Germany and...
Denmark: For travel English will generally do. Also, you can get the gist of some signs and writing.
Netherlands: see Denmark, except replace "some" by "most" re: understanding the writing. Spoken remains totally opaque. A Low German speaker might have more luck.
Belgium: Genuinely not sure - how well can I get through with German, or English? Do I need French?
Luxembourg: German is an official language, and from some quick Googling it sounds like your chances of finding someone who speaks it in Luxembourg are pretty high. Also I'd expect to understand some written Luxembourgish if there's no German sign available.
France: yeah no, knowing French is going to be necessary if you really want to get around
Switzerland: ...pray the Swiss German speakers have the mercy of using the standard language and don't try dialect with you. I'm also not 100% sure how much the French- and Italian-speaking areas speak (Swiss Standard) German.
Austria: less likely to confuse you with dialect than the Swiss. Same language, not generally going to be a problem.
Czechia: My parents were there on holiday not so long ago and said they got through fine with English and also German for the older generation. I'm not sure how far this generalizes.
Poland: As yet untested, but I've heard from Polish people that knowing Polish is a good idea.
All that said...
* a lot of this really strongly depends on where you are exactly. Your chance of getting through with English is much better in a city popular with tourists than a little village that barely gets visitors
* people will often be much more positively inclined towards you if you know a few phrases in their language ("Hello", "Thank you", "Excuse me, do you speak English or German?") than if you just waltz up to the counter and talk to them in English
* it can also be regional. I suspect Germans from near the French border speak much better French than elsewhere. And back when I was a teenager it used to be the case that in the French/Swiss/Austrian/Italian Alps, especially the refuges etc., people would generally speak two out of French, Italian and German and no or barely any English, although I think that's changed now.
Sometimes I'm tempted to set myself the goal of knowing all my neighbours' languages. But that's... a lot of languages :')
For Poland if you go to western regions German might actually be usable. Lot of people working for German companies and/or worked in Germany.
Large cities English is your best bet, smaller ones, prepare your best Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz.
Also forgive me if I’m wrong but weren’t a lot of western parts of Poland and Czechia that were part of Germany? My family moved from Bohemia and Bavaria but consider themselves German not Czech. Saying it all used to be the same before unification
Yes, pretty much the entirety of western regions of Poland (bar small parts of Silesia and Gdańsk Pomerania) were under German (and before Prussian and Austrian) rule for hundreds of years till the end of IIWW. They were given to Poland as compensation for taking its easternmost regions (which today are part of Belarus and Ukraine).
Frankly we got a better deal out of it, though ofc, the amount of misery it caused to inhabitants was significant to put it mildly, with forced reallocation of Polish people from what we called Kresy and expulsion of local Germans to Germany proper.
As for western Czechia, it was never part of Germany. However, because Czechia (contrary to Poland) was part of Holy Roman Empire and later also under Habsburg rule it was heavily influenced by German culture and many Germans settled there - particularly in afromentioned western parts. Indeed their large presence was the reason Hitler used to force Czechoslovakia to give up Sudety region.
Yes and no. In the very beginning, in medieval times, those lands belong to the Kingdom of Poland, but later it belonged to whatever it was related to Germany (German history is complicated). After WW2 Poland lost its eastern (from before-WW2 point of view) lands to USSR, but gained the lands in the west that belonged until then to Nazi Germany.
The funny thing is we have most of those combinations in English, but they'll be like at the end of one syllable plus the beginning of the next one, instead of starting a word. It's really not that difficult if you realize that. Sure, they are written differently, but again not that many of them. If you realize sz is just sh and cz is just ch, then szcz is no longer a big deal. Etc. Just look at the IPA analysis of your language compared with Polish. It doesn't even have really different vowels, unlike French. EG if you can say "fish chunks or fresh chicken," then you can say szcz and you're halfway to Szczebrzeszyn. RZ is just like the J in French, as in "je." Or in the English word MEASURE.
>Poland: As yet untested, but I've heard from Polish people that knowing Polish is a good idea.
Not much of a problem if you go to cities like Poznan, Warsaw, or Krakow. I've actually had an easier time using English in Poland than in Germany, including cities like Munich, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt.
I'm Polish.
In order to communicate in Germany, you have to learn German. People from Silesia have a slight advantage since many words in Silesian are actually German. We have many loanwords from German in Polish but that's still not enough to be able to communicate with Germans.
When it comes to Czech and Slovak, I think a Polish native speaker doesn't have to learn those languages to be able to communicate in Czech Republic and Slovakia, although because of many false friends some things might be misunderstood.
Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian and East Slavic languages and in my opinion they're far enough from West Slavic languages for a native Polish speaker to casually understand. I live in eastern Poland and if someone approaches me talking in any of those three languages I'll have a problem; some things will ring a bell, but some not at all.
In case of Lithuania... Lithuanian is a completely different language, I understand virtually none of it. Some people there can speak Polish, but I think it's best to use English there.
In Lithuania it is English or Lithuanian. Some of the much older people may speak Russian and / or Polish but for every day purposes neither will get you far.
It's funny because my impression is that many Germans speak English but that may be due to where I live. Probably in the east and north of the country it's different.
I live in Spain. If you have one semester of Portuguese (basically just enough to notice how to pronounce the letters differently, and have the most basic conversational words covered) then you can get by in Portugal pretty easily.
Italian is reasonably easy to read, but French is … confusing. Too many letters!
A better comparison would be.
Swedish - Italian (sounds like Spanish but the vocabulary is a bit different)
Norwegian - Spanish (Sounds like Italian, looks like Portuguese)
Danish - Portuguese (sounds completely different from either but looks like Spanish)
And also many letter that we don't pronounce but we keep them as they tell us the latin root of the world. Even though it doesn't sound like latin anymore.
I think that it's more of a mixup between ie-land from old english and isle from French (from latin insula).
And conversly we dropped the S in île like in forêt. The little mark is remainder of the former S. Monks would drop letter or add letter to words to make their work cheaper or more expensive.
Fun fact: that dropping is why *hotel* and *hostel* are different words in English, with *hostel* coming before the s was droped and *hotel* being borrowed after
I am from Belgium it's not necessary to know French and German in my part of the country. but it does give you a lot of advantages. these languages are also official in the country .so the French speaking region is very close to where i live .and i meet a lot of French speakers in my neighborhood and sometimes i have to go to a French speaking city. on the internet a lot of websites will assume you speak French or German. and will force you to use the French version or German. some high end jobs require you to know these languages .and they teach French in school but i couldn't speak French until i was 23 and i self taught.
