customer service accents?

[Chuft-Captain]

Among the most disturbing is that many North Americans imply (without asking!) that people in other countries know and are willing to speak their language! Of course it would be easy to list a few reasons for that familiar behaviour

This pretty much sums it up I think: http://www.satirewire.com/news/0010/international.shtml

My God, that's a pretty strong summary

To be absolutely fair, it's not ALL their fault.

In their defense, I'd like to relate my experience of trying to learn and speak the native language when in Deutchland some years ago.
Basically. what it came down to, is that as soon as any of the locals found out that I was an English speaker, they'd refuse to speak German. (To them, it was an oportunity to practice their english for free with a native english speaker...such practice, as I understand it, they would normally pay someone up to 100DM an hour for, in a lesson)

Danke

[LordFerret]

If I may...

A few years back my uncle did pretty much the same, he traveled to Germany and actually attended college there in an attempt to learn the language, take a language course - German. Picture it if you will, in his late 60's, attending Heidelberg University with all the young folk. He says he had the time of his life.

His favorite story he tells me, the woes of mispronounciation... in his case, the embarassment (I'm sure Fridger will appreciate this! ). While on a break he visited Zurick Switzerland for a few days. While in Zurick, walking around in search of the hotel he was to stay at, he ran across an old woman in her 90's riding a bicycle. He stopped her and politely asked "Bitte k?¶nnen Sie mir sagen wo finde ich die Judenherberge?" He says she laughed at him so hard she almost fell off her bicycle... but none-the-less she was kind enough to point the way.

(What he had meant to ask her was "Bitte k?¶nnen Sie mir sagen wo finde ich die Jugenherberge?")