Speaking as a pax fluent only in English, but reasonably OK in French, and knowing roughly what a number of other European langauges should sound like, I find it excruciatingly embarrassing on a large British Airline when I hear people trying to do announcements in languages in which they obviously have no competence whatsoever. I'm pretty sure to the French that it must sound like 'Allo 'Allo in reverse.
Certainly when I am on an obscure carrier in, say, China, if I hear an announcement in English then I will assume that someone in the cabin crew can converse in English. It causes much frustration and confusion to determine that they can't, so I would prefer that they hadn't bothered with the announcement in the first place (except for safety information)
Last edited by christep; 20th Oct 2002 at 13:47.