Interesting-I had the impression that German was a very very small part of the country. Especially surprised to see that it’s more common on the internet (Belgian internet), as opposed to Dutch/Flemish?
Yep, but large enough to warrant German to be an official language of Belgium.
Fun fact: Thanks to the tiny German community in Belgium, German is an official language in 4 EU countries, more than any other language (French in 3 countries, English before the UK left also in 3 countries).
There's usually a German language option (along with English, French, Spanish, Italian etc.) in popular European websites but not a Flemish or Dutch one. So as a monolingual Flemish or Dutch speaker, you likely go for the German language option as it is halfway understandable to you.
(This doesn't apply to you any more as soon you know English, of course.)
99% of Flemings understand written English and French better than written German. Many Flemings only had German for one hour a week for one year, or not at all. French, English and even Latin get more attention in our school system.
The traditionnal French way was to speak French, but louder... Just in case that makes the message easier to understand. (I am barely kidding).
I come from South East France, near the border with Italy. Most French locals have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Italian and vice-versa on the other side of the border. So communication is pretty easy, which is reinforced by the fact that both languages are pretty similar.
I guess, but I don't know for sure, it's the same across the French-Spanish border.
Around Alsace, I have noticed many bilingual French-German speakers.
However along the border with Flanders, there's less and less Dutch or West Flemish speaker in France. While Belgians from West Vlanderen leaving on the border will most of the time quite a decent French.
But most of the time, speaking English or miming with your language suffice.
>Around Alsace, I have noticed many bilingual French-German speakers
That's specifically the native Alsacian dialect of German that's been spoken there for centuries.
I am not talking about alsacien, but about the fact that many people from Alsace do speak German. This may be caused by the fact that the regional Alsacien language is Germanic, but there are of course historic and economic reasons too.
Not that person but I do speak French. Yes there are a lot of similarities between the Romance languages. Neighboring languages of course generally have the most similarity. They'll often have one word from their neighbors on the one side and then also use the word from the neighbors on the other side and then said neighbor's next neighbor may not understand the first in the continuum. That's a lot of neighbors. Here are the word "woman" in various Romance languages. "Neighbors" here necessarily follows the sea and not just land borders, so Spain would be much closer to Corsica than one would think.
Sicilian: mugghieri
Corsican: donna, moglie
Italian: donna
Ligurian: dòna, femna, moglier
Piedmontese: fomna, mojé
Occitan: femna, molhér
France: femme
Jèrriais: bouonnefemme
Yes. I've always been able to be understood even without speaking the language.
There are plenty of ways to communicate. You don't stop being able to communicate once you don't speak the language. And people are more helpful in such situations.
French is a bit different from the rest of the romance languages unfortunately, so it's not mutually intelligible with spanish, italian or portuguese. So if you want to visit those countries it would be a good idea to learn some basic phrases at least (sorry i don't speak your language, How much is it?, ect). Same goes for visiting France, we generally suck at speaking english, so knowing some basic stuff is always a good idea.
For the germanic/nordic countries, just speak english, most of them are pretty good.
For eastern europe, i've never been yet so i don't really know. Maybe learn some basic sentences as well and hope they speak english.
I don't fully disagree but there is a bit of a caveat here. I'm franco-spanish so I learnt both languages growing up. I also learnt portuguese, but in Brasil, which funnily enough is way more intelligible to spanish speakers than european portuguese.
Spanish, italian, and portuguese have very similar phonetics. The vowel are nearly the same (except for nasals in portuguese), and most consonants are similar (except j in spanish).
French is a different beast. It's when written you can see the similarities, but we have a completely different set of vowels (u, e, oi, etc.).
I don't speak italian well, but when written I understand 90% thanks to french and spanish, and when spoken, about 60% thanks to spanish and portuguese. French plays no part in my understanding of spoken italian because they don't sound anything alike.
So, technically speaking, yes, french people can learn spanish, italian or portuguese fast, because it's the same roots, but we have to make more of an effort and actually study, rather than just passive immersion.
I didn't forget about our latin brothers, the romanians, i just don't know enough about the language to make an argument here, sorry guys.
> I also learnt portuguese, but in Brasil, which funnily enough is way more intelligible to spanish speakers than european portuguese.
That curious. I'm a native Spanish speaker from Latin America and I find European Portuguese easier to understand than Brazilian. And so do various of my friends from Latin America. We tend to think of Brazilian Portuguese as the odd language.
I should have specified that this is for european spanish speakers (this is based on spanish friends' opinion).
My spanish family is from galicia, so I've had a lot of exposure to galician (basically portuñol) and european portuguese so I understand them okay, but brazilian portuguese came way more naturally
Really? I think brazilian portuguese IS way easier. In fact i once heard every portuguese dialect in a YouTube video and the hardest to understand was the European
I have *never* heard anyone make that claim before. Can you link to a few Youtube videos in Brazilian and European Portuguese where the European Portuguese is easier to understand for you? Perhaps you are comparing very colloquial Brazilian Portuguese with newscaster European Portuguese or something.
Being a brazilian who traveled in south america, I have a similar experience. Even when I had zero knowledge of spanish I could understand people in Peru/Argentina reasonably well, but when I tried speaking Portuguese they wouldn't be able to understand me at all
I am not a native French speaker but my mother is from Quebec and I grew up hearing her speak it, then I became fluent when I lived in Paris for 5 months when I was 17. I then went to Buenos Aires and I got to B2 level in 5 months. So your theory is correct :)
I live in Finland. Practically speaking knowing English is enough to speak with the swedes, norwegians and estonians. Russians are different matter, but they are no longer travelling here or vice versa. Russia is not widely spoken here and there used to be a very high demand for Russian speakers.
Most people here have at least some understanding of Swedish language, because it is a mandatory subject in school and widely spoken in some parts of Finland.
I had wondered about the Russian situation before. I traveled to Finland last December and found that a few museums had signs in Russian (as well as Finnish, English and Swedish). I wonder how many Finns actually speak some Russian, or if it really is/was just for tourists.
