suranyi

Not necessarily, not even for airlines that are generally good about things like this.

I've flown to Budapest on Lufthansa. No crew members spoke Hungarian.

I've flown to Bucharest on Air France. No crew members spoke Romanian.

Tchiowa

I lived and worked for around 12 years in sub_Saharan Africa. English and Portuguese were more widely spoken than French. CAR, Congo were the main places French was common.

Yoshi212

I was referring more to US airlines such as PHL-MUC would have German speaking staff as would DTW-NRT have Japanese staff or EWR-TLV would have Hebrew speaking staff.
In a way you make a further point about flights from NY to Latin America. On each of my 5 flights in the past 2 years to Spanish speaking Central American countries the gate staff and even the on board staff generally only spoke English as the routes are mostly tourism based. You can see the ratio by looking at all the sunburns on the return trip. Mexico City would not be included on that list of destinations.

callum9999

Ah, I presumably do then.

To be honest, I'd view learning that amount of the language to be a completely empty platitude which is why I'd try harder if I was going to try at all! I get that not everyone is as cynical as me though!

sxytxn

I live in China. I barely speak the language. But what few words or phrases I can say or try to say, always gets smiles and laughs.

You want to go where?

There are a lot more francophone countries in Africa than lusophone. I would presume it really has more to do with your travel patterns than anything else. For me, it is the opposite experience as regards Portuguese and French. English is, not surprisingly, the most dominant language on the continent.

emma69

Being able to ready Cyrillic was such a benefit in Russia, as there were plenty of times when things like signs were not written in English as well (unlike, for example, last month in Japan where train stations, restaurants, shops etc. had English characters as well as the Japanese). I simply couldn't have taken the trains I did (admittedly outside of the main tourist spots) if I couldn't read the station names (no announcements on board to tell you either) and there certainly weren't English character menus where I went. I tried to learn some characters in Japan, but without the benefit of classroom education in Japanese, struggled beyond a few obvious ones (entrance, exit, etc).

emma69

Part of the utility of a language is not necessarily being able to use it directly to be able to communicate, but to be able to draw things like vocabulary from it, like with the creole languages in Africa - knowing French, or Portuguese, or English would enable you to understand, if not speak, several other African languages in part or, at the very least, make it easier to learn more of a language if you are not starting utterly from scratch.

I learnt Latin and Ancient Greek at school, which huge droves of people, even at the time, thought a complete waste of time and we should be learning (insert language de jour here). In actual fact, aside from enabling me to do rather well in Jeopardy categories, it enables you to 'guess' at meanings of words in other languages which have their roots in those languages, as well as find English itself easier (knowing even simple things like the meaning of micro, macro, trans, mono, ante, post, ped enable you to guess at the meaning of words you may not have come across).

I went on a trip to Italy, and it was easy to understand the meaning of 'ieri' if you know that the Latin word 'heri' means yesterday, or reading a menu, pesce (pisces), agnello (agni), and pane (panem) are quite clearly fish, lamb and bread from that common root. Whilst I haven't travelled to Africa, I imagine it would be similar if you know the root of a creole language, to get by a little more easily.

I've found getting by in several European languages fairly easy based on shared roots etc. but find it incredibly hard to pick up a language which doesn't share structure, vocab roots, etc. with ones I already know - Japanese was very hard, apart from a few 'borrowed' words here and there (ko-hee, pan, ka-re, oren-ji).

BuildingMyBento

@emma69, at least in Japan you picked up such words as entrance and exit. So, Moscow and St. Petersburg are mostly devoid of English signage?

Although I can read Korean (and Russian, for that matter), it doesn't mean I understand what is written. Nouns are naturally the easiest though, and some of those I get. The bonus about having a background in Chinese helps out a lot with Korean.

emma69

St. Petersburg and other major destinations have far more information specifically for tourists, as do many major cities around the world, so I'd expect a non-Russian speaker to get by ok. I was taking local rail in small towns, and eating in off-the-beaten-path restaurants where I was probably the only non-Russian doing so. I imagine that I had been to a similar remote locations in Japan, I would have found the English signage and menus disappearing too!

With place signs not written in your own alphabet, you normally don't need much vocab, e.g. if you took the train to Пушкин, without knowing those letters you really couldn't work out where you were and whether you were supposed to get off the train or not (of course smart phones are making this less of an issue these days). I'm also far better at listening than reading, so whilst I could quite quickly understand in Japan that "niku" was meat, I certainly couldn't recognize the word written down, but if I knew the alphabet I could pick it out.

exilencfc

I agree that it's very hard to pick up a language that doesn't share any roots with yours - and worse still has a different alphabet. My attempts to teach myself Russian have not gone well. Possibly because I find it far easier to understand foreign languages in writing than in other forms.

cdn1

English is an international language, it should be enough.

If the 'gate' is in the USA, its enough for agent to be English. No need for additional languages, they can find that in their home country.

how about people make an effort and learn the English language if they wanna live in the USA ? Or can we not say that anymore bcaz its offensive now?

Yoshi212

I agree on your last point but I do enjoy the irony of a Canadian making these comments after all the laws/regulations regarding language on planes that Air Canada has to put up with.
English is the defacto international language which is why it is used in Business and for such important things as Air Traffic Control over most of the world. BUT that doesn't mean I expect anyone everywhere to speak English just because I do. It took my father and his two brothers just a few months to pick up English when they came here as kids..his mother it took a lot longer. Same will be said about the international community. First it starts with the businessmen and then it spreads to the masses.

lloydah

It's not offensive, it's not PC either - but then nor am I

But it's hardly the same as travelling and working somewhere. Hard enough selling snow to the Eskimos in their own language. So how about yanks learning another language other than English even if they don't want to live there.

emma69

I'm perfectly fine with the only language being the home nation, wherever we happen to be in the world. I always take it as a courtesy when others speak English to me. However, to make things a lot easier all around, sometimes a little give and take works wonders.

I've read multiple times about people 'pretending' not to understand when airlines board in a certain order or other 'kettle' behaviors - by all means only announce that information in one language, and not speak others to explain why someone is not being allowed to board , but don't expect it to go as smoothly than if you share the information in other languages pertinent to the crowds.