Saturday, October 07, 2006

Ugh, The language barrier!

When I call a number and the automated service asks me to press "1" to speak to someone in French, or to stay on the line to speak to someone in English, and I do NOT press one, then, I expect someone who speaks ENGLISH to come on the line.

Is that crazy of me? I mean, is that unreasonable? In a country of mostly English speaking people, I get to talk to a Frenchy who can barely understand me. Oh, the insanity!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. I never even thought about this being an issue in Canada. People in the US bitch about the English/Spanish thing allllll the time.

How funny! Good to know it's annoying elsewhere. Hhehe!

((((((le hugs)))))))

(yeah, I don't speak French either)

CeCe said...

Chase~Funny, I wouldn't have thought it to be an issue in the STATES!

Anonymous said...

It's frustrating to try to communicate across a language barrier!

Sometimes I get someone with a thick accent, but it's not usually French. I'm sure that the French-speaking part of Canada has the same complaints about getting someone on the phone who can barely speak French.

(It bothered me a tiny bit that you used 'Frenchy' as a derogatory term.)

Ryann said...

I call into my agency out east and they all answer the phone in french (it's based in Montreal) to which I reply "Hi, can I speak to ____ Please?"

they grumble and moan and obviously roll their eyes at my lack of french... but hey I'm a BC girl!

I grew up 3000km (1850 miles for you US kids) from anyone that actually speaks french. Canada is big eh!!!

CeCe said...

Tricia~I love the FRENCHIES!

Debambam~Many of our calls get sent to India too!

Ryann~At least they understand that sentence!

Catalina said...

Well, your country is officialy bilingual...so I imagine you were phoning to an administration office or so. Obviously, something in this phoning answering machine system is not working...that is the issue.

I lived in Vancouver many years and when I chad to choose a language to do some papers I would choose french, it was hard as well...you had to wait 3 times more for everything...but I still choose french on those cases because it is something good to be able to communicate in several languages if you have the opportunity.

Spanish origin people in the States are generally bilingual of course. They speak spanish, yes, but not ONLY spanish.

To dumamban I would say that is the companys that choose to give work to people out of your country (because it is cheaper for them)that you need to blame, to the people that do the job...it is the same for inmigration: When a country accepts inmigrants is because they NEED them, not because they are the nice guys...

Best to you all