Thread: "Английский язык -- самый трудный в мире".

Are you joking? My guess - less than 5%. In big cities maybe 5-7% in the best case.

I guess I was overly optimistic. )) Anyway, I tried to include everyone who supposedly can understand at least 80% of what's said on screen. I doubt there are many people who are absolutely fluent and can understand 100%. I can't. And I know English pretty well, comparing to other people I know.

Originally Posted by sperk

I don't think that's unusual. I "taught" English at a college in Thailand and the 3rd and 4th year students majoring in English could barely sustain a broken conversation for more than 2 or 3 sentences. I've heard of people getting Phds in French but who can't follow a conversation on the street.

Yes, it's very common. Most people after 5-6 years of English classes master only basics. There must be something wrong with the way we are taught. then. =/

Originally Posted by Hanna

I am reading a British-American guidebook on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and one of the things they do for every chapter, is make snidy comments about local peoples ability to speak English, the standard of translated menus in various restaurants, museums etc. If they see this as a problem, they should mention it once, and then stop banging on about it. It's rather arrogant and presumptious.

Menus and signs are endless source of jokes here too. I agree that it's somewhat arrogant to expect that everywhere you go people MUST know your language (in this case, English), and they must know it well, otherwise they are stupid. But I believe that in real life (authors of this guide aside) people are much more tolerant, English-speaking tourists included.

Local specific is that people do not especially care about "englicizing" their services. These horrible menu translations were probably made by a waitress or owner's schoolkid, or even online tranlsator. Why bother? It's not like there are throngs of foreigners milling around.


BTW, this happens everywhere. Russian tourists find menus in Russian just as hilarious.

"Onion взрывает баранину" (Fried mutton with onion), "Суп сладостной мозоли" (Sweet corn soup), and much more:
Русский язык по-турецки - Приколы на ЯПлакалъ
Меню тайского ресторана в переводе на русский язык.. Комментарии : LiveInternet - Российский Сервис Онлайн-Дневников
DoUpadu.com - Китайское меню для русских

"Onion взрывает баранину" (Fried mutton with onion), "Суп сладостной мозоли" (Sweet corn soup), and much more:
Русский язык по-турецки - Приколы на ЯПлакалъ
Меню тайского ресторана в переводе на русский язык.. Комментарии : LiveInternet - Российский Сервис Онлайн-Дневников
DoUpadu.com - Китайское меню для русских

Yeah, that's rather typical, I just returned from vacation in Egypt a couple of weeks ago (and no, I wasn't eaten by a shark ), the hotel where I were was rather large (about 1500 rooms) and about 90% tourists were Russian, but still the signs in Russian were of similar ridiculousness and most staff (exept some barmen and animators) didn't speak Russian at all. For example, when I asked room-service to bring an ash-tray (пепельницу) in my room, they brought a toilet paper.