How people in different countries react when other nationalities speak their language
Reddit’s MapPorn forum is an absolute feast for map lovers, or even for anyone who enjoys seeing different nationalities get really antsy in the comments.
A map showing how people react when other nationalities speak their language has had more than 3,000 comments in 15 hours (at the time of writing) – with varying degrees of approval or irritation.
Here’s the map.
A cursory glance at the news or electoral polls should be enough to show that there’s always a variety of attitudes, but that UK one looks pretty accurate to us.
Here’s what Reddit users thought.
Me, when the Romanian person at game convention in Romania swaps to English after I, a Romanian who lived exclusively in Romania, start speaking Romanian.
Nirast25
My wife told me French people would even make fun of Belgian people because they find their French accent comical.
Hippie Thanos
Going to Spain with my rusty B1/B2 Spanish and everybody cheers you for trying and is being so kind when I am completely tanking the rolling “r”.
Olagorie
Almost every time I speak Portuguese in Portugal, the listener switches immediately to English without skipping a beat or just stares at me and speaks slowly like I have a learning disability. I haven’t made any BFFs yet.
Puzzleheaded_band429
Poland should be red.
As-bi
100% agree as a Hungarian. By far the hardest European language to learn and one of the hardest in the world, if someone foreign speaks it I’m like “I love you but genuinely why”.
MassiveHelicopter55
Lithuania and Latvia should get separate color, the language is so niche seeing tourist speaking it is the same as seeing the unicorn. And i at least saw the pictures of unicorn….
Tamsta 273c
My experience in Germany (Berlin specifically) does match the description. I tried asking for directions to somewhere in the basic German I’d learned 20 years ago in school. They didn’t acknowledge the German and just responded in English. I guess my German was good enough that they knew what I meant, but bad enough that they knew there was no point continuing the conversation in German.
wjoe
Can confirm, true in the Balkan countries, the Turk in my local kebab place (we are both expats) greeted me in my language and I only eat there now.
SoftwareSource
Bright pink, bright red and bright orange for a legend. This isn’t map, this is art. Chef’s kiss.
majcek
Me deciding to try my Norwegian in the wild is something that will haunt me forever.
Hanoiroxx
As a Eastern European I find it pretty realistic.
Lolbite83
I was in Germany and missed my train stop. Asked a guy if he spoke English and he says, “A little bit” and then speaks perfect English with full use of idioms and all that stuff.
After he helped me. I said he made one mistake in his English. “When you said ‘a little bit,’ the word you were looking for was ‘fluently.'”
Joseph4th
As a Bulgarian I can confirm if you speak to me in Bulgarian and are not one we are now friends. You don’t have a choice in this.
No_stranger7804
Ukraine is red if you speak Ukrainian, blue if you speak Russian.
Orangoo264
Physical-Reality-132 had a question.
Why is Ireland grey?
And Moist_Farmer3548 had an answer …
It’s overcast most of the time.
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