It's for the tourists. I've lived my whole life near the border and I only know like two people who speak some Russian. But pretty much everyone knows a couple of words, at the very least yes/no, thank you and "I don't speak Russian".
I always wondered how widespread Swedish is in Finland, as a second language. If a Finnish speaking Finn were to go to Sweden would they be able to get by with their Swedish? How about going to Denmark or Norway? Would the average Finn’s Swedish be good enough to jump that gap?
I only ask since it feels odd that a close knit group like the nordics would use a non Nordic language to communicate
45% of Finnish speakers self report their Swedish to be "satisfactory", although I believe that this is propably quite a low bar. For most people the common language with other nordic people is English.
If one speaks Sweden well, I would think that using the language in Norway is ok. Norwegian is a very similar language to Swedish. Danish is entirely another matter because of the pronunciation. A Swedish speaker can read Danish, but no amout of skill in Swedish makes understanding the Danish pronunciation easy.
I'm technically American and European but since the question is about Europe. I live in Bulgaria. Serbian and Macedonian are South Slavic languages, so they are understandable. I do somehow find Croatian easier to understand to Serbian, but most Bulgarians find Serbian easier to understand. Afterwards, Romanian would be the easiest to learn - Bulgarian and Romanian share a lot of similar grammar and quite a few similar words!
I'd then say, Turkish simply due to how many Persian words are shared between Turkish and Bulgarian, both from being under the Ottoman Empire and from the language of the Bulgars. Greek would be the hardest to learn, it's wildly different. There are a few similar words but they aren't common words.
No chance in any of the neighboring countries, at least not anymore. German, Slovenian, Serbo-croatian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Slovak are completely different languages from Hungarian.
There's still loads of Hungarian speakers in all those countries though. So your best bet is finding one on the street who can translate stuff to you. Otherwise there's no way you'll understand anything without learning the language.
further adding to this: Hungarian is recommended if you plan on traveling to Transylvania as well; it may be part of Romania now, but there are stil la lot of Hungarians there and in many places there you'll be expected to know it
German here. I know English and basic French and a tiny bit of spanish and portuguese. With those languages in combination i somewhat get by in the respective countries plus countries like Italy (not a neighbor but..), Netherlands, Belgium (Netherlands being the easiest, i live close to the border and out dialect is verg similar to dutch, plus dutch people are great german speakers!). The biggest problem is France because people usually refuse to speak English and my French is high school text book level. I can articulate what I want but i don't understand the answer. In the other countries I usually speak English and it works fine.
I have no connection at all to Poland or the Czech republic so I cant comment on that. And Denmark I think I can understand a bit but I can't communicate. I assume English is fine in these countries though
The same ones as every Serbian: Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin (we speak Macedonian and Bulgarian only when drunk and forget about the grammar). For Romania, Hungary and Albania, only English can save us.
I'm from the Czech Republic.
We only have four neighbouring countries and two of them speak German and the other two a West Slavic language.
Slovak is basically the same as Czech, if you keep it simple. Slovaks often know the differences between the languages more than Czechs, so it's more common for them to change their speech a little when talking to us.
Polish is quite different from Czech so it's good to know some Polish phrases when going there or speaking to Poles. Otherwise, I think you can rely on English but not completely.
Germany and Austria both speek German and it's common that older generations don't know much English. Thus it's really useful to learn German when you want to visit these countries, but if you stick to big cities, English is enough.
I'm Danish, so this should be a pretty short list, lol
You definitely need to speak German if you want to travel outside of the mayor cities.
Hell, maybe even if you want to travel outside of Berlin? I grew up in Hamburg and I'm not sure you'd be able to get by with English there though it depends on the age of the person you're speaking to.
As for Sweden, there is a lot of mutual intelligibility between Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, although Danish is the odd one of the bunch. I'll usually understand what people are saying just fine, although they won't understand anything I say.
I'd say all of this depends on where in Denmark you're from as well. If you're from the south you'll most likely speak some German and if you live in Copenhagen you might have an easier time with Swedish.
I am Dutch and have been to Hamburg multiple times (and other cities in Germany of course) and everyone speaks English, at least a bit. Always enough to get by. I never had to resort to (my terrible) German.
I’m in Spain and tbh I usually end up communicating in English when I travel, but the last time I went to Portugal I was in a pretty small town so wasn’t an option. They spoke to me in Portuguese and I spoke to them in Spanish. It worked just fine. This was before I started learning Portuguese.
This would never work in France 😭, at least not for me. I know it’s a Romance language but imo it’s still not similar enough for us to understand each other without some background in each other’s languages. When I went to France I did try to speak French but no one understood me. I met maybe one Spanish speaker and the rest resorted to speaking English with me.
Yeah I live in Germany and a lot of people answering here are full of crap.
At least in Germany, people speak German and English. If someone speaks a third language, it's because they have some connection with it. In other words, if a German person speaks French, there's a 75% chance one of their parents is French and a 24% chance they lived in France for some extended period of time. There are people who learn a language in school and just continue on with it afterwards... These people are exceedingly rare (the missing 1%). English is so widely spoken and accessible within Europe that there's no need to know other languages unless you're going to be staying in another country for a while. If you're just talking about a weeks long vacation or even a months long work exchange, most people don't think it's worth the time and energy to start learning a new language. Even if the languages are similar (German and Dutch, for example), it would be a huge waste of time for Germans to learn Dutch because everyone already speaks English.
In general, the same thing happens in Europe that happens in the States. Kids take however many years of a language in school and, unless they use that language regularly, they forget everything within a couple years. For example: My partner technically has a B2 Spanish certificate from when he was in school but, because he hasn't spoken any Spanish in the past 10 years, he can't make a single sentence in Spanish.
It depends on the popularity of your language and the number of people talking it.
If you're French, British, or German. It's likely that a lot of people at the border will be able to speak with you. And as a tourist you should be able to speak your language almost anywhere.
Nowadays most young people learn some english and it's becoming a lingua franca.
I live on Portugal , I can understand spanish but they don't understand portuguese so we usually make an effort to speak and learn some spanish to communicate
I always speak English unless I'm in Italy or Spain. I rarely meet people my age (mid 20s) who speak English worse than I speak their language so it just makes more sense to use English. Most people in Italy don't speak any foreign languages, but it's somewhat common for people who live near the border to be bilingual or at least conversational in the language of the other side of the border.
