Languages

 International travel has been one of the great opportunities of retirement. We traveled some when we were younger, but now we have more time and more money. At one time I was hesitant to spend time in countries where I could not speak the language. I have always had difficulty getting to where I wanted to go and have often been lost. This does not increase your confidence when you cannot communicate regarding your situation.

We have spent time on this trip with people from many different countries and different ages. We seldom have found a situation in which English did not work as a way to communicate. Probably those folks able to afford travel have had the resources and professional interests that make learning English a goal. If all else fails, pretty much anyone we encounter wants to know about our take on the political situation in the U.S.

We have noticed one thing about the use of languages on this ship that seems a bit odd. Everything is repeated in multiple languages - Norwegian, German, and English. If there is an announcement over the ship's speakers - three languages. If there is a presentation on what passengers might see, history, or other matters of interest, the speaker presents a short segment and then repeats the same segment in the other languages. This is a bit inefficient as anything takes much longer, but I suppose the alternative would be to have separate sessions to repeat a given session, but that would require a lot more time for presenters. After experiencing this for several sessions, I began to anticipate the laugh lines to know where she was at when speaking in one of the other languages. I have decided the woman who makes these presentations has considerable skill, I would be worried that by the third language, I would not remember if I told a given joke before or not.

We took an outing today that included a visit to an ancient Lutheran church. Most of the churches in Norway seem to be Lutheran. The same thing happened. The Paster provided an abbreviated service again duplicating his remarks three times. The handout for the congregation's participation included a prayer and hymn in multiple languages (the service was again conducted in Norwegian, German, and English). On the way out, I noticed a history of the church for purchase that was available in three languages.