On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 14:12:30 +0200, "tim..."
wrote:



wrote in message news
On Tue, 8 Aug 2017 19:57:36 +0100
"Michael R N Dolbear" wrote:
Fully automatic self service petrol stations appeared in earnest in the
2000s, driven by supermarkets keen to cut costs to provide automatic
unattended fuelling at night and reduce staff needed to run the filling
station kiosk during the day. 'Pay at Pump' is now a common feature at
Tesco, Morrisons and Asda stores, with the latter having a number of
completely unattended filling stations, with just a phone to contact the
main store if assistance is required.

Its been a common feature in France for a long time plus even the manned
stations usually have a pump that takes cards so you don't have to go and
endure the regulation scowl from Jean-Claude when you try to pay.

Just come back from 2 weeks in France

and pay at kiosk is definitely a minority sport there now. And evenings and
Sundays, often an impossibility

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

tim



But visiting Nordic countries as an English speaker is embarrassing
anyway. It seems like everyone speaks English (and their dogs likely
bark in EE).

Icelanders are really concerned about the threat to their language...
and any attempt to use Icelandic, even simple stuff as in "takk
fyrir", will be greeted with huge grins and approval.

wrote in message
...
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

"Nobody" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 14:12:30 +0200, "tim..."
wrote:



wrote in message news
On Tue, 8 Aug 2017 19:57:36 +0100
"Michael R N Dolbear" wrote:
Fully automatic self service petrol stations appeared in earnest in the
2000s, driven by supermarkets keen to cut costs to provide automatic
unattended fuelling at night and reduce staff needed to run the filling
station kiosk during the day. 'Pay at Pump' is now a common feature at
Tesco, Morrisons and Asda stores, with the latter having a number of
completely unattended filling stations, with just a phone to contact the
main store if assistance is required.

Its been a common feature in France for a long time plus even the manned
stations usually have a pump that takes cards so you don't have to go
and
endure the regulation scowl from Jean-Claude when you try to pay.

Just come back from 2 weeks in France

and pay at kiosk is definitely a minority sport there now. And evenings
and
Sundays, often an impossibility

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

tim



But visiting Nordic countries as an English speaker is embarrassing
anyway. It seems like everyone speaks English (and their dogs likely
bark in EE).

It does, doesn't it

but a straw poll of asking random people who have just stopped at the same
middle of nowhere (by our standards) petrol station shows that it isn't true

tim

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 17:19:24 +0200
"tim..." wrote:
wrote in message
m...
I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal with
such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

I seem to have an inherent inability to remember more than 1 foreign
language

having (in chronological order) spent 2 years learning Italian, 6 years
learning German and 1 year in Sweden since I left school, 40 years ago

I have lost all ability that I had to communicate in French

As someone who can get by in French I always found written Italian similar
enough to understand at least some of it (spoken italian is another matter,
I can barely understand a word) so I'm surprised the reverse isn't true.

--
Spud

In article , d () wrote:

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 17:19:24 +0200
"tim..." wrote:
wrote in message
m...
I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

I seem to have an inherent inability to remember more than 1 foreign
language

having (in chronological order) spent 2 years learning Italian, 6 years
learning German and 1 year in Sweden since I left school, 40 years ago

I have lost all ability that I had to communicate in French

As someone who can get by in French I always found written Italian similar
enough to understand at least some of it (spoken italian is another
matter, I can barely understand a word) so I'm surprised the reverse isn't
true.

Indeed It is even more so, both written and spoken, with Italian and
Portuguese (and for all I know Spanish). One just has to know the different
spelling reforms and go by the sounds.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

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

On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 17:19:24 +0200
"tim..." wrote:
wrote in message
m...
I'm very disappointed that you can't understand enough French to deal
with such everyday things. Another shameful British habit.

I seem to have an inherent inability to remember more than 1 foreign
language

having (in chronological order) spent 2 years learning Italian, 6 years
learning German and 1 year in Sweden since I left school, 40 years ago

I have lost all ability that I had to communicate in French

As someone who can get by in French I always found written Italian
similar
enough to understand at least some of it (spoken italian is another
matter, I can barely understand a word) so I'm surprised the reverse
isn't
true.

Indeed It is even more so, both written and spoken, with Italian and
Portuguese (and for all I know Spanish). One just has to know the
different
spelling reforms and go by the sounds.

Italian and Spanish are much closer than Italian and French

I have never studied Spanish at all, yet I can read it almost as well as I
can German (which you will recall I banged my head against a wall for 6
years trying to learn)

tim

On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 05:00:54AM -0000, Clank wrote:
On 29.08.2017 2:50 AM, wrote:
I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost all of
us are supposed to have learnt it at school.
It's a bit of a mystery why it's taught in school, given it's about the
least useful language to learn.

Nah. That would be Welsh.

The problem I have with French is that it's too similar to Italian, to
the extent that they're so close together in my head that I'll often
switch languages half way through a sentence.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

There are many different types of sausages. The best are
from the north of England. The wurst are from Germany.
-- seen in alt.2eggs...

On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 03:52:50PM -0500, wrote:

When I was at school we used to says "optimists learn Russian, pessimists
Chinese".

My grandfather, being an optimist, learned Russian alongside Civil
Engineering, thinking that Lenin's NEP would open up opportunities for
infrastructure work. He was still ****ed off 70 years later at Lenin for
inconveniently dying and allowing that Stalin chap to take over.

I, having the choice at school of learning Russian or Italian, picked
Italian, because who the **** ever wanted to go to the Soviet Union. Two
months later people starting ****ting the Berlin Wall with hammers.

--
David Cantrell | Enforcer, South London Linguistic Massive

You know you're getting old when you fancy the
teenager's parent and ignore the teenager
-- Paul M in uknot

"David Cantrell" wrote in message
k...
On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 05:00:54AM -0000, Clank wrote:
On 29.08.2017 2:50 AM, wrote:
I take French as a bit exceptional because at least in theory almost all
of
us are supposed to have learnt it at school.
It's a bit of a mystery why it's taught in school, given it's about the
least useful language to learn.

Nah. That would be Welsh.

No, that would be Scottish Gaelic - 57,000 speak this - it is not
(apparently) interchangeable with Irish Gaelic (the numbers for which are
inflated by people who were forced to learn it at school but have never
spoken it in real life - on that basis I speak French, be we have already
established that I don't)

Welsh has half a million speakers

tim

On 30/08/2017 14:57, tim... wrote:


"David Cantrell" wrote in message
k...
It's a bit of a mystery why it's taught in school, given it's about the
Â*least useful language to learn.

Nah. That would be Welsh.

Welsh has half a million speakers

But how many don't speak reasonable conversational English and how many
people who are not from Wales speak any at all?

Whilst I accept the cultural reasoning for trying to keep the language
alive the Welsh government take it far too far given the more useful
ways they could spend their money (and open up a larger pool of
competent staff to employ).

The proliferation of Welsh language schools also remains a complete
mystery to me - are people that scared of the Severn Bridge?

Oh - and yes, I am born and bred Welsh and probably one of the few who
has visited Patagonia.