Comment by stevage
1 day ago
It's really not too much to expect a train going to the airport to make important announcements in English.
1 day ago
It's really not too much to expect a train going to the airport to make important announcements in English.
Where I live the bus drivers that drive the bus from the capital to the airport barely speak the local language, let alone English.
Where I live the airport bus plays a prerecorded message. It's pretty obnoxious.
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It's still an expectation I have, even as a native German speaker. I work for a well-known German company (our storefronts are sometimes called "the German embassy"), and our day-to-day business language at work is ... English. We hire from all over and want people to be able to get around effectively. This is infrastructure. Make it work.
Шановні пасажири, цей потяг який слідує від станції Івано-Франківськ Головний через Житомир до станції Київ-Дарниця буде розділено дві частини, вагони з першого по п'ятнадцятий прослідують до станції Київ-Головний, а вагони з шістнадцятого по двадцять перший поїдуть у пекло, муахаха. Дякую за вашу увагу.
To be fair, I'm sure the USSR insisted on Russian language announcements in the Ukraine. Look how that turned out... Language war in the east.
If I went to the Ukraine, I would either pick up some Ukrainian or take some who did.
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Nu sunt englez, așa cã n-o sã-ți rãspund în englezã.
Ceart gu leòr. Chan eil Romainis agam. :)
Honestly, it should be an obligation. DB should make it one for themselves. DB carries millions of people a year that do not speak the language. Important information like route changes should be available to them. English just happens to be the most likely language to be understood at least enough to ask staff/other passengers as to what is going on.
I'm a native English speaker. It is not their obligation to provide everything in English. It is arrogant for someone like me to presume it should be.
If preventing people that struggle with the local language from getting confused or missing stuff is the goal then they're likely better off doing it in Turkish or Arab.
Not being under any obligation doesn't mean it is not a sensible a courteous way to do. You like it or not, english has become a defacto common international language.
While I speak 5 languages and try to learn some basic words of the local languages of any country I visit out of courtesy (how to say hello, bye, thank you, ask where are the toilets, etc), I wouldn't expect any traveller to know enough to understand this kind of specificities in any country they visit.
>common international language
Not nearly as much as people on the internet seem to think. In large parts of Europe, speaking english will get you absolutely nowhere.
2 replies →
Of course they’re under no obligation to do so. In fact, they’re under no obligation to let in foreign tourists at all, or to not make their lives arbitrarily hard in various ways. But not being obligated to not be a dick doesn’t mean you should in fact be one.
They aren't though. That's the point. English speakers are determined to force their language on everyone else. I've seen it abroad on many occasions. It is often painful to watch. Sometimes they even make fun of the person for speaking poor English.
You're also assuming the tourists themselves are all fluent in English, which is another issue. In some parts of Germany, many of their tourists are likely to speak French or Polish as a primary language, not to mention Mandarin etc from further afield.
And French, as Germany is adjacent to France.
There are train connections to Scandinavia, so let's add Swedish, Danish and Finnish.
Also Dutch and Polish to accommodate the other adjacent countries.
This is the sort of immature "well, actually" response that you can't afford anymore once you actually take responsibility for things. I wish more people trained themselves to have a "what if I had to do it" habit before having an opinion.
Imagine you're in charge of the train network. You have to pay for the announcements on trains. You can't reasonanbly pay 10 announcements because that's silly and expensive. If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?
It's not hard to be pragmatic.
Pragmatic is multiple languages in locations where it's highly relevant.
For example, the UK Gatwick Express train makes announcements in English, French, German and Spanish.
The Thameslink service (which also happens to travel on the same tracks and also happens to stop at Gatwick Airport) makes announcements in English only.
I wouldn't expect local or regional trains in Europe to make announcements other than in that country's native language – except perhaps where it's a service designed for airport connections or similar international travel.
>If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?
Given the demographics? Turkish or arab
> If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?
Bavarian ? /s
Cheap strawman. Travelling Swedes, Danes, Finns and Poles will be fine with English, Dutch with either/both English or German.
Mostly fair, I really appreciate the grasp that almost all Scandinavians have on English.
Don't forget French though! I wouldn't make the assumption that travelling French people would have enough grasp of English or German to understand the announcements.
My comment is mostly a poke at the two assumptions: that non-English speaking countries should universally support English-speaking travellers, and that English is the predominant (and only other) language which should be supported.
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Look, as an EU country citizen, English is more or less the defacto language of the EU, regardless of what politicians declare. Everyone in the EU speaks english in some form as even traveling to a next door country like you state requires communication.
There are cases where in Belgium you will see signs in 4 languages (Dutch, French, Flemish and English)
Also if you ever travel in Japan, they have signs, especially on trains, all in, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English all in one. (usually rotating signage). So the precedent is there to do it on mass transit but :shrug:.
Point is, when your customer base is logically needing more language options, it should be considered.
Don't you think same could be said about German and French? I still remember the time when passports from my (now EU) country used French instead of English, and when signs for tourists were in German.
An English announcement wouldn't hurt but we don't have them on our trains here either.
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>Everyone in the EU speaks english
That's not even slightly true, where in god's name did you get this idea?