Something I Don't Understand
- Thread starter bcrdukes
- Start date
CasperSlides
New Member
Because San Antonio is a holiday ghetto designed for the British and not representative of the rest of the island in any way shape or form.
BTW lots of Spanish residents in Ibiza Town speak English although there is no reason why they should as this is Spain not Britain. Probably more do speak English in Ibiza Town than there are Vancouver residents who speak Spanish!
BTW lots of Spanish residents in Ibiza Town speak English although there is no reason why they should as this is Spain not Britain. Probably more do speak English in Ibiza Town than there are Vancouver residents who speak Spanish!
I had a hard time communicating with the locallers (business owners were fine though.)
I got by with very basic and minimal Spanish but whereas in San Antonio, everybody spoke English!
But anyways, I had an awesome time in Ibiza for the first time. I spoiled myself at El Hotel.
I got by with very basic and minimal Spanish but whereas in San Antonio, everybody spoke English!
But anyways, I had an awesome time in Ibiza for the first time. I spoiled myself at El Hotel.
CasperSlides
New Member
Has it ever occured to you that the locals are Spanish and living in Spain? In fact some locals in Ibiza don't even speak Castillian Spanish they speak Catalan. They shouldn't need to speak English. The lazy ones are the tourists who come over and don't even have the courtesy to learn a few basics of the language.
IMO it is an arrogant attitude to go to another country and expect the locals to speak English. It's a good job for Britain that tourists there don't expect the locals to speak their languauge as they would be sadly disappointed everywhere that they went.
IMO it is an arrogant attitude to go to another country and expect the locals to speak English. It's a good job for Britain that tourists there don't expect the locals to speak their languauge as they would be sadly disappointed everywhere that they went.
CasperSlides
New Member
My apologies, perhaps if x-amount had used some punctuation I'd have got it. Trouble is that I work in the tourist industry and 99.99 per cent of brits that come here don't have the decency to learn basic Spanish words like "please" and "thankyou", "yes" and "no", "hello" and "goodbye" and they complain that they can't go to Spanish bars and restaurants because the owners don't speak English. Consequently I have a growing contempt for the British tourist...... I'm still happy to take their money though!
i think it's all too easy to accuse brits of arrogance and ignorance when abroad.
on my recent tour of the non english and spanish speaking parts of the world i found myself flummoxed trying to remember the correct tonal pronunciation of please and thank you in mandarin chinese, tibetan and nepalese. sadly i was also let down in many of the hundreds of local dialects in india. pakistan, bangladesh and sri lanka.
if only there was an international language understood and studied in every country of the world, a lingua franca if you like. hold on, there is, english of course!
and as for the original question the reason why not so many people are good at english in ibiza town is very simple - it's where i teach it!
on my recent tour of the non english and spanish speaking parts of the world i found myself flummoxed trying to remember the correct tonal pronunciation of please and thank you in mandarin chinese, tibetan and nepalese. sadly i was also let down in many of the hundreds of local dialects in india. pakistan, bangladesh and sri lanka.
if only there was an international language understood and studied in every country of the world, a lingua franca if you like. hold on, there is, english of course!
and as for the original question the reason why not so many people are good at english in ibiza town is very simple - it's where i teach it!
weloveliam@space
Active Member
CasperSlides said:
One word... Germans
here they are the worst.
CasperSlides
New Member
So right, I apologise to the brits, the Germans are worst, they assume that everybody speaks German and they get annoyed when you don't.
CasperSlides said:Consequently I have a growing contempt for the British tourist...... I'm still happy to take their money though!
In a nutshell.
And 99.9%?
Why don't you go the whole nine yards and just call us all uncultured slobs?
Like "Your lot" are the pinnacle of international diplomacy, interest and culture? Shall I generalise about your country too?
Now go on tell me you were joking (or maybe say it was "lost in translation")too. It's the only way you'll escape from showing YOUR ignorance up like that.
Shocking post. Unbelieveable.
CasperSlides
New Member
Maybe 99.9% is an exageration but certainly a large amount of Brits walk into my bar demanding a "pint of lager mate" assuming that although it is a Spanish looking bar with Spanish staff everybody will understand. This is the worst as "Lager" isn't understood by most Spaniards being a word used uniquely in the UK to describe a beer. How hard is it to learn to say "Una Cerveza"?
Despite their lack of adventurousness linguistically though I have to take my hat off to the British who are the politest and best behaved of all the nationalities that we get in.
You can if you want........ I'm British!
Despite their lack of adventurousness linguistically though I have to take my hat off to the British who are the politest and best behaved of all the nationalities that we get in.
You can if you want........ I'm British!