Rise in number of travellers attempting local languages
28th October 2010
95% of travellers try to speak native languages when visiting locals
The most common languages attempted by travellers abroad are Spanish, French, German and Italian.
Angela Southall from holiday home specialist Owners Direct said, “It’s encouraging to see Brits becoming more and more confident in speaking languages. We wanted to find out whether the ‘Brits abroad’ label is outdated, and we think we've proved it is!”
But feeling your way through a second language is rarely without a healthy sprinkling of cringe-worthy moments. The survey revealed a few clangers.
One traveller recalls confidently calling an elderly lady a 'squid', by mixing up the Greek for good morning (kalimera) with the sounds-like cephalopod, calamari.
A visitor to Hong Kong ended up very red-faced when she realised she'd told the locals in experimental Cantonese she worked as a 'prostitute' (she didn't), while a common theme in Portugal is replacing the the word for 'fruit preserves’ with 'condoms'.
So why aren’t more of Brits actually speaking foreign languages while we’re away? 52% of respondents said a lack of knowledge was their main barrier; only 15% said they were deterred by mocking locals or the fear of getting it wrong.
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