I’m about to sound like the ignorant American I am, so I apologize in advance! We’re looking at a trip to Germany, and possibly Prague, and we’ve noticed that a lot of the hotel names are French and a couple hotels that aren’t named in French have replied to comments with things like “Bonjour! etc etc” What’s up with this? Is French just the most commonly spoken common language, even in Germany and Czechia? (I know that Germany and Czechia have their own languages, of course.) Or is it something else?

  • dot20@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    Here in the Netherlands my level of German is widely called “steenkolen Duits” (coal German) because it’s course, harsh, hard and dirty)

    That’s actually not the etymology. Steenkolenduits (spelled without a space) is a riff on steenkolenengels, which was the basic/broken English spoken by dockworkers with sailors on incoming British coal ships (steenkolenboten).

    https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steenkolenduits