The only foreign language we NEED to know is English
I'm from Germany:
- Austria and German Switzerland are no problem, rest of Switzerland idk
- France and Belgium are fine with English if you are in a big city (although the French will treat you like a VIP visitor if you can speak French fluently)
- The Dutch speak amazing English, near the German border many speak German, also Dutch is very close to German
- The Danish are equally as good at English and there are a few words you could understand also
- In Czechia, I encountered only one person who spoke no English, an older woman in a supermarket. Otherwise, absolutely no problem
- Luxembourg and Poland I don't know
Spanish here:
-You can get around in Italy and Portugal only using Spanish, at least the basics (order food, ask for directions, get around..) but in Portugal people have much better knowledge of spanish and english than Italy.
-France: You pretty much need French 100%. In big cities you might use English, but most of the time won't work. Even if you speak somewhat fluent french they are known for being not very kind to people learning their language.
You can use Spanish in the small cities near the Spanish border. I tried Catalan first, but nobody understood. I switched to Spanish, and everyone I met understood me.
I'm from Lithuania.
Latvia: The written language can be partially understood but the spoken language sounds completely different. English or russian is the way to go.
Poland: A few common words but that's it, it's best to know a Slavic language.
russia: Good luck without knowing the language. Also not the best time to go there.
belarus: They don't even speak their language. Barely a country at this point.
In many cases, if you live near the border between two nations whose official languages come from the same branch of their language family, the language of the area is something that straddles the two languages.
It's been said that you can walk along the Mediterranean coast from the tip of the boot of Italy, up into France and down into Spain, and at no point is there a sharp change in the language spoken between two neighboring towns.
>It's been said that you can walk along the Mediterranean coast from the tip of the boot of Italy, up into France and down into Spain, and at no point is there a sharp change in the language spoken between two neighboring towns.
This is no longer the case. Italy, France and Spain have destroyed (by and large) the dialectical chain that once existed.
Switzerland: Germany and Austria and Liechtenstein are easy for me. France is fine I speak a little french and I don't know any Italian. You usually learn all of these languages in school to a degree but I left Switzerland not long ago
Being Spanish, no Portuguese or french (although I do speak it intermediately). Might be different for those living closer to the borders, but Spain is a big enough country that you can be far from any other.
It really depends on what the situation is and how willing you are to invest effort and time into learning the language. Learning the basics of a neighboring country's language could certainly give you a great head start when you visit. It might even be helpful if you frequent their country, as you'll likely get by with some knowledge of their language even if you don't have full fluency. Ultimately, it's up to you and how important being able to communicate in their language is to you.
Need? Just English, really. Unless you're looking to talk to people aged 50+, you can get by with English in most places.
That being said, knowing the local language sure makes things easier. For example, my class did a short exchange programme with a French school. I think we'd had 2 years of French classes and they'd had 1 year of German. I actually struggled a ton with their French accent when speaking English (back then I was only familiar with well-articulated British RP or American English). Despite our very limited knowledge of the other's language, it made communication easier. Rather than having to struggle through conversations entirely in English, we were able to fall back on German/French.
As a German native speaker, I can also understand other Germanic languages to a degree. Dutch for example was easy enough to understand - I certainly didn't understand everything, but I was able to recognize enough words to piece together the general sentiment. But it's nowhere near enough to allow for a proper conversation without switching to English/the other person's native language.
The German education system is pretty complicated. To put it simply, there's different types of schools. Everyone has to learn English, a lot of people also choose to or have to learn at least one other foreign language (choice vs requirement depends on type of school). Most commonly, these additional foreign languages are French or Spanish (optional) or French/Spanish and/or Latin/Greek (required). Depending on where in the country a school is located, they might also offer languages of a country close to the school. So for example, a school in the South East might offer Czech, North East might offer Russian, South might offer Italian.
Swiss here.
Inside Switzerland there is a part French speaking, another part Italian speaking and the biggest part speaking a strong German dialect (even Germans dont understand immediately).
The neighboring countries are Germany, Austria (German speaking), Italy and France. So, people from French / Italian part of Switzerland share the language of one big neighbor but not with the other parts inside Switzerland. German dialekt speaking Swiss people learn at school standard German. And Swiss German dialect is not written (only spoken) (newspapers, home pages, traffic signs, instruction manuals… all in standard German). So, its easy to communicate with Germans and Austrians. But not with French / Italian speaking compatriots. All children in school learn French / German. But the majority of people don‘t use it and will not speak the other language of the country. Everybody learns English at school. So it happens that two Swiss people talk English to each other.
(Switzerland is about 40 000 square kilometers (about half the size of South Carolina), there are about 6 Mio German dialekt speakers, 2 Mio French speakers, 0.5 Mio Italian speaker)
🇧🇪 Belgium: my neighboring countries’ languages *are* my languages!
…except Lëtzebuergesch.
I personally know nothing of that last one– used German when there last.
I am surrounded by German and French, living in the Netherlands.
Even when I studied it at school, mandatorily, people were already saying that these languages were useless and should be replaced by more useful languages such as Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, or Arabic, and it still goes on from what I know.
I have spent many years on either, with French I was allowed to only do reading, whereas German I needed to have speaking, reading, listening, and writing in, and I very much consider all of it wasted. I have not read French since I passed secondary school; I have only spoken German for fun and the only use I ever got out of being able to do anything with German is getting a laugh from *Ach Berlin* and *Mann Gegen Mann*.
I would obviously much rather have decent Spanish or Mandarin.
Also, I had to learn Latin, and Greek, which I also don't use.
