

His English is very poor :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnxags924jw

logos999

German companies are highly competitive and don't give a .... about English. Salespeople need English, in other areas English arouses suspicion. Fluent German is expected for ANY decent job, if not, sweep the floors. Why would someone even think it's different. Even in IT, it's not Englisch but "Fach-Denglisch" that is used. For an English IT person, that must be really really freaking..
Two years ago people were afraid those laid off englisch IT people would come here and increase the competition.
Hasn't happened, they neither speak German nor IT-Denglish.
The way we conjugate and declinate the "standard" IT vocabulary is just hilarious.
So no, no English IT in Germany, not even people from India can make it over here .

logos999

Interestingly, 10 years ago, people here were scared about India and the "outsourcing nightmare". Those projects failed miserably. Today, outsourcing to India is a big laugh. People know the indian competition has been beaten, no matter how cheap it seems over there.

NorCalif

logos - interesting. Maybe that's your experience with German companies, but in my experience international companies that do business, and have large offices, in Germany do not fit your description at all. I'm a computer scientist, and some of the big software companies that I've worked for have all kinds of non-German speakers working in their German offices. They rotate people into Germany from various other countries, with no German-speaking ability at all. However, I have never yet met anyone at those companies, in Germany or elsewhere, that does not speak English. Just my experience of course, and as I say, they were multi-national companies, not exclusively German ones.

Michel_Paris

Walkin,

Time to go for a walk to cool down

I am fluently biligual, and have a smattering of another. I have worked in two different locations, in different lnaguages, in a technical job, for a Fortune 100 company, working with government agencies. So...

I've also travelled a fair amount, Europe and elsewher.

I am in fact agreeing that in a Fortune 500 environment it has become true that companies use English as a common language. But I woulld not expect a line worker at Pirelli to speak english.

At a tourist bureau in a main centre, would expect so. At a restaurant..maybe.

Curious...Florida is one of the .main destination in the winter for 100,000s of french speaking quebecers, some who speak limited english. How many tourist offices and waiters speak french? Or are you saying it is their problem?

ira

tg remarks,

>>...And why don't they speak more French in the US?
Because Spanish is a more important language......<

Only if you wish to communicate with a service worker from south of the US/Mexican border.

logos999

Been working at the same companies you mentioned. . Quite a few of the big German ones. Maybe you were involved is short term temporary projects? They need to synchronize work in the international offices. But the core (technical and other) staff was always German language only and any foreigner expected to speak fluent German. English unterstood of course but not used in the office. Only experieced it differently at a local investment broker, but that wasn't the big one.

sashh

<<... hit send to soon. And the reason they would expect someone on the tourist office staff to speak English is not just for native English speakers - but for the myriad of other-language speakers who have some competence in English - it's the language most likely to be understood to some degree by people from many different countries.>>

But if 90% of your visitors do not speak English why would you bother to employ someone who speaks English?

And if you employ one person what do you do if they are on holiday / ill/lunch-break.

I remember being in a tourist information office in France and someone asking what language I was speaking to my friend - I said English and got the answer, "No you are speaking English now, what were you speaking to each other?"

Apparently French people struggle with my northern English accent.

Michel_Paris

When I worked with a french government agency, I was acting as the translator for our remote english speaking management and product group. All conversations held when they were not present were in french, though it was funny how english technical words are used. Oh. And ALL manuals had to be translated into french and any help lines staffed by french speakers.

In a world supposdly so english, one has to wonder why bodies such as the UN still have so many translators. And I'll accept any bet that there will be many translators at the upcoming G8/G20 meetings

Do Putin. Merkel and President of China speak english? Not so sure

travelgourmet

<i>German companies are highly competitive and don't give a .... about English. </i>

Bull... I know for a fact that Siemens requires English for any sort of professional level job, and I know people hired there, to work in Germany, without any German skills whatsoever. SAP also requires English as a matter of course. Bayer requires English skills for professional level jobs. Yes, Wolfgang's Computer Repair & Gardening Service may not require English, but any job beyond sweeping the floors at an international German company will require English. If not, then I think we can expect German competitiveness to disappear relatively shortly.

<i>Only if you wish to communicate with a service worker from south of the US/Mexican border.</i>

Oh ira, you know better than that. It is the second most spoken native language in the world. Some expect it to pass English in total speakers in the relatively near future. Spanish is more important than French because it is a language of the future and French is a language of the past. That it helps when ordering your margarita when sitting on a Mexican beach is just icing on the cake.

<i>mandarin is not insignificant today but it will not grow in importance but rather will decrease in importance as china further opens up.</i>

Oh I don't know. I agree that many, many Chinese will only seek to increase their English skills in the near term, but Mandarin will surely grow in importance. One thing to remember is that, at least anecdotally, Mandarin is becoming THE Chinese language, displacing Cantonese, even in Hong Kong.

logos999

Wrong TG, I know it better. But anyway...

hanl

I think that the remarks implying that everybody (or at least all those under 40) should learn and be able to speak English are a bit naive. It's a great idea in theory, but the reality is bound to be a lot different. People learn languages and maintain fluency in them, for the most part, because they need to. That's one of the reasons English speakers tend not to speak foreign languages (and foreign language teaching is losing funding, at least in the UK) - they have little need to. Meanwhile speakers of other European languages - particularly minority languages - often speak English quite well because they can't get by without it. Speakers of the "bigger" EU languages are somewhere in the middle ground - some will have a need for foreign languages, such as English, while others can get by easily in their daily lives without ever needing to know more than a word or two.

In the business and academic fields, I agree, English certainly tends to be widely spoken. But that doesn't mean that it's spoken <i>well</i>, or that people's inflated ideas of their own profiency in English don't lead to major communication slip-ups, lost deals, misunderstandings at meetings or poorly drafted reports.

(I'm speaking from experience, as I work for an organisation where all 23 EU languages are used, with English and French being the official working languages and mediocre English the lingua franca.)

travelgourmet

<i>Wrong TG, I know it better. But anyway...</i>

http://www.sap.com/germany/about/kar...q/index.epx#16

http://www.siemens.de/jobs/jobs_bewe...iten/home.aspx

https://mybayerjob.bayerbbs.com/sap(...context=APP_DE

You will note that each link states that English is required, with the first two being general guidelines for all jobs. Bayer doesn't seem to have such a statement, but I seriously doubt one could find a job listed on their website that doesn't list English as needed. But, hey, you know better.

Now, perhaps some confusion is around the idea that, because English skills are important and often critical, that this means daily business is conducted in English. I don't think anyone would say that is broadly the case in Germany. There might be some Dutch or Scandinavian companies where one can go days/months/years without speaking Dutch or Swedish/Danish/Norwegian at work, but I doubt that is the case at a German company.

logos999

LoL, everything is "needed", but really NOONE cares. At least about using that language. Germans must be a mysterious bunch of people.