Do Italians hate the English or is it the language barrier?

[SoreFeets]

Currently in beautiful Italy. Love it here but we appear to be hated by the staff in most places, especially food/drink settings.

This week alone we’ve had receipts thrown at us, we went to pay for a coffee in a little shop and the woman wouldn’t even look at us, took the money, looked really pissed off and immediately moved on to the next customer without a word (but was happy and smiley with them).

DH hired some bikes and had the keys thrown at him without a word.

Last night in a restaurant the waiters were deliberately tending every table but ours until DH caught the attention of one of them - waiter then took our drinks order but when we tried to order food he threw the menus back onto the table and walked off!! He then said something to another waiter who looked at us and laughed. Nobody came back to take the food order.

Now this exact same thing happened in Rome a few years ago, everyone just seemed to hate us. We would try to book a table in a restaurant and they would say it was full … before letting someone else in 😂

so I looked it up last night and I found no suggestion of Italians having a problem with English …. But what I did find was Italians have no time for people who have not bothered to learn the language.

Is this the problem? I have tried to learn a bit of Italian before coming but nowhere near enough which is obviously my fault. DH doesn’t speak a word of Italian other than Grazie.

We’re coming back next year and I aim to be practically fluent in Italian in that time! AIBU to think/hope we’ll have a totally different experience?

A friend of mine was in Italy a couple of years ago and got shouted at (properly shouted at, this guy really lost his temper) by a local man who was angry that she "hadn't bothered" to learn Italian. She was trying to speak Italian, by the way, not just talking loudly at him in English. Not good enough apparently.

She is fluent in French and German, and is currently learning Portuguese. If it had been me, I would have given him a lecture on basic manners, all the while switching back and forth between these various languages to see how many HE understood.

Unfortunately she was too taken aback by this man's unreasonably aggressive response to her poor attempt at Italian to defend herself.

I've personally never met an Italian who was anything other than bloody lovely, but I suppose there are exceptions to every rule. I try and learn the basics of the local language if I'm travelling anywhere, and that's usually enough to get by without upsetting anyone. Except in Paris, but that's sort of part of the experience!!

The way some English people love to wallow in this attitude of 'everyone hates us!' never fails to astonish me. As a PP said, how are Italians (or countless other nationalities) going to be able to distinguish between accents? Unless you tell them (and why would they care anyway?), how are they going to know if you're English, Welsh, Irish, American, Australian, South African, Canadian? Or one of the many people around the world who are not native English speakers but often use English to communicate?

In my experience, no, most people do not 'hate the English' (though for sure some people who work in touristy places around the world have had some bad experiences with some English visitors). It's such a self-centred, arrogant attitude to have. Most people simply don't give a toss about you. Most people don't give a toss about Brexit. They're too busy working, looking after their kids, cooking, shopping, seeing friends, and so on to waste their time hating an entire nationality. You are not the centre of their universe. Get over yourself. 🙄

I tried this when I went to Copenhagen a few years back and oh my good LORD it was so hard!! Words with 12 letters somehow had only one syllable and even that seemed impossible to pronounce. Luckily everyone in Denmark clocked me as a foreigner straight away and spoke nothing but English to me 😆

This is so true. I once ordered a cappuccino after lunch in an Italian restaurant. The chef literally came out of the kitchen to see who had done such an unforgivable thing. 😄My Italian friends never let me live it down, and joked about it for years afterwards.

Not my experience in Rome or any other part of Italy, and I only speak a few words. Have used French though on occasions, perhaps they think I'm not from these shores.

Paris is awful - they seem to hate everyone! 🙄

I do find that in Italy you get much better service if you dress up a bit and don't look like typical tourists plus lay on the charm a bit. Especially in areas like Sorrento where lots of Brits are out in the evening in tshirts and shorts. You would never see Italian men dressed like that.

When in Rome etc...

It doesn't help you but that hasn't been my experience, either in Rome or in the sticks. I didn't speak more than a few words (though reading was OK, but no use when ordering a coffee!) but everyone was smiley, friendly and helpful, and encouraging to a ridiculous degree when I staggered along in ungrammatical Italian!

It's interesting to note that other cultures being rude to brits because of minor cultural differences in etiquette (not greeting a shopkeeper etc) are brushed off, but if the reverse happened here it'd most likely be deemed racism/xenophobia.

I heartily agree with you! But I think it is because the British are generally more traveled and open to other cultures than any other country.

