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?!!

French! Bloody hell. I thought it was going to be Hungarian or Albanian or something. That’s poor.

Really surprised by it being French!

Yes, but to a religious school, where they all speak the same language. Awful isn't it.

Well yeah, I can't get my head around her inability/refusal to learn as I don't think French is that hard but it is what it is. She says it's difficult, the grammer is hard, it's impossible to know when to use Tu or Vous etc. Plus the locals apparently looked down on her when she tried and mispronounced words so she gave up.

I do find the French tend to grimace a bit if you say something incorrectly which is off putting. The British are much more forgiving of broken English.

I co run a coversation club for non native English speakers here (London) and have met people (mainly women) who've lived here for 20+ and do not speak English. But there are many, many reasons why this happens and it usually anything to do with not wanting to learn.

Usually, I find that when women don't learn English it's because their men are deliberately isolating them.

I suspect that something similar happened when my relative was working abroad. Her partner was vehemently against sending their child to the local school and agreed with her that she didn't need to learn the language for work.

Strangely, her partner learned the language...

Well yeah, I can't get my head around her inability/refusal to learn as I don't think French is that hard but it is what it is. She says it's difficult, the grammer is hard, it's impossible to know when to use Tu or Vous etc. Plus the locals apparently looked down on her when she tried and mispronounced words so she gave up.

I'm living in Portugal and it's surprisingly hard to actually get the immersive experience. The locals (who are generally very nice) won't speak to me in Portuguese and if I try to say something I've learnt from google translate they look at me like I've got 2 heads. I feel so awkward about my Portuguese now I have stopped trying to have little conversations round and about.

Even getting the locals to talk to my toddler DD in Portuguese is a nightmare. She goes to a Portuguese playgroup but even there they just speak to her in English. I take her to toddler library events to expose her and they suddenly start speaking English. I hire a babysitter and tell them "pls speak in Portuguese" - they say Ola then the rest of the time it's English.

I need formal lessons for myself but I don't have time (yet) as I'm caring for my DD but I will get lessons eventually. I'll never pick up the language otherwise. I've picked up more language from watching foreign tv prior to having DD than I have while living here.

Stick with the TV for the time being, try to make it fun. If you can, find a cheesy Brazilian soap opera and try to follow the story in that. Learn your basic verbs, watch a few episodes with the English subtitles on and then try to follow the subsequent episodes without the subtitles. Brazilian Portuguese is much clearer to understand than the variety spoken in Portugal so you might find that it helps you a bit to gain some confidence and find your way around the language more quickly. Portuguese people will understand you if you speak to them like a Brazilian, though you’ll probably struggle with their replies. It’s the equivalent of living in Northern Ireland and learning English by watching Friends. At some point you’ll need more exposure to the local Portuguese accent and variations (eg Brazilians don’t use “tu” at all) but it’s maybe more enjoyable than slogging away with a text book or duolingo.

@TimeandMotion thanks for the tips!

This sometimes happened to me when I lived in France. Usually with younger people who picked up on my accent and immediately switched to English. At first I thought oh it’s nice they are making things easier for me but I then realised I would never improve. So I adopted a habit of just continuing to speak French. In some cases I pretended I couldn’t understand when they spoke English. In retrospect that was a bit shitty but I really wanted to improve.

Fortunately I had the opposite problem in my place of work. Everyone resolutely refused to speak English (even the English office manager who had lived in France for 20 years and claimed she’d forgotten how?!). When I asked a colleague to come with me to the bank and help me open an account he wrote down a list of useful banking terms and sent me on my way😭

I struggled and hated it when I first arrived but honestly, my colleagues did me a massive favour.

I used to pretend to be Dutch when people spoke to me in English, no one speaks Dutch 🤣

That sounds like a difficult situation. I think you may just have to get blunt with people: "I'm living here for the long term, so I need to learn to speak Portuguese/my child needs to learn Portuguese. Can we use Portuguese, please?" My experience is that if you state this to people politely but straightforwardly, they sort of go "oh" and then switch to the local language.

If you have hired a Portuguese-speaking babysitter and their speaking Portuguese was agreed upon when you hired them, you have every right to get annoyed if they start speaking English to the child - they are breaking the terms you hired them on. You need to speak firmly to the babysitter and make it clear that they need to stick to Portuguese or you will be looking elsewhere. Be assertive.

But everyone knows that the vast majority of Dutch people speak English!

Yes and this is why we call you ignorant. Sorry. And people make jokes behind your back in all the languages as they know you won't understand any. 🤣

I'd be very impressed if you knew how to speak all the languages - Welsh, Finnish, Japanese maybe...? But if you don't, then do you include yourself as one of the ignorant masses? 🤔

I've normally found that when I try to speak a local language I get quite a sympathetic response as long as they know I actually really am trying. Also if you ask I've generally found people to be willing to help - you have to be prepared to be laughed at though

I once went into a shop in Italy looking for a box of matches. The lovely man behind the counter made me repeat the pharse "una scatola di fiammiferi" 21 times before he was happy with it - the other customers were in tears of laughter but so was I.. he gave me the matches and a glass of wine at the end of it all and every time I went back in for the next few weeks I got schooled very firmly. I never got very good at Italian but I was excellent at any phrases relating to things you could buy in news agents

I honestly don’t think you need to learn the language of a country you are visiting for a two week break. Obviously absolutely should if you’re going to live there. But unfortunately we also have many older generation immigrants in the UK, who will not learn the language, and our laws are so ludicrous the tax payer funds interpreters to facilitate their ignorance and laziness.

@Livelovebehappy I disagree - you are very unlikely to become fluent for a 2 week break but surely being able to read menus, know what some of the signs mean and a few basic greetings, please and thank you etc. is useful. If they have the menu in English and the local language I ask for both and only use the English one if I'm stuck or unsure

I know when I found myself in China for a few days and couldn't do any of those things I felt completely adrift - don't think I've ever felt so lost in all my life. I couldn't pick it up at all and really wished I'd learnt some of the very basic stuff before going

Ability to read menus in foreign language correctly is quite.... Not a basic language skill! Often it requires quite a more.
Couple of greetings and please and thank you sufices for holidays.
Bless Google lens

Reading menus if you are reading cheese pizza and chips is not too hard. But it requires a good grasp of the language if the menu is items like, beef cheeks, lightly fried in a pomegranate and rosemary jus lightly flavoured with local organic gin.
I ended up ordering beef tongue once as I understood the word beef and thought it was a safe bet. A slab of an obvious cow tongue is not the safe bet I was expecting.

Tbh most menus in restaurants in tourist hotspots have menus in multiple languages, so there often isn't a need to interpret.

YANBU. The cost of interpreters is ridiculous.

This hits too close to home... I've been living in a foreign country for 20 years and mine it's nearly fluent. It's pretty good, intermediate, and I made an effort to learn the language when I first got here; but I work online or teach english so besides the basics I don't really need more vocabulary - that's no excuse though and I'm starting to feel dumb telling people I've been here 20 years, so recently I've started going back to school and watching youtube videos to try and improve (It's chinese, so not the easiest but I'm learning) 😅