2009/8/21 Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net:
I can speak from a bit of personal experience here. Between the Dutch chapter, Jan-Bart, and people on the technical team like Mark and Roan, the Dutch were well represented at the meetings in Berlin in April. At one point I decided to invade a table full of Dutch speakers, maybe not eight but close to that number, partly just to see what would happen. (Personally, despite speaking both German and English, and Dutch occupying a linguistic space vaguely between the two, I can barely make out the occasional word in spoken Dutch, although I have a little bit more ability to comprehend it when reading.) Anyway, everyone was quite willing to switch over to English without any trouble, although some Dutch was still used occasionally for conversations I wasn't directly involved in.
I'm now thinking of a friend who emigrated to the Netherlands from Australia, and has terrible trouble getting people to speak to him in Dutch rather than English, even when he asks them to. They hear his accent and switch into English.
For the English language, I think the underlying problem is a bit different. Often we native English speakers never really learn any other language, and by reason of not learning how things are framed in comparison, end up neglecting the quality of our own language, though we use it constantly.
Speaking English a bit is easy, speaking it really well is a bit more work. Many native speakers don't realise how much work, or that they have to work at it too.
(What's the next lingua franca going to be? When?)
- d.