Subj : Semi-regular BS messages
To   : Werner Dworak
From : Steve Quarrella
Date : Tue Aug 29 2000 03:08 pm

 WD> No, the opposite is true. English will speak a rather big share of
 WD> Germans, in French, Italian or other languages, the number is much
 WD> smaller.

I figured that with France and Italy closer to Germany, my odds of finding 
speakers of those would be greater than finding speakers of English.  I stand 
corrected, fortunately.

 SQ>> None of the three were of any use to me when I was in Germany in May.
 WD> This depends where you are and whith what levels of people you have
 WD> to do.

I was outside of Dusseldorf, but to be fair, I got the distinct impression that 
my hosts (hotel and restaurant) spoke English, and they were just messing with 
me.  About the farthest I got was "Ich bin Steve Quarrella, und ich habe ein 
zimmer".  After that, there was some broken English in the hotel, but with the 
restaurant, it was all pointing. :-)  [And I could overhear "Amerikaner" all 
over the place!]

FWIW, my background is IN foreign language -- I speak the aforementioned 
languages pretty well -- but I've just never gotten around to studying German.  
It was a serious aggravation to me to be "dumb" and not be able to communicate 
or understand what was going on. I went through this in Belgium in a few places 
with Dutch, too (and Z2C Ward Dossche had some fun with me in that department 
:).

---
 * Origin: Fish he got problem. (1:393/9005)

.