Asklemmy

43396 readers

1195 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Languages in the EU (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jennwiththesea@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm about to sound like the ignorant American I am, so I apologize in advance! We're looking at a trip to Germany, and possibly Prague, and we've noticed that a lot of the hotel names are French and a couple hotels that aren't named in French have replied to comments with things like "Bonjour! etc etc" What's up with this? Is French just the most commonly spoken common language, even in Germany and Czechia? (I know that Germany and Czechia have their own languages, of course.) Or is it something else?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] EuclidsLemmy@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have been to France in 2000, 2010 and last year, and this last time I was unable to use French with waiters and cashiers in Paris. They realized my French was not exactly fluent and immediately switched to English. Very surprising, but at least in Paris youngish people seemed positively eager to use English instead of French. And the skills were passable, too - generally way better than my French.

[–] Jay@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

The last time I was in France, which was around 2009, everyone answered me in English.

Even though French is my second language.

[–] Redredme@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Large cities, big tourist spots? Yes. Go in land and it's game over. I've been in cajarc (beautiful spot, really!) this year, it's on one of the compostela routes so they get a lot of pelgrims from al over the world. 1 waiter spoke good enough English to have a conversation with. 1.