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Comment by modo_mario | Hacker News Reader

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It's really not too much to expect a train going to the airport to make important announcements in English.

Where I live the bus drivers that drive the bus from the capital to the airport barely speak the local language, let alone English.

Where I live the airport bus plays a prerecorded message. It's pretty obnoxious.

And French, as Germany is adjacent to France.

There are train connections to Scandinavia, so let's add Swedish, Danish and Finnish.

Also Dutch and Polish to accommodate the other adjacent countries.

This is the sort of immature "well, actually" response that you can't afford anymore once you actually take responsibility for things. I wish more people trained themselves to have a "what if I had to do it" habit before having an opinion.

Imagine you're in charge of the train network. You have to pay for the announcements on trains. You can't reasonanbly pay 10 announcements because that's silly and expensive. If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?

It's not hard to be pragmatic.

Pragmatic is multiple languages in locations where it's highly relevant.

For example, the UK Gatwick Express train makes announcements in English, French, German and Spanish.

The Thameslink service (which also happens to travel on the same tracks and also happens to stop at Gatwick Airport) makes announcements in English only.

I wouldn't expect local or regional trains in Europe to make announcements other than in that country's native language – except perhaps where it's a service designed for airport connections or similar international travel.

>If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?

Given the demographics? Turkish or arab

> If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?

Bavarian ? /s

Look, as an EU country citizen, English is more or less the defacto language of the EU, regardless of what politicians declare. Everyone in the EU speaks english in some form as even traveling to a next door country like you state requires communication.

There are cases where in Belgium you will see signs in 4 languages (Dutch, French, Flemish and English)

Also if you ever travel in Japan, they have signs, especially on trains, all in, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English all in one. (usually rotating signage). So the precedent is there to do it on mass transit but :shrug:.

Point is, when your customer base is logically needing more language options, it should be considered.

Don't you think same could be said about German and French? I still remember the time when passports from my (now EU) country used French instead of English, and when signs for tourists were in German.

An English announcement wouldn't hurt but we don't have them on our trains here either.

> Don't you think same could be said about German and French?

That they’re the de facto languages of the EU? No, this is just factually not true. The vast majority of EU citizens speak no German at all.

>Everyone in the EU speaks english

That's not even slightly true, where in god's name did you get this idea?

Cheap strawman. Travelling Swedes, Danes, Finns and Poles will be fine with English, Dutch with either/both English or German.

Mostly fair, I really appreciate the grasp that almost all Scandinavians have on English.

Don't forget French though! I wouldn't make the assumption that travelling French people would have enough grasp of English or German to understand the announcements.

My comment is mostly a poke at the two assumptions: that non-English speaking countries should universally support English-speaking travellers, and that English is the predominant (and only other) language which should be supported.

I’m baffled that any other language would be considered - the only language that comes close to English in number of speakers is Mandarin, and Mandarin has nearly half a billion fewer speakers than English.

We should be happy there is a language that has emerged for people to communicate globally without borders, and support it’s role as the worlds second language rather than work to re-fracture how people communicate

    > "I’m baffled that any other language would be considered"

There are direct trains between French and German cities, where additional announcements in French may be appropriate (and perhaps also English).

For local/regional trains, I wouldn't expect any language other than German.

I would say that for long distance trains only English and the local language should be enough.

For international trains, we should have all languages of all traversed countries and English. So for example a train from Paris to Frankfurt should have announcements in French, German and English (and it is actually the case for that train, I already rode it).

But for example, the Berlin - Warsaw train has only English announcements besides the local language depending on the country the train is in (so no Polish when it is in Germany, and no German when it is in Poland), I consider this to be wrong. It should have announcements in Polish, German and English for the whole route.

Agree with your last point. That's a weird choice. At least the stops either side of the border are guaranteed to have people who natively speak the other language.

I seem to recall lines in Belgium that do announcements is 4 languages: french, Flemish, German, and English.

I take trains like those for work, not to France but to Amsterdam, and I don’t speak German, French or Dutch.. if we want a train system that allows Europeans to use it there needs to be announcements and signs in the language 50% of EU citizens speak

Because even in countries less developed(by western standards), there are more English announcements, so visiting tourists can also use the public transport. This isn't lack of speaking the language as well, it is more about not wanting to speak another language because "In Deutschland muss man Deutsch sprechen." It is reaching French level of racism at this point. Funny for a country that wants to attract so many international expats.

This assume that a country should please english-speaking tourists but not everyone speaks that language. Here our perception is biased because we're in a english-speaking-forum. Tourism isn't a central concern for many people/countries and not supporting it is a valid choice.

