Hacker News Reader

Comment by stevage | Hacker News Reader

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

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 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

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.

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.

>Everyone in the EU speaks english

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com