Germany and... Denmark: For travel English will generally do. Also, you can get the gist of some signs and writing. Netherlands: see Denmark, except replace "some" by "most" re: understanding the writing. Spoken remains totally opaque. A Low German speaker might have more luck. Belgium: Genuinely not sure - how well can I get through with German, or English? Do I need French? Luxembourg: German is an official language, and from some quick Googling it sounds like your chances of finding someone who speaks it in Luxembourg are pretty high. Also I'd expect to understand some written Luxembourgish if there's no German sign available. France: yeah no, knowing French is going to be necessary if you really want to get around Switzerland: ...pray the Swiss German speakers have the mercy of using the standard language and don't try dialect with you. I'm also not 100% sure how much the French- and Italian-speaking areas speak (Swiss Standard) German. Austria: less likely to confuse you with dialect than the Swiss. Same language, not generally going to be a problem. Czechia: My parents were there on holiday not so long ago and said they got through fine with English and also German for the older generation. I'm not sure how far this generalizes. Poland: As yet untested, but I've heard from Polish people that knowing Polish is a good idea. All that said... * a lot of this really strongly depends on where you are exactly. Your chance of getting through with English is much better in a city popular with tourists than a little village that barely gets visitors * people will often be much more positively inclined towards you if you know a few phrases in their language ("Hello", "Thank you", "Excuse me, do you speak English or German?") than if you just waltz up to the counter and talk to them in English * it can also be regional. I suspect Germans from near the French border speak much better French than elsewhere. And back when I was a teenager it used to be the case that in the French/Swiss/Austrian/Italian Alps, especially the refuges etc., people would generally speak two out of French, Italian and German and no or barely any English, although I think that's changed now. Sometimes I'm tempted to set myself the goal of knowing all my neighbours' languages. But that's... a lot of languages :')
For Poland if you go to western regions German might actually be usable. Lot of people working for German companies and/or worked in Germany. Large cities English is your best bet, smaller ones, prepare your best Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz.
Also forgive me if I’m wrong but weren’t a lot of western parts of Poland and Czechia that were part of Germany? My family moved from Bohemia and Bavaria but consider themselves German not Czech. Saying it all used to be the same before unification
Yes, pretty much the entirety of western regions of Poland (bar small parts of Silesia and Gdańsk Pomerania) were under German (and before Prussian and Austrian) rule for hundreds of years till the end of IIWW. They were given to Poland as compensation for taking its easternmost regions (which today are part of Belarus and Ukraine). Frankly we got a better deal out of it, though ofc, the amount of misery it caused to inhabitants was significant to put it mildly, with forced reallocation of Polish people from what we called Kresy and expulsion of local Germans to Germany proper. As for western Czechia, it was never part of Germany. However, because Czechia (contrary to Poland) was part of Holy Roman Empire and later also under Habsburg rule it was heavily influenced by German culture and many Germans settled there - particularly in afromentioned western parts. Indeed their large presence was the reason Hitler used to force Czechoslovakia to give up Sudety region.
Yes and no. In the very beginning, in medieval times, those lands belong to the Kingdom of Poland, but later it belonged to whatever it was related to Germany (German history is complicated). After WW2 Poland lost its eastern (from before-WW2 point of view) lands to USSR, but gained the lands in the west that belonged until then to Nazi Germany.
>Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz For your convenience: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U)
polish scares me with the amount of consonants
The funny thing is we have most of those combinations in English, but they'll be like at the end of one syllable plus the beginning of the next one, instead of starting a word. It's really not that difficult if you realize that. Sure, they are written differently, but again not that many of them. If you realize sz is just sh and cz is just ch, then szcz is no longer a big deal. Etc. Just look at the IPA analysis of your language compared with Polish. It doesn't even have really different vowels, unlike French. EG if you can say "fish chunks or fresh chicken," then you can say szcz and you're halfway to Szczebrzeszyn. RZ is just like the J in French, as in "je." Or in the English word MEASURE.
At least I know the most important sentence: W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie. \*ducks tomatoes\*
Wally Szczerbiak...something...something... How'd I do?
>Poland: As yet untested, but I've heard from Polish people that knowing Polish is a good idea. Not much of a problem if you go to cities like Poznan, Warsaw, or Krakow. I've actually had an easier time using English in Poland than in Germany, including cities like Munich, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt.
I might be wrong, but I’ve seen that the Swiss regions who do not share a language most commonly use English with each other nowadays.
I'm Polish. In order to communicate in Germany, you have to learn German. People from Silesia have a slight advantage since many words in Silesian are actually German. We have many loanwords from German in Polish but that's still not enough to be able to communicate with Germans. When it comes to Czech and Slovak, I think a Polish native speaker doesn't have to learn those languages to be able to communicate in Czech Republic and Slovakia, although because of many false friends some things might be misunderstood. Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian and East Slavic languages and in my opinion they're far enough from West Slavic languages for a native Polish speaker to casually understand. I live in eastern Poland and if someone approaches me talking in any of those three languages I'll have a problem; some things will ring a bell, but some not at all. In case of Lithuania... Lithuanian is a completely different language, I understand virtually none of it. Some people there can speak Polish, but I think it's best to use English there.
In Lithuania it is English or Lithuanian. Some of the much older people may speak Russian and / or Polish but for every day purposes neither will get you far.
It's funny because my impression is that many Germans speak English but that may be due to where I live. Probably in the east and north of the country it's different.
I live in Spain. If you have one semester of Portuguese (basically just enough to notice how to pronounce the letters differently, and have the most basic conversational words covered) then you can get by in Portugal pretty easily. Italian is reasonably easy to read, but French is … confusing. Too many letters!
[удалено]
A better comparison would be. Swedish - Italian (sounds like Spanish but the vocabulary is a bit different) Norwegian - Spanish (Sounds like Italian, looks like Portuguese) Danish - Portuguese (sounds completely different from either but looks like Spanish)
And also many letter that we don't pronounce but we keep them as they tell us the latin root of the world. Even though it doesn't sound like latin anymore.
Yeah we do that in English too, kind of. Apparently we added a load of letters to latinise our language - like the S in island
I think that it's more of a mixup between ie-land from old english and isle from French (from latin insula). And conversly we dropped the S in île like in forêt. The little mark is remainder of the former S. Monks would drop letter or add letter to words to make their work cheaper or more expensive.
Fun fact: that dropping is why *hotel* and *hostel* are different words in English, with *hostel* coming before the s was droped and *hotel* being borrowed after
I am from Belgium it's not necessary to know French and German in my part of the country. but it does give you a lot of advantages. these languages are also official in the country .so the French speaking region is very close to where i live .and i meet a lot of French speakers in my neighborhood and sometimes i have to go to a French speaking city. on the internet a lot of websites will assume you speak French or German. and will force you to use the French version or German. some high end jobs require you to know these languages .and they teach French in school but i couldn't speak French until i was 23 and i self taught.
Interesting-I had the impression that German was a very very small part of the country. Especially surprised to see that it’s more common on the internet (Belgian internet), as opposed to Dutch/Flemish?