> French level of racism

Racism really ??? As a Parisian I'll struggle to make tourists feel unpleasant but I assure you there's absolutely nothing to do with race. French from outside the capital get the same treatment, they just happen to understand our insults.

English is the international language. It is mandatory to learn it as the second language in most parts of the world, even places you never heard of. It is especially a no-brainer for a person who grew up in Germany(which is one of the most developed countries in the world, and definitely has the means to educate its own people). Again, this is a problem of choice. And since Germany is a country that relies on importing educated people to keep its economy afloat, choices like these are self-sabotaging.

This isn't an english-speaking-forum, its an international one. That is the reason English is being spoken.

I get why the French is still angry about this issue and refuses to speak English, since it isn't French that is considered the international language, but English.

I wouldn't expect a French to understand this though.

Germany isn't a country that relies on importing educated people to keep it's economy afloat.

It for the most part imports comparatively uneducated people and partially to suppress the wages of it's native population.

>I wouldn't expect a French to understand this though.

A weird reaction given the way you described them earlier.

France can be afforded such idiosyncrasies because the French are generally rational thinking people, not clockwork slaves to a bureaucratic machine like Germans are made to be by their culture.

Because English has become the lingua franca for Europe. I suspect that now UK has left EU it will be much easier to accept this.

Personally I worry about the Maltese/Irish supremacy that will arise as a result.

More seriously, I suspect that

> Since the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU in 2020, the government of France has encouraged greater use of French as a working language

will hasten the move to English in official proceedings. Almost 44% of the population understand it already, and it’s unclear why the teens of the EU who already speak near-perfect English would want to learn French other than for recreation.

I still lean on UK English though, regarding way of writing and words I tend to use.

Wasn't that meant to be Esperanto? /s

Sure, but it never caught on. Not sure the point of your “/s” sign, since what you’re claiming is in fact true, and if it’s a joke it’s not a particularly funny one.

Because it's going to the airport and so might be full of travellers and tourists?

To be fair, it’s announced in the platform screens in a language abstract way, by indicating the destination and the platform segments (A,B vs C,D) to take to reach the destination.

The key is that on hundred of trains around the world this is done to indicate the convenience - these doors will be closer, etc.

Trains splitting in half are rare enough that THAT is what needs to be described.

The US equivalent is the empire builder which splits in Spokane (I believe) but it’s much more old fashioned and you have a tag above your seat showing your destination- if you somehow end up on the wrong car the conductor will wake you up and move you to the right one.

A similar one that can catch you (and has caught me) are express elevators or the two-story ones which mean you only can stop at even or odd floors depending on where you got on.

Unpopular opinion: you should learn the absolute basics of the language used in the country you are travelling to.

Seriously? That unpopular? Lmfao.

Not only unpopular, but pretty daft too. If you think the basics of a language should include "this train will separate into two at station X, please sit in the front Y carriages to get to Z" then enjoy doing a cross-Europe trip.

Not that I agree with the post you are replying to - I think having announcements in a few of the best-known languages is very reasonable to deal with tourists - but the fair expression/announcement would be something simpler like "Airport carts 1, 2 and 3. so-and-so-place carts 4 through 8". A tourist could make do with "aiport", "cart" and basic numbers in their vocabulary. If I recall, I was able to get to the correct train(s) in Italy with no more Italian than "treno", the name of the city, and "linea gialla" or something.

You can't just learn a few words and expect to follow a train announcement, particularly when it's not obvious from context (anything other than announcing the next station).

I have done cross-Europe trips before and I needed way less than that.

Well in this case this is what you would've needed. Either you ignored that when you replied, or you didn't care.

I planned my trips (read: spent a couple of minutes on them). I went through all countries from Budapest to London. I was only 16 years old at one time. I did fine. Adults, in the age of smartphones are having issues? It actually is wild to me.

Being 16 was a benefit - you didn’t know anything so you checked basically everything.

This kind of thing captures older adults who know everything and have never heard of a trainset split.

I made a similar mistake years ago in NY - I assumed that the impressive subway system could get me to the airport, but you transfer onto a bus that gives you a VERY detailed tour of some neighborhoods.

I did not check out everything, I had to be somewhere.

I would have mentioned running away at age 13 with no destination in mind but I never left the country.

Going from the Netherlands to Budapest I started my journey with Deutsche Bahn. My train also did the split in half and go different directions trick. Was I supposed to learn Dutch, German, and Hungarian in order to buy my train tickets?

I said "travelling TO", and most of the time you do not need to know anything apart from the name of the city... and then I presume you have a smartphone as well. Come on.

What did you do once you arrived in Budapest? Did you do your research or did you get scammed by the taxi mafia as well?

