If You’re American, You’ve Likely Done One Of These Embarrassing Things When Traveling Abroad

Nearly a quarter of surveyed US travelers believe that speaking louder will magically make English comprehensible to non-speakers. This scenario typically plays out in restaurants, shops, and tourist sites where voices rise from casual conversation to near shouting, often accompanied by exaggerated pointing.

Esther Gutierrez Eugenio, who has a Ph.D. in language education and speaks nine languages, has spent 25 years researching how we learn them, including work with the United Nations, and has seen this many times.

“While they do it with the intention of making communication easier, it comes across as condescending, a bit as if they were assuming the other person was a child or had an impairment. It’s really embarrassing, especially in bars and restaurants, where the waiting staff have no choice but to patiently smile,” she explained.

The volume approach becomes doubly ineffective because Americans continue using complex phrasal verbs while raising their voices. “Another thing that is very embarrassing is how they just try to repeat the same thing slower and louder while still using super complicated language that foreigners are not likely to understand,” Gutierrez Eugenio noted.

The problem often lies in Americans’ instinctive use of complex expressions. “They use phrasal verbs (pick up, sort out, figure out) naturally and think foreigners will understand them, but these are really hard for non-native speakers to learn,” she added.