Pretty much 

"El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!" (lightningzone) 01/26/2016 at 07:36 • Filed to: None

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Party-vi > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 01/26/2016 at 07:44

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yep.

jariten1781 > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 01/26/2016 at 08:09

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When I was in Japan it was more like:

“Konichiwa”

“OMG OMG OMG Wow! Your Japanese pronunciation is so good! Let’s speak English so you can help me with my pronunciation”

Clown Shoe Pilot > jariten1781 01/26/2016 at 09:16

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You say “arigato” like WE say “arigato”.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Party-vi 01/26/2016 at 09:17

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Absolutely yep. Makes it harder to learn German, but in some senses meant the culture shock of being in Germany wasn’t any worse than the UK. On the flip side, I look close enough to a German that I’ve also had people assume I was a local in this or that town until I started talking.

Cé hé sin > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 01/26/2016 at 09:22

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I was in the former East about ten years ago and that wasn’t the case there and then. People in say their thirties or over didn’t usually speak English.

English still isn’t widely spoken in Italy if you’re off the tourist trails.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Cé hé sin 01/26/2016 at 09:30

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It depends on where one is, I found. Erfurt, Weimar, and other hubs were sort of a mixed bag, and anyone younger has gone all out trying to make up for time. Anywhere smaller, certainly an English barrier, or if one is traveling on the cheap trains, standing next to a ragged old man traveling to the outskirts of Jena. Cologne, Munich, and anywhere else in the West, very open regardless of age.

Kat Callahan > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 01/26/2016 at 09:50

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Accurate in Tokyo only. Which is one of the reasons I avoid the city. Most of the places I have lived, especially rural areas, it’s more like, “Oh, thank God, she speaks Japanese. PHEW.” In Tokyo, I get really annoyed, REALLY fast when I need to get shit done in Japanese and get broken English despite that. As I have said before, I am not above pulling out my ID with my Japanese name on it (with kanji) and rapping it on the counter a couple of times to drive the message home.

My Japanese is far from perfect, but I have studied it since I was 13, I live here, and I’m naturalising. In the vast majority of daily interactions, my Japanese is going to be better than a clerk’s English by several orders of magnitude.

cletus44 aka Clayton Seams > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 01/26/2016 at 10:13

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The France one is spot on. Been there and done that.

BATC42 > cletus44 aka Clayton Seams 01/26/2016 at 16:51

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Meh. We’re not that bad. (Parisians though...)

DrJohannVegas > Party-vi 01/26/2016 at 17:01

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My favorite “speaking German to a German” experience was trying to find a campsite at the Nurburgring. The older gentleman listened politely to me ask about which campsites were still open, then gently shook his head and said: “Please, no. We do this in English.”

cletus44 aka Clayton Seams > BATC42 01/27/2016 at 09:48

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Beautiful place and great bars but man, my southern accent granted me no favours.

BATC42 > cletus44 aka Clayton Seams 01/27/2016 at 09:53

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Oh, I bet. We already have trouble understanding simple english with not much accent in it (blame TV shows and movies for that one), so south US accent, woosh. Most of my compatriotes can’t understand the BBC’s english (took me some time to get used to it).
I can speak english fluently and have no trouble understanding most of the accent now, but sometimes the southern accent is a complete mystery to me (alongside some really hard UK, Oz and NZ countryside ones).

cletus44 aka Clayton Seams > BATC42 01/27/2016 at 09:57

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That makes sense. I speak crappy broken French as a side affect of speaking Spanish pretty well. I also found that people seemed to get nicer the farther I got from the urban centres.