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Languages in the EU (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I'm about to sound like the ignorant American I am, so I apologize in advance! We're looking at a trip to Germany, and possibly Prague, and we've noticed that a lot of the hotel names are French and a couple hotels that aren't named in French have replied to comments with things like "Bonjour! etc etc" What's up with this? Is French just the most commonly spoken common language, even in Germany and Czechia? (I know that Germany and Czechia have their own languages, of course.) Or is it something else?

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[โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

Yep, we try English. We are not very good at it (thanks Mussolini) and the situation is not gonna improve. But you'll survive, even here. Last time I was in a hotel here a foreigner was communicating with the receptionist via Google Translate ;p

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Mussolini came to power a hundred years ago. That's one century. It takes a couple of years to learn English to a passable degree. How can Mussolini possibly be blamed for how badly Italians speak English today?

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago

    Mussolini's nationalism led to movie dubbing. Still to this day we dub everything (tv series, documentaries, you name it). Since TV was and still is via steaming the main spreader of language, you can understand why we didn't learn English the way other countries did.

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