To think you should speak the language after living in a country for 20 years

[Eastie77Returns]

Just back from visiting a friend abroad. We met 20 years ago as young expats in the European country she still lives in. When I lived there, she didn’t speak the language at all. In fairness she was employed as a nanny for a family who only wanted her to speak English with their children. However they also offered to pay for her to take private 1-1 classes with a tutor to learn the local language. She declined as she didn’t want to ‘study’ in her spare time. I worked for a company where English was barely spoken so I was forced to learn the language and I accept that if I was in her position I may not have become as fluent as I eventually did.

However fast forward to now. She no longer works and is married with children. She still doesn’t speak the local language beyond the bare basics. I stayed at with her family and her husband (a local) and children spoke to me in their native tongue. My friend only spoke English which is fine between the two of us but she cannot speak to her MIL who was also there but doesn’t speak English. I’m a bit baffled. The local language is hard but…20 years?!!

What?

So how is this person able to get a job in the UK? Even basic minimum wage jobs in places I’ve worked require basic English.

I was about to say, I can’t imagine anyone living in the UK even 6 months and not speaking English, it would be impossible to get by…

Somewhere like Netherlands or Scandinavia different story obviously as everyone speaks English

YANBU. Utterly baffling to not have mustered up a few words after 20 years.

@APassionFruitMartini I don't think she has one.

So people just can not manage it, DH has lived here for > 20 years and taken over a 1,000 hours of language classes but even now he wouldn't be able to come up with the words for '2 loaves of bread'. Anything he learns is forgotten within a week. Usually within 30 mins of a class ending he has forgotten most things. If we go over the class material with him 2-3x that week he struggles and if you ask him again 10 days later he has no idea what we are talking about.

For some reason it just seems to be beyond him.

I think it's respectful and necessary to at least learn enough of the language to get around. What if you were on your own and had an emergency but couldn't explain the problem or call for help? And that's before addressing the simple courtesy issue of not being able to have a nice chat with the in laws.

I think if you've chosen to immigrate and settle into another country,m where the majority language is not English, you absolutely should learn the language. You might not become fluent but it's quite disrespectful to not try.

There can be reasons. I'm a bright capable well educated person, I absolutely can't learn a foreign language. I have tried it's like a barrier in my brain, whereas others I know pick them up (to at least a basic level) fairly quickly. I really wouldn't judge over it.

@APassionFruitMartini even in The Netherlands and Scandinavia it's not as accepted as it once was. Years ago languages were expensive to learn and time consuming. Between Duolingo and Zoom lessons the cat is out of the bag about people who just cba.

This is my experience, I went to live in a major European city, I’m freckled with blue eyes and red hair so people knew straight away I was English, even when I did all of the things you say people still spoke to me in English, even when I insisted on the local language. I had been quite good at languages at school but it didn’t translate to the real world.

When I took language classes the teacher spoke to me in English, even though there were other nationalities in the class. I tried so hard but after 5 years I was still at a basic level, I could order food and get the gist of a newspaper story, but I couldn’t have made small talk or read a book. My friend who was tanned with dark hair and eyes had better luck practicing with the locals.

I have a fair few friends that live in Amsterdam (job postings) and admit they don’t really know Dutch and learning isn’t hugely encouraged as everyone just speaks English with them, and many environments (eg parties) take place in English rather than Dutch to be inclusive.

Having said that, they intend to return after a couple of years.

In Scandinavia you cannot get a client facing job (so anything from being a lawyer to working in a cafe/ call centre) unless you speak English, ideally one other language also. It would be pretty unheard of for someone to finish secondary school without being fluent in English, which makes it easier for immigrants from countries like the UK or USA to make connections i suppose

It sounds rubbish being cut off from the community you live in. Maybe your friend is a real homebody so it works for her. But it would make me feel isolated and bored.

I cannot understand people who say they are "bad at languages" and that's why they haven't learnt xyz language despite living there. You are speaking your native tongue and presumably ypu learned to speak and read that without too many issues ! So you are at least good at 1 language! And if you had been born in that country you'd presumably be fine at speaking it too!

I hate this attitude. It entirely ignores the fact that just as some of us are inately talented at something, others of us have brains that lack certain natural abilities.

I'm intelligent, educated to degree level, and have some natural skills in some areas. But languages are close to impossible for me to learn to any degree of usefulness. We had to do a language at school. In all other subjects I got top O level grades. I failed French twice.

My main passion is travel. I would love to be able to pick up some of the languages of the places I travel to. But I can't even retain "where is the bus station?" for more than two minutes. I just can't. And it's galling to have someone deny my experience.

My friend is no more intelligent than I. But she speaks six languages fluently and easily. She spent six weeks in Portugal on a language course recently and returned fluent. Our brains are clearly not the same.