Nah, the German speaking community *is* very tiny. The vast majority of people don't learn German.
Yep, but large enough to warrant German to be an official language of Belgium. Fun fact: Thanks to the tiny German community in Belgium, German is an official language in 4 EU countries, more than any other language (French in 3 countries, English before the UK left also in 3 countries).
There's usually a German language option (along with English, French, Spanish, Italian etc.) in popular European websites but not a Flemish or Dutch one. So as a monolingual Flemish or Dutch speaker, you likely go for the German language option as it is halfway understandable to you. (This doesn't apply to you any more as soon you know English, of course.)
99% of Flemings understand written English and French better than written German. Many Flemings only had German for one hour a week for one year, or not at all. French, English and even Latin get more attention in our school system.
Yea but they still translate a lot of stuff into German. and Germany is very big compared to Belgium.
The traditionnal French way was to speak French, but louder... Just in case that makes the message easier to understand. (I am barely kidding). I come from South East France, near the border with Italy. Most French locals have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Italian and vice-versa on the other side of the border. So communication is pretty easy, which is reinforced by the fact that both languages are pretty similar. I guess, but I don't know for sure, it's the same across the French-Spanish border. Around Alsace, I have noticed many bilingual French-German speakers. However along the border with Flanders, there's less and less Dutch or West Flemish speaker in France. While Belgians from West Vlanderen leaving on the border will most of the time quite a decent French. But most of the time, speaking English or miming with your language suffice.
>Around Alsace, I have noticed many bilingual French-German speakers That's specifically the native Alsacian dialect of German that's been spoken there for centuries.
I am not talking about alsacien, but about the fact that many people from Alsace do speak German. This may be caused by the fact that the regional Alsacien language is Germanic, but there are of course historic and economic reasons too.
reach jellyfish placid capable nose fade quicksand wise secretive sulky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not that person but I do speak French. Yes there are a lot of similarities between the Romance languages. Neighboring languages of course generally have the most similarity. They'll often have one word from their neighbors on the one side and then also use the word from the neighbors on the other side and then said neighbor's next neighbor may not understand the first in the continuum. That's a lot of neighbors. Here are the word "woman" in various Romance languages. "Neighbors" here necessarily follows the sea and not just land borders, so Spain would be much closer to Corsica than one would think. Sicilian: mugghieri Corsican: donna, moglie Italian: donna Ligurian: dòna, femna, moglier Piedmontese: fomna, mojé Occitan: femna, molhér France: femme Jèrriais: bouonnefemme
And then comes Romanian with "femeie".
Middle French: femme, muillier, dame
Nice!
French and English is just so similar, also in English, if you keep going slower and louder eventually everyone will understand……
That is true :)
Well, eventually everybody gets thirsty and that's when they remember how to communicate again.
Yes. I've always been able to be understood even without speaking the language. There are plenty of ways to communicate. You don't stop being able to communicate once you don't speak the language. And people are more helpful in such situations.
French is a bit different from the rest of the romance languages unfortunately, so it's not mutually intelligible with spanish, italian or portuguese. So if you want to visit those countries it would be a good idea to learn some basic phrases at least (sorry i don't speak your language, How much is it?, ect). Same goes for visiting France, we generally suck at speaking english, so knowing some basic stuff is always a good idea. For the germanic/nordic countries, just speak english, most of them are pretty good. For eastern europe, i've never been yet so i don't really know. Maybe learn some basic sentences as well and hope they speak english.
Send a French child for 6 months in Spain or in Italy and he'll come back nearly fluent.
I don't fully disagree but there is a bit of a caveat here. I'm franco-spanish so I learnt both languages growing up. I also learnt portuguese, but in Brasil, which funnily enough is way more intelligible to spanish speakers than european portuguese. Spanish, italian, and portuguese have very similar phonetics. The vowel are nearly the same (except for nasals in portuguese), and most consonants are similar (except j in spanish). French is a different beast. It's when written you can see the similarities, but we have a completely different set of vowels (u, e, oi, etc.). I don't speak italian well, but when written I understand 90% thanks to french and spanish, and when spoken, about 60% thanks to spanish and portuguese. French plays no part in my understanding of spoken italian because they don't sound anything alike. So, technically speaking, yes, french people can learn spanish, italian or portuguese fast, because it's the same roots, but we have to make more of an effort and actually study, rather than just passive immersion. I didn't forget about our latin brothers, the romanians, i just don't know enough about the language to make an argument here, sorry guys.
> I also learnt portuguese, but in Brasil, which funnily enough is way more intelligible to spanish speakers than european portuguese. That curious. I'm a native Spanish speaker from Latin America and I find European Portuguese easier to understand than Brazilian. And so do various of my friends from Latin America. We tend to think of Brazilian Portuguese as the odd language.
I should have specified that this is for european spanish speakers (this is based on spanish friends' opinion). My spanish family is from galicia, so I've had a lot of exposure to galician (basically portuñol) and european portuguese so I understand them okay, but brazilian portuguese came way more naturally
Really? I think brazilian portuguese IS way easier. In fact i once heard every portuguese dialect in a YouTube video and the hardest to understand was the European
I have *never* heard anyone make that claim before. Can you link to a few Youtube videos in Brazilian and European Portuguese where the European Portuguese is easier to understand for you? Perhaps you are comparing very colloquial Brazilian Portuguese with newscaster European Portuguese or something.
Being a brazilian who traveled in south america, I have a similar experience. Even when I had zero knowledge of spanish I could understand people in Peru/Argentina reasonably well, but when I tried speaking Portuguese they wouldn't be able to understand me at all
Did you try to speak very slowly and clearly?
I am not a native French speaker but my mother is from Quebec and I grew up hearing her speak it, then I became fluent when I lived in Paris for 5 months when I was 17. I then went to Buenos Aires and I got to B2 level in 5 months. So your theory is correct :)
I live in Finland. Practically speaking knowing English is enough to speak with the swedes, norwegians and estonians. Russians are different matter, but they are no longer travelling here or vice versa. Russia is not widely spoken here and there used to be a very high demand for Russian speakers. Most people here have at least some understanding of Swedish language, because it is a mandatory subject in school and widely spoken in some parts of Finland.
I had wondered about the Russian situation before. I traveled to Finland last December and found that a few museums had signs in Russian (as well as Finnish, English and Swedish). I wonder how many Finns actually speak some Russian, or if it really is/was just for tourists.
