London Banter - View Single Post

tim... · August 30th 17, 07:36 AM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote in message
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In article , (tim...)
wrote:

wrote in message
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In article ,
(Richard) wrote:

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 10:07:01 -0500,
wrote:

In article ,
(tim...) wrote:

(fortunately, the machines offer instructions in 4
languages -though
you can just about bluff your way through without translation -
unlike the bloody Scandinavian offerings)

I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

That's a bit harsh - unless you're suggesting that French has a
special status, which I think it has, but you can't know the language
everywhere you go. The other option is not going anywhere not on your
language list, far too limiting (even if I'm guilty of it sometimes).

I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost
all
of us are supposed to have learnt it at school.

I must say I do feel uncomfortable going to countries where I know
nothing of the language to the point of not knowing which are the words
for Ladies & Gents' loos and have only done it once, to Poland in 2002.

In Poland you don't need to know the words, you need to know if you
are a circle or a triangle.

My Polish colleagues where actually amazed to find that the rest of
the world did not subscribe to this system.

Fortunately most countries recognise the issue with toilets and
revert to pictograms rather than words to identify them

I got away with English entirely except on one occasion, buying single
train tickets from Krakow to Warsaw.

I always write this sort of stuff down

"Krakow (big arrow) Warsaw, time and date of train"

Of course that still leaves you with the DDMMYY MMDDYY problem :-(

In Poland?

not normally no

but a "clever" ticket seller might think "this person is American, they have
written the date down in American format" and then you have to explain to
them that you haven't

I have had that sort of thing happen to me elsewhere

I thought of trying German but decided it would be undiplomatic at
least. Luckily the next person in the queue behind us was a student
who did the necessary interpretation.

The other exceptions are the Netherlands and Belgium. I've found that
my
German helps me pass the loo test (and which poster in a railway
station
lists Departures and which lists Arrivals)

This is a transport board so I expect people here would be able to
work this out without actually needing any translation abilities
(hint, the times shown at the "destination" on the departure board
will be after the departure time, on the arrivals board they are
earlier)

Only the actual Arrival or Departure times were shown when I first met
this
problem, at Schipol Airport station too!

but having found how good Dutch and Flemish-speaking people are at
English I was surprised in Gent a few years back how few prisoners they
took linguistically.

yes it's embarrassing, isn't it

We managed pretty well, I found. My wife has no foreign languages at all.

I managed all over the world with sign language as required

tim