Originally Posted by
vanabb
Ok, so the consensus here is that YES it is OK to be rude, laugh at, then hang up on anyone who does not speak your language. Particularity if you work a customer service line at an international company, like say AMEX, then yes it is even more OK. All right then.
So German is spoken by less than than 0.02% of all people, whereas English is understood by more than 40%, yet I should waste my time learning a dead language just because I happen to reside in a particular country? Outside of Germany, Austria and maybe Switzerland, German is profoundly useless. All the Swiss speak English anyway.
Oh dear. You are really not willing to take some constructive advice to eek out a basic phrase? No one is asking you to read Goethe or Mann, or write like a FAZ editor. Just to have the ability to get in the front door. I can't imagine you live in Germany and never utter a word of the language in your daily life.
Where did you get the idea that it's a 'dead language' by the way?