this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Well, if we reduce the requirements from knowing English to being able to understand "toilet! problem!" then of course.
Non-english speakers are not evenly distributed in different countries, that is why it still depends a lot on where you are searching, and in places where there's almost no demand for speaking English, there will be much less people working in services speaking English.
For instance, you can take a look at Wikipedia's list of countries by English speaking population, Italy has ≈13% of speakers, Spain has ≈22%, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and Portugal all fall between 25–27%%
And it's not like you can just go and every fourth will be speaking English fluently, I would expect most of them to be in big cities or capitals.
Wow, the UK and Turkey (I'm not spelling it that way) have the same proficiency in English! /s
And it's not like only 13% of Italians speak English. 13% of them identify as having a certain level of skill in English.
There's a massive difference in having enough of a language to communicate basic things to customers in service jobs and being fluent. When I was working in taxi dispatch, some 15 years ago, we had a few 60-70 year old women who would say they don't speak a lick of English. Yet because they know their job and the interactions and have common sense and live in a world where you can't really avoid being exposed to English, they would manage basic level orders, but they preferred saying just "moment" and transferring the call to me or someone else who spoke English better.
The point here being that even on the telephone, these non-English speaking service workers managed to handle basic things in English.
Now think about the fact that for Italy, tourism brings in about 10% of their GDP.
If you think there's a cafe you can go to in Italy where you won't be served a coffee when you say "I'd like one coffee please", please let me know.
The requirement for this "hilarious" joke, especially if we take OP's greentexted version isn't fluency in English. It's about communication on a Swedish ferry. And they're not really Swedish as much as Finnish&Swedish.
I live at the Finnish end of the trip, in Turku. I've been on these specific boats (yes, the one in the picture as well) several times.
First off, the dude wouldn't be able to find staff like that, he'd literally have to walk several decks to the nearest employee in all likelyhood, unless this is happening right when they're getting to the harbour.
Secondly, the nearest employees would probably not be native Swedish speakers, as the cleaners who come to clean the cabins in the harbour are mostly immigrants, as it's not a very respected job.
Thirdly, if he wasn't in harbour, he'd be speaking to the actual crew, who literally have to be able to speak English as a part of their job requirement. (I've read Viking Line's wanted ads.) Not only that, they strongly prefer you to be able to speak all three; English, Finnish and Swedish.
What kind of a fucking caveman would one have to be to not even try to speak English before dragging someone into their cabin to show a shit to them. Which would be very hard, given that the crew aren't cleaners and they wouldn't follow you several decks down to see your shit, all in utter silence while you refuse to even attempt communication, despite the member of crew definitely saying something like "what can I help you with".