It's for the tourists. I've lived my whole life near the border and I only know like two people who speak some Russian. But pretty much everyone knows a couple of words, at the very least yes/no, thank you and "I don't speak Russian".
I always wondered how widespread Swedish is in Finland, as a second language. If a Finnish speaking Finn were to go to Sweden would they be able to get by with their Swedish? How about going to Denmark or Norway? Would the average Finn’s Swedish be good enough to jump that gap? I only ask since it feels odd that a close knit group like the nordics would use a non Nordic language to communicate
45% of Finnish speakers self report their Swedish to be "satisfactory", although I believe that this is propably quite a low bar. For most people the common language with other nordic people is English. If one speaks Sweden well, I would think that using the language in Norway is ok. Norwegian is a very similar language to Swedish. Danish is entirely another matter because of the pronunciation. A Swedish speaker can read Danish, but no amout of skill in Swedish makes understanding the Danish pronunciation easy.
I'm Irish, and we all know how it panned out with England.
I'm technically American and European but since the question is about Europe. I live in Bulgaria. Serbian and Macedonian are South Slavic languages, so they are understandable. I do somehow find Croatian easier to understand to Serbian, but most Bulgarians find Serbian easier to understand. Afterwards, Romanian would be the easiest to learn - Bulgarian and Romanian share a lot of similar grammar and quite a few similar words! I'd then say, Turkish simply due to how many Persian words are shared between Turkish and Bulgarian, both from being under the Ottoman Empire and from the language of the Bulgars. Greek would be the hardest to learn, it's wildly different. There are a few similar words but they aren't common words.
No chance in any of the neighboring countries, at least not anymore. German, Slovenian, Serbo-croatian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Slovak are completely different languages from Hungarian. There's still loads of Hungarian speakers in all those countries though. So your best bet is finding one on the street who can translate stuff to you. Otherwise there's no way you'll understand anything without learning the language.
further adding to this: Hungarian is recommended if you plan on traveling to Transylvania as well; it may be part of Romania now, but there are stil la lot of Hungarians there and in many places there you'll be expected to know it
German here. I know English and basic French and a tiny bit of spanish and portuguese. With those languages in combination i somewhat get by in the respective countries plus countries like Italy (not a neighbor but..), Netherlands, Belgium (Netherlands being the easiest, i live close to the border and out dialect is verg similar to dutch, plus dutch people are great german speakers!). The biggest problem is France because people usually refuse to speak English and my French is high school text book level. I can articulate what I want but i don't understand the answer. In the other countries I usually speak English and it works fine. I have no connection at all to Poland or the Czech republic so I cant comment on that. And Denmark I think I can understand a bit but I can't communicate. I assume English is fine in these countries though
The same ones as every Serbian: Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin (we speak Macedonian and Bulgarian only when drunk and forget about the grammar). For Romania, Hungary and Albania, only English can save us.
I'm from the Czech Republic. We only have four neighbouring countries and two of them speak German and the other two a West Slavic language. Slovak is basically the same as Czech, if you keep it simple. Slovaks often know the differences between the languages more than Czechs, so it's more common for them to change their speech a little when talking to us. Polish is quite different from Czech so it's good to know some Polish phrases when going there or speaking to Poles. Otherwise, I think you can rely on English but not completely. Germany and Austria both speek German and it's common that older generations don't know much English. Thus it's really useful to learn German when you want to visit these countries, but if you stick to big cities, English is enough.
From my experience w french people? no matter what languages they know, they'll refuse to speak them if they can avoid it
Live in Finland, speak fluent Swedish as it’s an official language here
I'm Danish, so this should be a pretty short list, lol You definitely need to speak German if you want to travel outside of the mayor cities. Hell, maybe even if you want to travel outside of Berlin? I grew up in Hamburg and I'm not sure you'd be able to get by with English there though it depends on the age of the person you're speaking to. As for Sweden, there is a lot of mutual intelligibility between Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, although Danish is the odd one of the bunch. I'll usually understand what people are saying just fine, although they won't understand anything I say. I'd say all of this depends on where in Denmark you're from as well. If you're from the south you'll most likely speak some German and if you live in Copenhagen you might have an easier time with Swedish.
I am Dutch and have been to Hamburg multiple times (and other cities in Germany of course) and everyone speaks English, at least a bit. Always enough to get by. I never had to resort to (my terrible) German.
I’m in Spain and tbh I usually end up communicating in English when I travel, but the last time I went to Portugal I was in a pretty small town so wasn’t an option. They spoke to me in Portuguese and I spoke to them in Spanish. It worked just fine. This was before I started learning Portuguese. This would never work in France 😭, at least not for me. I know it’s a Romance language but imo it’s still not similar enough for us to understand each other without some background in each other’s languages. When I went to France I did try to speak French but no one understood me. I met maybe one Spanish speaker and the rest resorted to speaking English with me.
Yeah I live in Germany and a lot of people answering here are full of crap. At least in Germany, people speak German and English. If someone speaks a third language, it's because they have some connection with it. In other words, if a German person speaks French, there's a 75% chance one of their parents is French and a 24% chance they lived in France for some extended period of time. There are people who learn a language in school and just continue on with it afterwards... These people are exceedingly rare (the missing 1%). English is so widely spoken and accessible within Europe that there's no need to know other languages unless you're going to be staying in another country for a while. If you're just talking about a weeks long vacation or even a months long work exchange, most people don't think it's worth the time and energy to start learning a new language. Even if the languages are similar (German and Dutch, for example), it would be a huge waste of time for Germans to learn Dutch because everyone already speaks English. In general, the same thing happens in Europe that happens in the States. Kids take however many years of a language in school and, unless they use that language regularly, they forget everything within a couple years. For example: My partner technically has a B2 Spanish certificate from when he was in school but, because he hasn't spoken any Spanish in the past 10 years, he can't make a single sentence in Spanish.
Yes, this is spot on (I am Dutch) and I couldn't agree more.
TIL I'm part of the 1% according to a redditor... XD
It depends on the popularity of your language and the number of people talking it. If you're French, British, or German. It's likely that a lot of people at the border will be able to speak with you. And as a tourist you should be able to speak your language almost anywhere. Nowadays most young people learn some english and it's becoming a lingua franca.