If you travel to Budapest from Berlin you buy the ticket from DB and the crew changes as follows: German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian. None of the first three crews would speak Hungarian. Luckily all will be able to communicate in English.

(regular announcements oftentimes won't be in Hungarian until you are in Hungary, that depends on the train origin, but I would only expect local+English)

> What did you do once you arrived in Budapest?

You will be perfectly fine staying in Budapest with just English; you can learn hello, please, and thank you to be polite. This goes for most bigger European cities, outside of France I guess.

Even France you can survive with English, just try some French and ask “how do you say” a number of times.

French people are quite friendly if you don’t exhibit all the worst symptoms of stereotypical tourists.

Basics for a casual traveller are 'hello, 'please', 'thank you', 'two beers', 'can I have the bill', and 'I'll take the schnitzel please'.

Perfectly understanding rapidly-spoken German explaining something esoteric about the splitting of a train is magnitudes, years of study beyond casual traveller level.

I took French for 5 years and I don't think I learned enough to understand a tannoy announcement that the train was being split into two parts. Tannoy announcements aren't the easiest to understand even for native speakers.

It’s been a staple of comedy routines that train announcers can’t be understood even by native speakers.

Knowing the basics is knowing how to salute, thanks, ask basic directions. You can't ask everyone to know every single language they visit and be able to understand stuff mentionned in a foreign language in a possibly noisy environment and from an only half decent speaker system.

> Unpopular opinion: you should learn the absolute basics of the language used in the country you are travelling to.

As a German I disagree with this. Europe is a single market, we want to have people getting around crossing borders at all times to get stuff done. It pays to make things easier.

If you're going for a three-weeks leisure trip, sure, learn how to say hi and thank-you.

In India train announcements in stations are made in the regional language, English and Hindi.

I most most places to English. Honestly it should be default to have the local language and English.

Belgium gave me one of the more annoying train experiences when I was a younger man. I was in Leuven for a conference, and had decided to bring my then girlfriend (now wife) for a trip, after which we would take the Eurostar to London. On the ticket, it said Brussels-Midi, but after happily boarding the train, we only saw the following related options on the train map for stops:

1. Brussel-Noord

2. Brussel-Centraal

3. Brussel-Zuid

So here we were, not speaking the language, rushing for a train that we were at risk of being late for, and not having a clear idea of the actual stop to get off of.

And the people on the train? Totally unhelpful. "Eurostar"? Shrug. "Train to London?" Blank looks.

Anyway we winged it and made it, but still a damn stupid set up if you want to be welcoming to tourists (and their money).

Brussels in particular perhaps is sort of non-intuitive because, even (or perhaps especially) if you know a little bit of French, the station names don't obviously correlate to their relative locations. There is a logic but it's not obvious to someone not used to it--and, honestly, I'd have to go online to figure it out again.

Was it Centraal? That would have been my guess.

Nope, the biggest station is actually Midi/Zuid.

Hah nope! Even as a Belgian I find the naming of the Brussels train stations maddening. Brussels-Midi is the south station, so Brussel-Zuid. Midi allegedly means south in French, but I've never actually heard it being used over "sud", also south.

In conversation, midi also means noon (e.g. used as "meet me at noon"), which for my brain correlates more with central than south, given the context of a day.

Not a linguist, so what do I know, maybe someone else can chime in.

This is indeed the bizarre convo I was having with myself, having (allegedly) taken some French classes, I was racking my brain on which was the correct answer. We always used "sud", and Midi didn't seem to be south, eliminating Zuid (Since Zuid/Sud seemed similar), and yes Midi seems "mid-day", so maybe "Central" since it's the center of the day, but then there's "Centraal", so why would there be Centraal and "Brussels Middle"?!

So we winged it and got off at Zuid (since Noord felt wrong and Centraal definitely seemed wrong) and luckily it was the right one.

We did have a wonderful evening (perhaps too much so) the night before at a nice craft beer bar in Leuven which had 100 beers on tap, and it had just bought over by a nice young couple as well. So perhaps neither of us were in the right state that morning to navigate a confusing train map! Good memories.

Southern France is also called le Midi!

BTW, Ukrainian shares the same logic, but it also calls the north "midnight" (північ). Meanwhile, Armenian calls the east and west "sun exit" and "sun entrance" (արևելք, արևմուտք) respectively.

In Europe (and anywhere else north of the Tropic of Cancer), the sun is always approximately due south at noon. That’s the reason for the connection, and “midi” indeed means both south (in some contexts) and noon in French.

Makes a lot of sense, thanks for the insight!

I was in Belgium going to Antwerp and sometimes the French name -- Anvers -- was used. At least in e.g. Valais in CH cities that have dual names are shown with both, e.g. Sierre/Siders.

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