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.
English is much more diffuse around the globe and can't be attributed to a single empire. There is no risk in dubbing in English and many benefits, from encouraging tourists and workers.
Also people are forgetting that railway announcements both at the station and inside the carriage are usually a complete incomprehensible trash tier. I honestly can't decipher half of the words in the Ukrainian or Russian announcements. Imagine needing to do that in the foreign language.
In my opinion it is way past time that EU has officially adopted English as a standard language for all communications. Especially with the crazies preparing for invasion right at the border.
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.
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.
Near international airports and capitals usually yes you can usually get help in english accross europe, at least enough to get basic help and instructions.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I’m baffled that any other language would be considered - the only language that comes close to English in number of speakers is Mandarin, and Mandarin has nearly half a billion fewer speakers than English.
We should be happy there is a language that has emerged for people to communicate globally without borders, and support it’s role as the worlds second language rather than work to re-fracture how people communicate
I would say that for long distance trains only English and the local language should be enough.
For international trains, we should have all languages of all traversed countries and English. So for example a train from Paris to Frankfurt should have announcements in French, German and English (and it is actually the case for that train, I already rode it).
But for example, the Berlin - Warsaw train has only English announcements besides the local language depending on the country the train is in (so no Polish when it is in Germany, and no German when it is in Poland), I consider this to be wrong. It should have announcements in Polish, German and English for the whole route.
Agree with your last point. That's a weird choice. At least the stops either side of the border are guaranteed to have people who natively speak the other language.
I seem to recall lines in Belgium that do announcements is 4 languages: french, Flemish, German, and English.
I take trains like those for work, not to France but to Amsterdam, and I don’t speak German, French or Dutch.. if we want a train system that allows Europeans to use it there needs to be announcements and signs in the language 50% of EU citizens speak
Because even in countries less developed(by western standards), there are more English announcements, so visiting tourists can also use the public transport. This isn't lack of speaking the language as well, it is more about not wanting to speak another language because "In Deutschland muss man Deutsch sprechen." It is reaching French level of racism at this point. Funny for a country that wants to attract so many international expats.
This assume that a country should please english-speaking tourists but not everyone speaks that language. Here our perception is biased because we're in a english-speaking-forum. Tourism isn't a central concern for many people/countries and not supporting it is a valid choice.
> French level of racism
Racism really ??? As a Parisian I'll struggle to make tourists feel unpleasant but I assure you there's absolutely nothing to do with race. French from outside the capital get the same treatment, they just happen to understand our insults.
English is the international language. It is mandatory to learn it as the second language in most parts of the world, even places you never heard of. It is especially a no-brainer for a person who grew up in Germany(which is one of the most developed countries in the world, and definitely has the means to educate its own people). Again, this is a problem of choice. And since Germany is a country that relies on importing educated people to keep its economy afloat, choices like these are self-sabotaging.
This isn't an english-speaking-forum, its an international one. That is the reason English is being spoken.
I get why the French is still angry about this issue and refuses to speak English, since it isn't French that is considered the international language, but English.
I wouldn't expect a French to understand this though.
France can be afforded such idiosyncrasies because the French are generally rational thinking people, not clockwork slaves to a bureaucratic machine like Germans are made to be by their culture.
Lingua Franca predates colonialism. Latin predates Lingua Franca, although one can argue Latin was forced down due to the Roman Empire's extensive reach and size. Ancient Greek also served a similar role. One doesn't need to learn each others language as long as they all know one common language. One could argue for Esperanto, or a purely symbolic language like traffic icons, but you need to learn that one too. So it makes more sense to use a fit for purpose language for travel that has no ambiguities. You can even create a graph that can be queried. There's all sorts of ways to solve this with as little pain as possible as long as you care to. And wanting people to just learn the local language to traverse a transport network is chauvinism.
The term "lingua franca" comes out of the Holy Roman Empire and Norman expansion, and later French imperialism, which gave it high status.
But I have long wondered whether many European languages will end up in the same state as Welsh or Basque or Sorbian. Icelandic is already much of the way there. Will Dutch and even German go the same way?
It is chauvinistic and colonial-minded to expect everyone to speak your language in their country. Not to mention arrogant.
If you visited Japan as a tourist, I believe you learned enough to say hello, ask someone where your hotel is, and so on. I don’t for a second believe you learned enough to understand arbitrary train network change announcements. Unless you spend years studying the language before visiting any country as a tourist, which would be absurd.
No, I didn't learn vast amounts of Japanese, but I did learn phrases and the kanji for various destinations. It sped things up. I did not stand around and speak English to people slowly and expect them all to understand.
Personally I worry about the Maltese/Irish supremacy that will arise as a result.
More seriously, I suspect that
> Since the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU in 2020, the government of France has encouraged greater use of French as a working language
will hasten the move to English in official proceedings. Almost 44% of the population understand it already, and it’s unclear why the teens of the EU who already speak near-perfect English would want to learn French other than for recreation.
Sure, but it never caught on. Not sure the point of your “/s” sign, since what you’re claiming is in fact true, and if it’s a joke it’s not a particularly funny one.
To be fair, it’s announced in the platform screens in a language abstract way, by indicating the destination and the platform segments (A,B vs C,D) to take to reach the destination.
The key is that on hundred of trains around the world this is done to indicate the convenience - these doors will be closer, etc.
Trains splitting in half are rare enough that THAT is what needs to be described.
The US equivalent is the empire builder which splits in Spokane (I believe) but it’s much more old fashioned and you have a tag above your seat showing your destination- if you somehow end up on the wrong car the conductor will wake you up and move you to the right one.
A similar one that can catch you (and has caught me) are express elevators or the two-story ones which mean you only can stop at even or odd floors depending on where you got on.
