Languages with the Least Amount of English Speakers

[Xenops]

Prompted by PM’s thread, where French, Italian and Spanish native speakers prefer to use broken English than their native tongue with a language learner, it got me wondering: what languages can we safely learn without the interference of English? My best guess would varieties of Chinese and maybe Arabic and Japanese.

Thoughts?

[LinguaPony]

If you come to Russia, most people here will be only happy not to have to speak English. They will forgive you any number of mistakes as long as you don't ask the dreaded "Do you speak English?" question.

That is, unless you run into me, my friend Nadezhda or other Russian members of this forum

[aaleks]

That is, unless you run into me, my friend Nadezhda or other Russian members of this forum

6-7 (and maybe even 5) years ago I would've been among those who prefer to speak Russian over English

[Willow]

If you come to Russia, most people here will be only happy not to have to speak English. They will forgive you any number of mistakes as long as you don't ask the dreaded "Do you speak English?" question.

As far as I still remember it was different in big, touristic cities, such as Saint Petersburg, for example
People there were ready to answer you in English, happens you need it. At least, I noticed such cases.

[LinguaPony]

That's the cultural capital. Even in Moscow things are different, and as for those "small" provincial cities with population nearing a million, finding someone willing (and able) to speak English will be like winning a lottery.

[garyb]

I think there is still hope for Spanish, despite my comments in that thread. My experiences were in more touristy areas of Spain like Andalusia, but a friend of a friend was telling me that she visited Galicia and very few people spoke English there. Of course that's just anecdotal, and she doesn't speak Spanish and people do tend to focus on the negative (funny how people who don't speak French always complain that nobody speaks English in Paris, yet people who do speak French always complain that everybody speaks English in Paris). And I can't speak at all for Latin America.

[Cavesa]

Based just on my personal experience:

French: difficult to get people to speak in French at B2 level. Some are ok with it, some even went to such extremes as insisting on English even when the rest of the group was normally talking to me in French. At C2 usually ok, except for very touristy and extremely brief situations (which is understandable). At C2 with my family or with people with prejudices, it is really hard as even me talking in solid French doesn't always convince them. This is what I've experienced not just in huge tourist places like Paris and Bordeaux and some of the ski areas. It is very similar in the middle sized or smaller towns in the half of France that I have traveled a bit more. It is easier there at the high levels, but still not that easy at the B2 and lower ones. However, in Belgium I had no problem using French in basic situations even when I was there very briefly and around A2/B1.

Spanish: awesome. Garyb has much more experience than me and I totally believe him, but my one month experience in Asturias was great in this aspect and even though Spanish was horrible. Like C1 listening, but only A2ish speaking. Also the people from southern Spain that I met there (and they were young university students) spoke almost no English (and hard to understand Spanish. Not easy even for some natives used to the more standard northern variants). A dream! However, I am very inclined to believe in huge differences among the individual regions and between Spain and the Latin America. If you want to use English, you can in the touristy place, but usually don't have to. I've heard English is being imposed on Spanish speaking foreigners in the most touristic sites like Malaga. I had no problem in Barcelona.

Italian: again no problem, but my experience is just touristic even though repeated (I've visited Italy six times so far). My Italian was like B2 passive and A1 active, but still the natives were ok and usually even glad to use Italian. Awesome!

All three seem to have a partial psychological block in Prague. They don't expect people to understand to such an extent they ignore me talking to them in the natural communication language which is their native one, not their broken English. It varies a bit, but some of the situations are really ridiculous.

German:no problem even at A1 level and even in Berlin, Dresden, Münich, and even in very touristy situations. In the austrian Alpes, people seemed to even prefer me using my weak German.

Czech and Slovak: middle aged and older people suck at English. It is often not practical but it is great for learners. A learner, especially a serious one, is a rare treat here. The younger generations vary. The people with overall better education tend to speak well. Those with low education are just as bad as the older ones. One more reason to learn these languages!

[tarvos]

I've never had trouble with this, not even in Sweden.

[nooj]

Choose a rural part anywhere in the world that doesn't get tourism and you're guaranteed a good conversation in a language other than English.

My friend went to Iceland, met an Icelandic farmer living alone, helped out for several months. Learned how to drive a tractor with the farmer riding in the car alongside shouting instructions to her in Icelandic and hand gestures. She survived.

Then she went to Mongolia on her lonesome, hired two horses and rode across the Mongolian plains, stopping at yurts along the way. She spoke no Mongolian, they spoke no English. Worked out very well.

I spent a couple of weeks in a rural part of Thailand where people didn't speak English, living with a family in their home. I learned and used a great deal of Thai that I don't think I would have otherwise, even though in that province, the native language is Isan. I lugged my copy of a Thai grammar around and pored over it every night. That later helped a lot when I went to more touristic regions in the south even though English use was prevalent because...Thai people appreciate it when you speak Thai.

As for Spain, for what it's worth, when I initiated conversations in Spanish so they could see that I spoke the language, I never, ever had anyone switch to English with me in all my time living there. And that goes for tourist information centres, they kept to Spanish.

[Axon]

I've been a tourist in lots of places.

Places where I have barely attempted to learn the local language and forged ahead with English to general success (in descending order of success):

Big cities of Denmark, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Hungary.

Places where I had many interactions entirely in the local language but was also helped out in some capacity by English speakers (in order of ease of getting help in English):

Much of France, Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar), one small part of Romania near Cluj-Napoca, much of Poland, large cities of Indonesia, large cities of Vietnam.

Places where I would have had a lot of trouble if I didn't have a strong grasp of the local language:

Russia and China.

Germany is special because I tried and succeeded to use zero English the last two times I went. I have used English on day-long visits to Austria, Malaysia, South Korea, and Switzerland but I don't really count those as representative of actual tourism there. Singapore is essentially an English-speaking country; I was met with such confident English use there that it sometimes felt rude to use Mandarin.

Incidentally, my dad and I together have some real rusty French between us and we never met with the constant English use that people have been reporting in the other thread. It would have been better in some cases if we had, actually.