Foreign Perspectives

For various reasons the majority of online booking systems in Europe are run by UK based companies which means that we regularly get phone calls from them during the peak holiday season.

Almost without fail, they start off in French which is fair enough as they’re phoning a French hotel. However, we know they’re from the UK since we see the phone number before we answer the phone so we always start off in English.

What’s really surprising is how long the brits keep going in, usually, bad French before it dawns on them that we’ve been talking English to them from the start. Even when the penny does drop, their first question afterwards is “do you speak English”!

Isn’t it peculiar how our brains work like that?