Quote:
Originally Posted by Burning Down
But a lot of people in other countries always want a chance to practise their English with native speakers who visit their country. My boyfriend was always practising his English with foreigners and especially the numerous American and British ex-pats in Belgrade. I think a lot of people around the world, when they find out you are Canadian/American/British/Australian, will want to speak English to you regardless of whether or not you'd like to hone your language skills with them (of course they want you to help them hone their English skills).
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Yeah I get if you meet people in a social setting then that makes sense. But what if you go into a shop and the person serving doesn't understand very well? There's a joke that English people just point at stuff and shout in the hope they'll understand. I dunno, I spoke about this before with a friend, and I had the opinion that learning a few words and speaking to them in their language would go down well and he kept saying there's no point, doesn't make a difference, why make the effort if they will speak English anyway.
I do find it ignorant, especially with the amount of English people who get uppity about immigrants not speaking our language when they're in England. I'd imagine once the person you're talking to realises you're s
hit at their language then they'd naturally just switch the conversation to English anyway, but it seems nice to at least try, as opposed to just "f*ck 'em, they speak our language anyway".