I'll agree with you when
all the British ex-pats clogging up Portugal, Spain, Japan, etc., decide to get off their arses and learn Portuguese/Spanish/Japanese, etc.

Yes, I appreciate the frustration of dealing with people whose English is poor. I see many students who have an excellent understanding of physics, but their level of English is still trying to catch up with their mathematics. But I was far more embarrassed when I last went to Germany, and one of the people I was travelling with spent half an hour at Stansted telling us not to worry, because his German was pretty good, then the first thing he did upon arrival was march into a taxi office and ask for a taxi in English.

But he was just visiting. In that sense, at least he didn't display the arrogance of the ex-pat living in Portugal who told me, "Oh, you don't need to bother learning Portuguese, they all speak English over here."

I'm rambling now; it just seems kind of hypocritical to demand that anyone from abroad learns English when we ourselves have a pretty lousy track record for learning other countries' languages.
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 12:16, 1 reply)

Couldn't agree more...
Personally, I wouldn't dream of living somewhere and not learning the language.

Also, just to clarify for some of the posters above:

It doesn't have to be perfect English, just understandable. I know that's pretty much impossible to quantify, but when no-one you're talking to can understand you, surely there's something wrong?
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 12:34, closed)

Well that's fair enough
But how frequently is their English so bad that they are completely unintelligible? Cases that are that bad, I'd have guessed, are few and far between. But that's my experience to date, yours may differ.
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 12:44, closed)

Well, as mentioned above, I got served in Subway by a guy who didn't understand my order once...
And in fact, only last week I was with a group of doctors at work and there was one who none of us could understand. Even the other doctors were nonplussed...
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:07, closed)

Also, when I worked in London it was almost a daily occurence
I dealt with lots of hotels and their reception staff were notorious for it. I phoned one once, asked to speak to the head of engineering and got put through to a guest in a room :)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 15:09, closed)