{"id":363,"date":"2011-08-15T19:42:04","date_gmt":"2011-08-15T19:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/blog\/?p=363"},"modified":"2011-08-15T19:42:04","modified_gmt":"2011-08-15T19:42:04","slug":"you-speak-english-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/index.php\/2011\/08\/15\/you-speak-english-right\/","title":{"rendered":"You Speak English, Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/hola.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-364\" title=\"hola\" src=\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/hola-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>A lot of responsibility comes with being a tourist in another country.\u00a0 In some senses, as an American traveler, there are some casual ambassador duties.\u00a0 At the risk of being just another \u201cobnoxious American\u201d, I take every step imaginable to fit in in my surroundings, and pay attention to the customs and traditions of whatever foreign land I\u2019m exploring.<!--more-->That said, on my recent travels to Spain, I tried my best to conjure my one time expertise in the Spanish language.\u00a0 And by expertise, I of course mean five years of high school Spanish taken, at most recent, seventeen years ago.\u00a0 At the very least, I wanted to be sure I made an effort.\u00a0 Nothing irks me more than witnessing Americans demanding they be spoken to in English in lands where English is not the first language and being incredulous when they aren\u2019t treated all that well.\u00a0 That wouldn\u2019t be me.<\/p>\n<p>My Spanish was passable, but barely, in Madrid, where Spanish is spoken everywhere, but where English is common as well.\u00a0 But in Barcelona, Spanish is not the primary language.\u00a0 They speak Catalan there, a hybrid of sorts between Spanish and French.\u00a0 My knowledge of French being nil, and my expertise in Spanish being modest at best, Catalan was just not going to work.\u00a0 I was fortunate enough to check in to Le Meridien Barcelona with a kind, English speaking gentleman from Monaco.\u00a0 When we arrived in our room and noticed the two twin beds and cared to change it, I thought I\u2019d go down and have my hand at Spanish.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I approached the same individual who had just checked us in and, to the best of my ability, explained in Spanish, why the existing bedding was not optimal for us.\u00a0 He looked at me somewhat blankly and said dead-pan, \u201cYou speak English, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d I said, coyly knowing we just finished an English conversation not five minutes earlier.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s better you speak English.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that, I declare, was the finest thing anyone had said to me on vacation.\u00a0 I tried.\u00a0 But between my broken Spanish, and his broken Spanish (not a native Spanish speaker in Monaco), there was no way I was going to get my twin bed problem resolved \u2013 or at least not quickly.<\/p>\n<p>I tried.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of responsibility comes with being a tourist in another country.\u00a0 In some senses, as an American traveler, there are some casual ambassador duties.\u00a0 At the risk of being just another \u201cobnoxious American\u201d, I take every step imaginable to fit in in my surroundings, and pay attention to the customs and traditions of whatever [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>You Speak English, Right? 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