on a daily basis for me.

Indian
American
Canadian
South African

Less often we talk to quite a few Israeli's (the paranoid bastards make quite a lot of world leading security products), some Australians and some Spanish.

Rarely we deal with some French and I always try to speak as much French as I can, I'm very rusty and don't get there enough to practise as much as I'd like and I'm always keen to talk in French but they always speak such good English it always reverts to that. Perhaps they get bored with my continual attempts to converse at the same level as a 5 year old french child.

edit: oh, we also deal with germans but they're ordered to only talk in english so despite my attempts to enage them at a 3 year old german child level, they formally ignore it and talk to me in english. The job description says english so ve vill talk in english.

Lots of schools are now dropping German as a language as there's simply no need for it. An increasing number of Germans are now adopting the Dutch approach of conversing in English amongst themselves.

mcboo – Member

Whichever nationality TJ is I'm going generalise are a bunch of whining patronising supercilious choppers.

That will be the English then as proven on this thread. Nowt the English like so much as a good whinge if they think anyone is interfering in their god given right to sneer at others.

Some of you guys so miss the point it simply is not true.

I think the phrase is "doth protest too much"

hahahahaha 'LOLZ'

Lots of schools are now dropping German as a language as there's simply no need for it. An increasing number of Germans are now adopting the Dutch approach of conversing in English amongst themselves.

I think that's shocking. German is a great language and a lot like English. It should be adopted as the international language for getting things done.

i work in an international airport so meet allsorts

do you work in the sweet shop?

Mrs Mugsy est francaise.

I get to deal with her now and again.

The Welsh

tails – Member

Chinese : Will bodge a solution rather than resolve a problem. Worst two words you can hear = No Problem!
you wouldn't call the olympic stadium a bodge, but they often build seats etc on the spot in a slap dash method or they will say add a cushion to a broken stool tie it with string bring it back to life.

Hmmm, I wouldn't mind betting that if you look behind the facade you would find agreat deal of bodging. A good example being a company that I've dealt with a great deal over the years in Shanghai. Went to their new head office building, which was a fabulous bespoke marble clad 30's art deco style edifice. When you went into the foyer it was impressive and very stylish. Into the lift, up onto the floor for the department I was dealing with, and so far so good, then walk into the general office and there is the department working sitting on tea chests and desks made out of planks over crates. Style over substance. Seen it 100's of times. Another example of what I mean being a door closer that I bought years ago. Had an oil leak problem, so we went back to them, and it was "no problem"….. next lot arrived and the same happened, so more heated exchanges, and it was "no problem" again and the process was repeated. When eventually out of frustration I had one in half with an angle grinder to investigate for myself, I found the source of the "no problem" problem. Their solution had been to add another oil seal to the main spindle evey time we had complained, so there it was 5 oil seals one after another and the thing was stil leaking. A flight to China later I got to the bottom of it. They were assembling the thing, spray painting it then baking it in an oven to cure the paint faster, so the oil inside was expanding and bursting the seals which in the meantime were perishing in the heat…. No Problem! I can repeat similar stories ad nauseum.

Anyway, one nationality I left out in my previous post. The Brits. Who seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Constant problem is price cutting negotiations followed immediately by complaints of "why haven't we got the rolls royce version?" type of thing. Very rarely do you find a situation where folk give a detailed specification of what they want prior to getting to price.

Germans are an ace bunch of people. I spent six months working in Bavaria at Uni and still think it's one of the best, friendliest places in the world. Good food, excellent beer, nice riding.

I just wish that my German was up to making a decent fist of talking to the locals without sounding like an idiot. For some reason I kept mixing up my A-level French with the German I learned out there, so sounding like a special child every time I got into a conversation with a local. And yes, the conversation then went back to English, which they spoke perfectly.

Years later, me and the mrs went to Berlin for a week and I was stunned to find that people were exactly the same in the north or Germany. The food was just as good and the beer just as nice. All that after I was told by my mates in Erlangen that the north was a barren wasteland filled with people that didn't care about each other.

Remind me to heckle them next time I see them.

I'd like to add Canadians to my list too. Quite possibly the nicest people on earth. Shame that their domestic wine is a bit ropey and their beer is a bit "American" (generally). I can forgive them that for having such a nice country though.

samuri – Member

do you work in the sweet shop?

I wish! lol

Countries represented on my team at the moment:

* Spain
* Cuba
* Mexico
* Columbia
* Venezuela

No, the lengua franca is not English 🙂

Somebody on here mentioned the Spanish and the 'manyana' culture – you ought to try living in Cornwall, with the 'dreckly' culture – its even worse.

We use a lot of aussie and saffer local crew. Fantastically hard grafters and always seem to have a good craic, unlike the odd english guy who gets employed who usually skives off for a fag/coffee/dump and whinges the rest of the stime.