> - the language is just too difficult.
>
>The eternal excuse....
>
>I studied Spanish for 6 years from the time that I was 12 until the time that I was 18. Even though it has been a lot of years since then, every time we visit Spain I try to speak only in Spanish. The native speakers tell me that if we lived there that I would be fluent again very quickly. I also studied French for 2 years but now the only thing I can say is "Où est ma valise bleu ?" Which is really helpful because it just so happens that I do have a blue suitcase. The only problem is that if I get a response, I have no idea what it means :) Andy speaks French well enough for us to get by when we visit France.
>
>It is true that many English speakers, even those that are well-travelled do not bother trying to learn any other language. They expect everyone else to speech English. Whenever I am in someone else's home, I try to learn at least a few words in the native language. Things like hello, goodbye, please, thank you.

The sentence I make sure to learn before I go somewhere is the local version of "Do you speak English?" Experience says that asking someone that in their own language results in better interactions. But it doesn't always do the trick ...

I had 5 semesters of French in college (after 6 years of Spanish in secondary school). I was trying to get some information about a hotel in Belgium the other week, and called via Skype. My first sentence was, of course, "Parlez-vous Anglais?" Sadly, the answer was "Non." I managed to piece together enough words to get across the question of whether someone else there spoke English. Nope, she told me to call "demain matin." Unfortunately, I was sleeping "demain matin" in Belgium. Ended up booking elsewhere on the basis that my 40-year-old bits of French and my son's 10-year HS French weren't going to work out in a hotel that didn't have an English speaker available in the middle of the day.


Tamar