Keep it Simple: English as a second language spoken here, there, and everywhere
One of the quirky things I enjoy about traveling abroad is the variety of languages my ears hone in on as like-minded travelers from around the globe gravitate to the same places I have chosen to visit.
In Portugal, where I recently ended a five-week stay, it is a virtual Tower of Babel with a number of languages swirling about me in the streets, restaurants and shops I visit.
English though, it seems, has become by default, the de-facto, go-to global language which can be heard, especially by those working in the service industry, just about anywhere in the world you please. From dusty little Himalayan Mountain villages in Nepal, to cosmopolitan European cities such as Lisbon in Portugal and Vienna in Austria, one can just about be assured they will be greeted by a waiter with a “hello, how are you?” in English, just about anywhere you set your travel compass.
The Queen’s English-speaking English, Scots and Irish notwithstanding, Europeans, it turns out, are quite proficient in their English speaking abilities; sometimes even better than me and my American friends. I recently discovered of its 450 million citizens more than 80 percent of Europeans are now proficient with English as a second language. Amazing!
As a result, we here in the United States can get by just fine about anywhere by putting all of our English only eggs in one basket; albeit they come in a variety of local accents from nasally Midwestern, to Southern drawls, to New England whatever, to Texas twang, and everything in between.
English speakers one and all across this great melting pot country of ours where immigrant languages, like everything else here, gets assimilated, mixed up, put in a blender and then spit out into this potpourri of American culture and old-school American-style English.
It is nice, though, to travel abroad and “catch” folks speaking in their native tongue rather than, in most cases, proper English; more proper than many of us here in the States speak it.
I enjoy listening in (ie, eavesdropping) to the couple seated next to me at the pizza joint in Lisbon, conversing in standard English with the waiter as he takes their drink order. And then, just as I have them pegged as a couple from London, Liverpool or elsewhere in Great Britain, once the waiter leaves to fetch drinks, they lean into each other and whisper conspiratorially in their native Italian, French, German, or on the rare occasion a delightful Dutch, shattering my preconception of their Englishness not as their first but second language.
In Lagos, my wife and I enjoy going out for a pre-dinner small beer at this tiny non-touristy neighborhood bar where the owner and most all her customers, locals through and through, converse only in the national language — the consonants, vowels and syllables bubbling into the after work air — foreign music to the ears of this American — as opposed to the nasally honking Midwesternese coming from the mouths of me and those around me back home at a brewery in Gaylord or Petoskey.
Anyway, I love to hear the different languages swirling about when traveling abroad, as well, I guess, listening to our wonderful basketful of regional accents when out and about here in the United States.
It reminds me that even though we are all unique and different, inside we are all quite the same; simply simple people trying to understand and accept those around us who we perceive as different, yet, above all, trying to get along with each other despite those differences.
Adios, ciao, adieu arrivederci, cheers, catch y’all later, bye.
— Michael Jones is a columnist and contributor for the Gaylord Herald Times. He can be reached at mfomike2@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Keep it Simple: English as a second language spoken here, there, and everywhere
