Originally Posted by
Scrotum Scissor
Zeuhlmate, man; on spending a few days in Copenhagen this last summer it struck me how hopelessly, almost provocatively silly some of that imaginary lingual barrier works with younger folks in your city. Even at the hotel (where I've been staying on each visit these recent years) there were 25-30 YOs who somehow pretended not to understand basic, clearly spoken Norwegian and would rather have me address them in my fluent English - which I promptly refused to. I tried pointing out to them that Norwegians would normally actually have a harder time discerning Danish than the other way around, but as it turned out they didn't even recognize which language I adhered to in the first place; "Sorry, we don't understand Faeroian here". They were simply unable to identify my tongue. But then again it appeared as if every fifth word they used between themselves were basically borrowed from English.
The whole ordeal was quite embarrassing, and I admit to being somewhat pissed off at the fact that it's essentially a generational issue; they are sloppy and unwilling to "take the time" to listen to what you're telling them, preferring it would seem to rather treat conversation as an arbitrary sonic in volume. When I left there I just had to express my sentiment to a taxi driver who was somehwere in his late 50s, apparently from Ålborg; he confirmed just about every suspicion I presented, complaining that it's not merely a question of lingual barriers - according to him it was a case of cultural ignorance in general. Which, if true, is mildly disconcerting.
The beautiful gal who served me Scotch at La Fontaine was an exception, though. She was even able to perform a modest verbal transaction on music. Those jazz women...