Originally Posted by Mountain Trader
Your complaint about langauge seems to say the French should have English services since so many customers speak English. So should major US airports do the same in Spanish?
My
perception is that, in many US airports where large numbers of hispanophones enter the US, there are visible signs in Spanish. Do I expect everyone to speak Spanish? No! but, as you point out, it just makes perfect sense to have clear multilingual signs.
Originally Posted by Mountain Trader
It makes going to Holland a snap, but that hardly sets the standard for what others do, whether the others are the French at CDG or Americains at JFK. I think common sense says multi-language signage should be everywhere, and CDG could do a lot better.
I actually think that AMS (and others) should set the standards.
Originally Posted by Mountain Trader
My only point is this: When suggesting what others should do, it sometimes helps to first ask "Do we hold ourselves to the same standard?" And certainly on languages at airports, the answer is no.
Interesting perception. To tie this with your previous bit: there is always room for improvement; airports are not the UN and one cannot expect to instantly find a translator. However, what I note there are precedents in Europe for good multilingual signs possibly because they have, by geography, are much larger linguistic diversity than North Americans (I shamelessly exclude Mexico from this.)
Surely it is not too much to ask that international entry points in the EU provide services in
some of the official languages of the EU other than French? After all, I expect, as a Canadian, to be able to speak French when I reach any entry point in Canada just as you expect to be able to speak English (or even American English!) when you enter the US.
In the end, what drives me bonkers is not so much the lack of signs, but the implicit attitudes that signs are NOT to be put up. In other words, I can tolerate the absence of service, but not the apparently purposeful denial of services. And this, taken with my frequent logistical nightmares at CDG, singles it out as particularly bad. (I find even the simplest signs, like "Paris par train", to be confusing. Why do I want to take the train to Paris? Why can't they just say "RER vers Paris"? But of course, the RER is a train, just like the TGV!)
BTW, I regret to hear that IAD is also bad, and I did not attempt to be "high-minded"! (We Canadians must truly apologize for everything, but this is stereotypical and let's not get there!)