Not only unpopular, but pretty daft too. If you think the basics of a language should include "this train will separate into two at station X, please sit in the front Y carriages to get to Z" then enjoy doing a cross-Europe trip.
Not that I agree with the post you are replying to - I think having announcements in a few of the best-known languages is very reasonable to deal with tourists - but the fair expression/announcement would be something simpler like "Airport carts 1, 2 and 3. so-and-so-place carts 4 through 8". A tourist could make do with "aiport", "cart" and basic numbers in their vocabulary. If I recall, I was able to get to the correct train(s) in Italy with no more Italian than "treno", the name of the city, and "linea gialla" or something.
You can't just learn a few words and expect to follow a train announcement, particularly when it's not obvious from context (anything other than announcing the next station).
I planned my trips (read: spent a couple of minutes on them). I went through all countries from Budapest to London. I was only 16 years old at one time. I did fine. Adults, in the age of smartphones are having issues? It actually is wild to me.
Being 16 was a benefit - you didn’t know anything so you checked basically everything.
This kind of thing captures older adults who know everything and have never heard of a trainset split.
I made a similar mistake years ago in NY - I assumed that the impressive subway system could get me to the airport, but you transfer onto a bus that gives you a VERY detailed tour of some neighborhoods.
Going from the Netherlands to Budapest I started my journey with Deutsche Bahn. My train also did the split in half and go different directions trick. Was I supposed to learn Dutch, German, and Hungarian in order to buy my train tickets?
I said "travelling TO", and most of the time you do not need to know anything apart from the name of the city... and then I presume you have a smartphone as well. Come on.
What did you do once you arrived in Budapest? Did you do your research or did you get scammed by the taxi mafia as well?
If you travel to Budapest from Berlin you buy the ticket from DB and the crew changes as follows: German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian. None of the first three crews would speak Hungarian. Luckily all will be able to communicate in English.
(regular announcements oftentimes won't be in Hungarian until you are in Hungary, that depends on the train origin, but I would only expect local+English)
You will be perfectly fine staying in Budapest with just English; you can learn hello, please, and thank you to be polite. This goes for most bigger European cities, outside of France I guess.
Basics for a casual traveller are 'hello, 'please', 'thank you', 'two beers', 'can I have the bill', and 'I'll take the schnitzel please'.
Perfectly understanding rapidly-spoken German explaining something esoteric about the splitting of a train is magnitudes, years of study beyond casual traveller level.
I took French for 5 years and I don't think I learned enough to understand a tannoy announcement that the train was being split into two parts. Tannoy announcements aren't the easiest to understand even for native speakers.
Knowing the basics is knowing how to salute, thanks, ask basic directions. You can't ask everyone to know every single language they visit and be able to understand stuff mentionned in a foreign language in a possibly noisy environment and from an only half decent speaker system.
> Unpopular opinion: you should learn the absolute basics of the language used in the country you are travelling to.
As a German I disagree with this. Europe is a single market, we want to have people getting around crossing borders at all times to get stuff done. It pays to make things easier.
If you're going for a three-weeks leisure trip, sure, learn how to say hi and thank-you.
Belgium gave me one of the more annoying train experiences when I was a younger man. I was in Leuven for a conference, and had decided to bring my then girlfriend (now wife) for a trip, after which we would take the Eurostar to London. On the ticket, it said Brussels-Midi, but after happily boarding the train, we only saw the following related options on the train map for stops:
1. Brussel-Noord
2. Brussel-Centraal
3. Brussel-Zuid
So here we were, not speaking the language, rushing for a train that we were at risk of being late for, and not having a clear idea of the actual stop to get off of.
And the people on the train? Totally unhelpful. "Eurostar"? Shrug. "Train to London?" Blank looks.
Anyway we winged it and made it, but still a damn stupid set up if you want to be welcoming to tourists (and their money).
Brussels in particular perhaps is sort of non-intuitive because, even (or perhaps especially) if you know a little bit of French, the station names don't obviously correlate to their relative locations. There is a logic but it's not obvious to someone not used to it--and, honestly, I'd have to go online to figure it out again.
Hah nope! Even as a Belgian I find the naming of the Brussels train stations maddening. Brussels-Midi is the south station, so Brussel-Zuid. Midi allegedly means south in French, but I've never actually heard it being used over "sud", also south.
In conversation, midi also means noon (e.g. used as "meet me at noon"), which for my brain correlates more with central than south, given the context of a day.
Not a linguist, so what do I know, maybe someone else can chime in.
This is indeed the bizarre convo I was having with myself, having (allegedly) taken some French classes, I was racking my brain on which was the correct answer. We always used "sud", and Midi didn't seem to be south, eliminating Zuid (Since Zuid/Sud seemed similar), and yes Midi seems "mid-day", so maybe "Central" since it's the center of the day, but then there's "Centraal", so why would there be Centraal and "Brussels Middle"?!
So we winged it and got off at Zuid (since Noord felt wrong and Centraal definitely seemed wrong) and luckily it was the right one.
We did have a wonderful evening (perhaps too much so) the night before at a nice craft beer bar in Leuven which had 100 beers on tap, and it had just bought over by a nice young couple as well. So perhaps neither of us were in the right state that morning to navigate a confusing train map! Good memories.
BTW, Ukrainian shares the same logic, but it also calls the north "midnight" (північ). Meanwhile, Armenian calls the east and west "sun exit" and "sun entrance" (արևելք, արևմուտք) respectively.
In Europe (and anywhere else north of the Tropic of Cancer), the sun is always approximately due south at noon. That’s the reason for the connection, and “midi” indeed means both south (in some contexts) and noon in French.
I was in Belgium going to Antwerp and sometimes the French name -- Anvers -- was used. At least in e.g. Valais in CH cities that have dual names are shown with both, e.g. Sierre/Siders.
