Mostly fair, I really appreciate the grasp that almost all Scandinavians have on English.

Don't forget French though! I wouldn't make the assumption that travelling French people would have enough grasp of English or German to understand the announcements.

My comment is mostly a poke at the two assumptions: that non-English speaking countries should universally support English-speaking travellers, and that English is the predominant (and only other) language which should be supported.

▲ jakewins 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m baffled that any other language would be considered - the only language that comes close to English in number of speakers is Mandarin, and Mandarin has nearly half a billion fewer speakers than English.

We should be happy there is a language that has emerged for people to communicate globally without borders, and support it’s role as the worlds second language rather than work to re-fracture how people communicate

▲ manarth 10 hours ago | parent [-]

    > "I’m baffled that any other language would be considered"

There are direct trains between French and German cities, where additional announcements in French may be appropriate (and perhaps also English).

For local/regional trains, I wouldn't expect any language other than German.

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nehalem501 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would say that for long distance trains only English and the local language should be enough.

For international trains, we should have all languages of all traversed countries and English. So for example a train from Paris to Frankfurt should have announcements in French, German and English (and it is actually the case for that train, I already rode it).

But for example, the Berlin - Warsaw train has only English announcements besides the local language depending on the country the train is in (so no Polish when it is in Germany, and no German when it is in Poland), I consider this to be wrong. It should have announcements in Polish, German and English for the whole route.

	▲	stevage 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agree with your last point. That's a weird choice. At least the stops either side of the border are guaranteed to have people who natively speak the other language. I seem to recall lines in Belgium that do announcements is 4 languages: french, Flemish, German, and English.

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jakewins 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I take trains like those for work, not to France but to Amsterdam, and I don’t speak German, French or Dutch.. if we want a train system that allows Europeans to use it there needs to be announcements and signs in the language 50% of EU citizens speak