She doesn't speak English - pointless meeting up

YABVU

Of course it’s worth meeting up. It will be a bit more difficult but people muddle through.

Are you seriously saying you’ve never spent time with anyone who barely speaks English before and have no experience of making conversation work with either someone translating, muddling through with bits of each other’s language or (these days) google translate or similar.

Many of the richest experiences of spending time with others can be in this sort of scenario.

And the language you speak a bit - can you try to improve that with some Duolingo language or similar?

Yep, totally unreasonable.

My FIL was Polish. The relatives live in very rural Poland and only one of them speaks English. None of us speak Polish.

We visit them every few years, and are very fond of them. If the English speaker is around, he translates for us. If he's at work and unavailable, we all smile a lot and my SIL dredges up random bits of Polish vocabulary (single words) that she's gathered over the years. We have a lovely time.

Well this is a depressing thing to read. Your poor brother.

She speaks three languages, all of which are commonly taught in UK schools, and yet you don’t know a few words of any of them? And aren’t prepared to learn?

She will have learned some English at school for sure. But she probably just doesn't speak it well - like your average Brit with their school french.

However I'm wondering if this is a reverse and making a point about Brits going abroad with no local language. That's very common!

Is this a wind-up?

YABU! I think you're being very short-sighted and unfriendly. This is the lady your brother loves and wants to marry. Of course wants to introduce her to his family so you can all get to know her. If she already speaks four languages, she must have an ear for them and the chances are she's probably already trying to learn English. You could even learn some phrases in her language to make her feel welcome. Nothing too complicated, just a hello and welcome to the family kind of thing.

Just go along with an open mind and a kind heart, because it looks like she's going to be around for a while. Do you really want to be labelled the a-hole sister who wouldn't go to a special family dinner because it was going to be a bit boring?!

Jesus. Really?

It sounds like you and your brother aren't close if it met his partner at a wedding and made little attempt to speak to them. I'd have thought you'd have been curious to meet her. It's up to you how much you want to put yourself out for someone you aren't close with.

Do meet her! She’s joining your family after all. Put your school-level language to work (we really must value language education more!).

You don't need to share a language to communicate! Just being together, gestures, body language, facial expressions, atmosphere, these all work fine, in fact they will all be heightened if verbal communication is tricky.

As it happens, you DO share a language, just one that you're not very good at.

Your brother is going to marry this person, so I suggest you start learning her native language. Right now. You could master some basic phrases in the week before this dinner, and your efforts would go a long way to making her feel welcome.

Or start improving the language you do share. The absolute state of you judging her lack of English when you are so linguistically lazy yourself!

One of my favourite, relaxing, cosy things is eating out with others, surrounded by languages I don't really understand, basking in warmth and laughter and good food and conviviality. Home.

Don't be scared, OP. Just try it. And get a wiggle on with DuoLingo or similar in the meantime.

Reads a bit like a reverse

I had this situation. I went a long, tried to include her as much as possible but naturally spoke to my family member too. The woman then went absolutely crazy and stormed out because we had spoken in English a few times. It was horribly tense and the relationship was never repaired.

I’m surprised he even wants you to meet her given how awful you sound.

This can't be serious...

Yeah why bother with someone who doesn’t speak English OP. Bloody hell. I imagine she’s not in a hurry to meet up with you either if this is any indication of your general attitude (undoubtedly your brother has already warned her). Would you have anything in common with a tri-linguist anyway? She sounds very accomplished.

Totally unreasonable. Friends and family are the main reasons people become proficient in other languages. And communication comes in many ways.

Op come on. It’s 2025. Use your phone. You can talk at it and it’ll speak to her in any language you want.

Royston Vasey? 😁

I live in a small northern village, but the local inhabitants aren't as inward looking and xenophobic as you are.

Have you never wanted to expand your horizons?

I didn’t say anything about the OP not knowing Fr/De/It, just commenting that she hasn’t bothered to learn a single other language (whatever that may be) but seems disgruntled that her brother’s partner hasn’t learned English on top of the 3 languages she already speaks.
As I said, my (European) BIL doesn’t speak any English. I don’t speak any of his language. However I speak a decent amount of French, as does he, so we get by.
So many English people don’t bother learning any other languages because they just assume everyone else will speak theirs. Well the OP has now realised that’s not the case.

You sound incredibly ignorant.

What do you mean by ‘worth it’ though? Makes it sound like you think this SIL is provided for your own entertainment.

YABU - unless you don’t have any sort of relationship with your brother? She will be your SIL. Are you going to avoid her forever because ‘it’s not worth it’ as you don’t speak the same language???