DH and I, non-British , always remark to each other when traveling -even in the most obscure places, that there always seem to be 2 Brits meeting up and asking , are you on holiday?? We find this hilarious in a very respectful way. ;)

@Redpaisely
Sadly j think you may be right about the racism - there are certain countries in Europe where racism seems to be acceptable.

And although I posted that generally we had not had problems in Italy, one of my first trips there was in the late 80s with a group of friends and we had random strangers approaching my black friend with lewd comments and in one instance threw a (wrapped) condom at her. This was only at the black girl, not the rest of us. Although TBF experiences in many places in the UK perhaps weren't that much better at the time .

I agree with this. One poster suggesting that the Italians were impolite in serving the OP as they blamed them for Brexit.
As if! Not sure why it would even affect them.

Love this! Can't let standards slip 😂I was refused a glass of white wine in France once because I was having beef tartare.

Although @Calliecarpa you may be wrong about the accents - as one of the Sardinians we met last year said she recognised our midlands accents as she loved to watch Peaky Blinders on Netflix!

Italy is full of tourists who can't speak Italian.

They don't mind, they can usually speak English, and do so.

I've never had an incident happen like that, not have ai ever seen one, and that includes large cities, medium towns, small villages in the north, south and central of Italy.

I find all Italians very friendly and accommodating.

Pretend to be German

Just say ja, ja, ja

You'll be fine

DP and I speak minimal Italian.

The queues were horrific for food at Turin airport one year. You had to queue up, choose your food, get a ticket, trot over to the pay desk and then back to queue to collect your choice. It was all English as it was a ski flight back to Gatwick and they were all ordering in English.

DP wished the assistant good morning in Italian and ordered the panini we selected in (probably execrable) Italian. He was rewarded by a huge smile, and didn't have to return for his food- it was brought to him!

It certainly helps to have a go.

I go to Italy every year and I love going there precisely because people are so friendly, unlike in Spain or France! I always feel special )) I'm not English though, eastern European, but I speak only English abroad. I travel on my own with my DS, and when he was little he was treated like a prince, it was hilarious ))

I remember going on holiday to Italy in the 90s and we were warned about the rude and miserable staff in the campsite shop. However, I speak reasonable Italian and when I went in there and asked for what I wanted in Italian they were lovely. I was a teenager doing A levels in French, Spanish and German so learning enough Italian to get by was important to me. I’d never travel anywhere without learning the basics.

@OneForTheToad I was in Austria and whenever Brexit was mentioned they were generally in favour of it.
We were on holiday at a hotel we'd been to quite a few times in Austria not long after the Brexit vote. Many of the staff were in favour and wished they had done the same, some even shook our hands!

Good point someone made unthread, we have been mistaken for Americans in Italy. DH is Jewish, favoured loud checked shorts and always had a big camera round his neck 😹

But some posters told Op to not generalise her opinion on a group of people based on her experiences in Italy. So why the English people as whole are getting that generalisation. As a foreigner, I find it interesting that English people justify judgements against English people. Usually when it happens to other nationalities and ethnicities, they come in defence of their people as a group but not English or British.

I can't carry a conversation in any other language but I wouldn't go to any non- English speaking country without learning the following in their local language:

Hello/goodbye
Please/thank you
(Speak) English?
(Very) good
Yes/no

In the case of the major European languages, you've probably heard most of the words before in movies etc. anyway. But it's not difficult to learn either way - can be done on the plane over if needed.

Or Google Translate will do it all for you.

I just can't imagine walking into someone's place of business and prattling away at them in a language that isn't theirs, let alone get miffed when they don't respond positively.

Do mumsnetters really learn conversational spanish/french/croatian/greek/arabic/dutch etc when they are off to their one week holiday? Don’t think so.

I do, when I go to a country whose language I don't already speak! But tbh I am not very widely travelled and I speak French, German, Spanish and a bit of Italian. I didn't learn much Greek when I went to a Greek island years ago, bjt certainly a smattering of useful phrases. I'm loving learning Danish. I'm only going for a week and no doubt they'll all speak perfect English

@AllProperTeaIsTheft - I'd be amazed if you got to speak any Danish. Pretty much everyone speaks English and if you've not got perfect danish pronunciation they'll think you're incomprehensible. The best I've ever managed is having someone reply to me in German, I've never had a response in Danish.