Parlez-vous, donde esta, quanto costa…?

In a recent survey of holiday homeowners, holidaylettings.co.uk dared to ask its customers how they fared when communicating in the country of their second home. Whilst the figures won’t quash the reputation of the British being ignorant when it comes to communicating abroad, the figures do show that a surprising 49% of people have sufficient language skills to get by in their chosen location.

Of those, 22% already knew the language before purchasing abroad and 27% picked it up along the way.

More interestingly, as a measure of whether attitudes have changed over time, the figures revealed that an equal number (30%) of second homeowners who had bought their property up to ten years ago and those who have bought within the last year, said that knowing the language was beneficial when purchasing the property and dealing with local services providers.

Whilst many would expect countries closest to the UK, such as France, Spain and Italy to be the easiest for English to be used as a means of communication, 36% of owners said that they benefitted from being able to converse in Spanish, 23% in French and 12% in Italian. The next country, where it was deemed to be beneficial to be able to communicate in the native tongue was Turkey (9%).

Ross Elder, MD of holidaylettings.co.uk comments: “These results, whilst not scientific, show that British holiday homeowners and expats are far from ignorant when it comes to the languages and cultures of other countries. These are positive statistics that Britons buying abroad should be proud of, but also heed as a useful spot of advice when doing business abroad.”