rbwtexan

Please only answer this if you've actually visited a country where English is not the native language.

I visited Germany once. Before I left a friend told me that all people in Germany study English in school so I would have no problem. While I could use English in the airport, car rental shop, and my hotel. I found that when I got outside the big cities, I had a hard time getting along with just English. The people didn't understand and I was reduced to the "Dumb American" point and grunt routine.

Many people on this forum have made the statement recently that English is the "Universal Language", but my experience doesn't support this statement.

Please tell me about your experiences, and think about whether you got outside the tourism main-stream and tried to talk to the average citizen or not..

Thanks.

Research has shown that the human brain looses much of it's innate ability to learn new languages at puberty. But most schools in the United States don't offer foreign language study to children until High School (I know there are some that do, and I congratulate, even applaud them, but most don't).

With world travel becoming more commonplace and businesses becoming more global, it seems to me that we are not equipping our children with the ability to be competitive in the world market. So many times business ventures have failed simply because the people making decisions didn't understand the language and culture of the people they are trying to sell to. We've all heard about the GM disaster trying to market the Chevy Nova in Latin America.