Do you also feel that you have been learning English for many years, but still prefer to let your children or your better-educated loved ones speak for you on holiday? Are you worried about embarrassment from misunderstandings or embarrassment from mistakes?
English is the third most widely spoken mother tongue in the world. If you learn it, you can talk to at least 372 million people. And many others use it as their main language of communication. Recently, on two trips abroad, I realized that some of us are trying, perhaps unnecessarily, to hone our skills to perfection.
When checking-in in Hungary (let’s all brush up on our English), the receptionist, after looking at my travel document, says to me in broken English with a wink: “If you want to wait for a receptionist from Russia, it’s that lady over there with big eyes and long hair.” Since I had overheard him speaking German a few moments before, or, to be more precise, telling a German-speaking guest the room number in German, I switched to German to ask why he was sending me to a Russian-speaking colleague. The German in the answer was even more broken than the English: ”Because you are Slovak and Russian is supposedly the same.” I quickly looked at my passport. It’s Czech. But to appreciate the efforts of the receptionist, I switched to ”Russian”. I pulled out some long forgotten words, some of which might have been in Czech with a Russian accent. The lady took my passport and said in my native language: “You can speak Czech.” This closed the linguistic exchange slot at the reception. It continued in the hotel spa, where the staff spoke Polish. Although I think I have a knack for languages, Polish is incomprehensible to me, so we went through the basics of all the aforementioned languages just for me to learn where to change towels.
Coincidentally (but not purposefully), before my trip to Hungary I learned a few expressions of this Finno-Ugric language, which is the first language of 13.3 million people. I don’t know more than 30 of these words, including numbers up to ten. But all you had to do in a restaurant was to say hello and thank in Hungarian for being taken to the table and the lively waiter could not be stopped. The learned words “I don’t speak Hungarian” didn’t work, so we were treated to a free language lesson – the staff were so pleased to hear Hungarian at the beginning that they wouldn’t speak any other language. Gyertya, pohárköszöntő, Fizetek! The more I googled what I heard or wanted to say, the more popular a table we became. The messy Hungarian may have been amusing for the people there, but it was enough to ensure that nothing was missing on the table. There was no end to the gratitude from the staff as we left.
On holiday in Greece the situation was almost the same. Only Greek instead of Hungarian, and even Spanish popped up thanks to a student from Andalusia working in the local spa, and Italian, spoken by Giovanotto, who led the animation team. I heard from a chef with pleasantly chocolatey complexion doing show cooking that he makes the best crêpes in the world. So it came to the language from which a large proportion of international words originate – for example, in English, up to 70% of wordsoriginate from French.
I am not at all trying to encourage anyone to stop studying English. It just might sometimes pay to not be afraid, to speakwith mistakes and strange pronunciation rather than clinging to perfect grammar and a refined linguistic style. Language learning could become fun for you with this approach, which is always more enjoyable than responsibilities. So join us for the fun.
Pavla Houšt’ová, Sales Director