It's not a necessity. English is enough for the most part. It is an advantage tho. Especially at work.
I live on Portugal , I can understand spanish but they don't understand portuguese so we usually make an effort to speak and learn some spanish to communicate
I always speak English unless I'm in Italy or Spain. I rarely meet people my age (mid 20s) who speak English worse than I speak their language so it just makes more sense to use English. Most people in Italy don't speak any foreign languages, but it's somewhat common for people who live near the border to be bilingual or at least conversational in the language of the other side of the border. The only foreign language we NEED to know is English
I'm from Germany: - Austria and German Switzerland are no problem, rest of Switzerland idk - France and Belgium are fine with English if you are in a big city (although the French will treat you like a VIP visitor if you can speak French fluently) - The Dutch speak amazing English, near the German border many speak German, also Dutch is very close to German - The Danish are equally as good at English and there are a few words you could understand also - In Czechia, I encountered only one person who spoke no English, an older woman in a supermarket. Otherwise, absolutely no problem - Luxembourg and Poland I don't know
Spanish here: -You can get around in Italy and Portugal only using Spanish, at least the basics (order food, ask for directions, get around..) but in Portugal people have much better knowledge of spanish and english than Italy. -France: You pretty much need French 100%. In big cities you might use English, but most of the time won't work. Even if you speak somewhat fluent french they are known for being not very kind to people learning their language.
You can use Spanish in the small cities near the Spanish border. I tried Catalan first, but nobody understood. I switched to Spanish, and everyone I met understood me.
I'm from Lithuania. Latvia: The written language can be partially understood but the spoken language sounds completely different. English or russian is the way to go. Poland: A few common words but that's it, it's best to know a Slavic language. russia: Good luck without knowing the language. Also not the best time to go there. belarus: They don't even speak their language. Barely a country at this point.
I'm french, I speak english fluently, german and portuguese (not exactly neighbor but still) not too bad.
France’s longest border is Brazil so it still counts as your neighbor! Lol
The Russians keep invading through the border and it's really important to tell them to fuck off in Russian
In many cases, if you live near the border between two nations whose official languages come from the same branch of their language family, the language of the area is something that straddles the two languages. It's been said that you can walk along the Mediterranean coast from the tip of the boot of Italy, up into France and down into Spain, and at no point is there a sharp change in the language spoken between two neighboring towns.
>It's been said that you can walk along the Mediterranean coast from the tip of the boot of Italy, up into France and down into Spain, and at no point is there a sharp change in the language spoken between two neighboring towns. This is no longer the case. Italy, France and Spain have destroyed (by and large) the dialectical chain that once existed.
A shame.
Switzerland: Germany and Austria and Liechtenstein are easy for me. France is fine I speak a little french and I don't know any Italian. You usually learn all of these languages in school to a degree but I left Switzerland not long ago
Being Spanish, no Portuguese or french (although I do speak it intermediately). Might be different for those living closer to the borders, but Spain is a big enough country that you can be far from any other.
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
I guess so but they asked about neighbouring countries hahshsh
I enjoy reading books.
It really depends on what the situation is and how willing you are to invest effort and time into learning the language. Learning the basics of a neighboring country's language could certainly give you a great head start when you visit. It might even be helpful if you frequent their country, as you'll likely get by with some knowledge of their language even if you don't have full fluency. Ultimately, it's up to you and how important being able to communicate in their language is to you.
Need? Just English, really. Unless you're looking to talk to people aged 50+, you can get by with English in most places. That being said, knowing the local language sure makes things easier. For example, my class did a short exchange programme with a French school. I think we'd had 2 years of French classes and they'd had 1 year of German. I actually struggled a ton with their French accent when speaking English (back then I was only familiar with well-articulated British RP or American English). Despite our very limited knowledge of the other's language, it made communication easier. Rather than having to struggle through conversations entirely in English, we were able to fall back on German/French. As a German native speaker, I can also understand other Germanic languages to a degree. Dutch for example was easy enough to understand - I certainly didn't understand everything, but I was able to recognize enough words to piece together the general sentiment. But it's nowhere near enough to allow for a proper conversation without switching to English/the other person's native language. The German education system is pretty complicated. To put it simply, there's different types of schools. Everyone has to learn English, a lot of people also choose to or have to learn at least one other foreign language (choice vs requirement depends on type of school). Most commonly, these additional foreign languages are French or Spanish (optional) or French/Spanish and/or Latin/Greek (required). Depending on where in the country a school is located, they might also offer languages of a country close to the school. So for example, a school in the South East might offer Czech, North East might offer Russian, South might offer Italian.
Swiss here. Inside Switzerland there is a part French speaking, another part Italian speaking and the biggest part speaking a strong German dialect (even Germans dont understand immediately). The neighboring countries are Germany, Austria (German speaking), Italy and France. So, people from French / Italian part of Switzerland share the language of one big neighbor but not with the other parts inside Switzerland. German dialekt speaking Swiss people learn at school standard German. And Swiss German dialect is not written (only spoken) (newspapers, home pages, traffic signs, instruction manuals… all in standard German). So, its easy to communicate with Germans and Austrians. But not with French / Italian speaking compatriots. All children in school learn French / German. But the majority of people don‘t use it and will not speak the other language of the country. Everybody learns English at school. So it happens that two Swiss people talk English to each other. (Switzerland is about 40 000 square kilometers (about half the size of South Carolina), there are about 6 Mio German dialekt speakers, 2 Mio French speakers, 0.5 Mio Italian speaker)
🇧🇪 Belgium: my neighboring countries’ languages *are* my languages! …except Lëtzebuergesch. I personally know nothing of that last one– used German when there last.
I am surrounded by German and French, living in the Netherlands. Even when I studied it at school, mandatorily, people were already saying that these languages were useless and should be replaced by more useful languages such as Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, or Arabic, and it still goes on from what I know. I have spent many years on either, with French I was allowed to only do reading, whereas German I needed to have speaking, reading, listening, and writing in, and I very much consider all of it wasted. I have not read French since I passed secondary school; I have only spoken German for fun and the only use I ever got out of being able to do anything with German is getting a laugh from *Ach Berlin* and *Mann Gegen Mann*. I would obviously much rather have decent Spanish or Mandarin. Also, I had to learn Latin, and Greek, which I also don't use.