I don't really understand how it's possible to have not picked up at least conversational ability when you are immersed in, and surrounded by a language for 20 years. Just from looking at signs in public, hearing people speak it, watching the odd bit of TV, glancing at a newspaper etc etc

We have cleaners in work who have lived in the U.K. for years and whose understanding of English is very basic. Mostly older women, but a few men too. I don't know how they manage.

It's really easy to say people should learn as language. There's a very long way between learning a few phrases on holiday to becoming fluent. The best of intentions isn't always enough as a number of factors will apply:

• your age. Under 30s have an easier time learning a new language
• if you already have a second language
• your educational background. Some people cannot read or write their own language
• if specialised language teaching is available.
• if the locals can speak your language
• who else is in your class
• how much time you have
• necessity
• how closely related the language is to your own
• the people around you. I've been in dk for 17 years and am fluent enough to have got a degree in and work as as social worker yet I understand about half of what my very jysk MIL says.

So it's really easy to say someone should learn but in practice it's much more difficult.

I find it really strange. I often encounter this at work, someone reports an incident but the parents don't speak English & a teenage child has to interpret.

I used to work with a girl like this, she was ethnically Chinese, her parents had arrived from Hong Kong to England and had their children in the UK. My colleague was about 21 when I knew her, and she had older siblings, so her parents had been in the UK 25ish years. She had to do ALL the "admin" for them in terms of dealing with the bank, sorting out insurance, ringing a plumber because the tap was dripping. Her parents could not speak English beyond the very basics of hello, how are you. They ran a takeaway business and their children took the orders, their suppliers all spoke chinese, they used a chinese speaking doctor, lawyer. The weird thing was that my colleague thought this was all very normal.

I am good at learning languages, my undergrad degree is in modern languages and I find it easy to pick them up. But even if I didn't, I'd make the effort if I was living in a country and especially if I had married someone from there and had kids there! It's just appallingly lazy. I can understand perhaps not learning to read/write if it is a very unfamiliar writing system/alphabet like Japanese, Arabic or Hebrew. But that is not a barrier to learning to speak and understand what people are saying to you.

Oh and I forgot trauma can affect the brain so good luck to the refugees.

Some people find learning another language really difficult. I have a friend whose parents came to the UK in the 60's. Their mother raised 4 children who all went to university, but the mother claims not to speak a work of English. I don't believe it myself, but when I mentioned it to someone from the same community as them told me it was perfectly possible.

I've lived in two different counties, and could speak almost none of both languages when I arrived. In one country I was fully immersed from the moment I arrived and picked it up quite quickly. The other I was surrounded by English speaking people and although I had some formal lessons, it was much more difficult to pick up.

But I definitely think some people pick up languages more easily than others, and some people don't understand how hard it can be, if they don't struggle.

@WhatWouldYouDo33 @Anameisaname
You should read the thread before being so very judgemental. Posters like @Natsku and @wombat1a have detailed how even with countless lessons and courses and intention to learn, some people just struggle.

Would you criticise a dyslexic person or someone who struggled with maths and call them lazy or rude for never mastering certain skills?

I think you mean women of disadvantage backgrounds, or certain cultures. I've lived in 4 different countries in my life and speak all 4 languages fluently. My family had no say in whether I learnt the language or not

I have been learning Spanish with Duolingo for over a year and it is not really cutting it.
I would really struggle to have a conversation. It is a fun way to learn some words but it is no substitute for being taught properly. It is also very American rather than European, which is annoying.

Duolingo is an American app so not sure what exactly you were expecting. I use Rosetta Stone which I know is more expensive but it uses a mix of different ways to immerse you in the language, there is no English used when learning and it also gives you the choice between Mexico and Spain in terms of Spanish.

I know someone who left school at 14, is dyslexic and is fluent in a second language. It's an absolute necessity because they simply couldn't work if they didn't know the local language, they are a workaholic and very ambitious.

I know of quite a lot of people who've lived in Finland for a long time without being able to progress far in the language. It is difficult, especially for native English speakers (I find immigrants from outside of Europe do much better). The duolingo course is absolutely shit, barely any grammar covered and that's the really complicated bit you need to learn. It also doesn't help that language courses teach one type of Finnish (kirjakieli - book Finnish) but spoken Finnish is very different and they don't teach that, so you might study really hard in languages courses but be completely unable to have a normal conversation with a Finn.

The Indian guy who smiles and waves ,only found out he doesn't speak English recently. His wife though is fluent

Dyslexia and language learning are not as related as you think. Dyslexia is about text, language learning is largely aural.

If anything I'm hyperlexic. I was a fluent reader at 3, and just as those with a particular aptitude for languages can't always understand why others struggle, I struggled to understand why some of my classmates couldn't spell. It was second nature to me.

But someone can teach me a phrase in a foreign language, and I'll even struggle to say it back to them, never mind remember it 100 yards down the road when I go in a shop.