I agree with this. I spend alot of time in Spain and we've met alot of English people who livethere full time, they mainly stick to groups of other English people and most of them only have enough Spanish to get by, they don't seem to have much interest in integrating themselves with the Spanish fully at all. Infact the area I go to, the people there speak Catalan rather than Spanish but the English people only learn Spanish so really aren't actually learning their native tongue at all eventhough they all understand Spanish which is fine if that's how they want to live and work there personally If I were moving there full time I'd rather immerse myself into the Spanish culture

ETA : I'm sure the same is true for Irish living there but I've mostly met English people in our area

Agreed. Obviously its desirable to speak the language but its incredibly difficult to be near fluent or conversational in another language, especially if they're learning late in life and when its a language as complicated as English is

Yeah, people who speak English as a first language often don't realise that it's a very HARD language to learn as a second language. A strange ancient blend of Latin, Greek and Germanic origins. A thousand ways to say the same thing, grammar "rules" that chop and change and have exceptions without warning. Weird spellings of many words... It must be a total headache :joker:

I'm trying to learn Spanish at the moment, what's the story with masculine and feminine words like seriously? Ugh

Yeah and what if they don't identify as either gender and want to be known as something else :worry:

:joker:

:laugh:

Of course those coming here (long term) should make an effort to learn English.

Having said that, when I was living in Greece (6 months at a time) I worked very hard to learn Greek despite the huge majority of people there speaking English anyway. So maybe my standards are just higher than everyone elses, or maybe I'm not as antisocial as those who think knowing a countries main language is not important...

I'm having that with German at the moment actually.:laugh:

Masculine, feminine, and neutral objects.

I think acceptable is perhaps the wrong word/question. Of course you can be in any country you don't speak the language of but if you are planning to emigrate/live in a country with a different language then you ought to learn the language so you can communicate. In fact it's rather stupid and insular not to. There are many practical reasons you would need to speak the language like speaking with teachers of your children, banking etc etc. A bank won't speak to someone who isn't you to deal with your account.

There is a lot of French in it too.