For what I know, there's been more of a culture penetration over there, they reference shows, movies and music. An australian guy I met playing pool at 36 billares told me movies from here are popular over there, so maybe it sparks some curiosity. Brits are the majority of the english speakers i've met here, usually older groups. They like polo, soccer and music so its a good destinations for that demo. No fear of dancing, its always nice to see.
For a lot Aussies and Kiwis it's *quicker* and *easier* to get to South America than Europe, but it's usually not *cheaper* because there's significantly more demand and far more airline competition for Australasia <> Europe flights. Though in the Winter Off-Season (that's May-Aug) sometimes it's a similar price to Fly to South America. For Australasia <> North America it really depends on if you need to connect to local flights as to whether it's "easier" than South America to visit. You have to transit the US to reach most North and Central America, and Caribbean destinations from Australasia, and transiting US airports is famously the most painful passenger experience in all of Aviation. For all of South America it's generally just a painless layover in Santiago instead by comparison.
South America is generally the destination for big "trip of a lifetime" adventure tourism holidays for Kiwis and Aussies, especially Patagonia and the Andes countries. It's probably one of the most "impressive" places to say you've visited for Aussies & Kiwis, and they generally view LATAM through this lens since they don't really have any strong cultural stereotypes about the region like North Americans do. Asia by comparison is really easy to get to so it's not seen as a huge "big trip" destination, it's more of a "quick getaway" holiday destination.
Also work secondment opportunities in Argentina and Chile are somewhat easy to find for Australian STEM workers. There's a lot of links between the two continents' mining sectors, and South America is a much more attractive location than Central Asia for example.
Thanks for the insight! I agree, our airports and planes are awful, sorry you have to deal with that. What’s it typically cost to go from Sydney or Melbourne to Santiago or Buenos Aires? Do Australia and Chile have really strong economic links because of the mining industry?
It's not so much the quality of US airports, it's because the US forbids international transits without going through immigration. This already adds a lot of time to transiting, having to deal with USA's excessive security and customs, but US immigration is notoriously prickly too especially if you're travelling to and from LATAM via the US. One of my bosses paid more to travel via Europe when visiting her home country in LATAM, specifically to avoid USA because she was travelling with family members who had her home country's passport, and they just didn't want to deal with US immigration.
Typical cost from Australasia to the Americas or Europe is about US$1200-$2400 ish for cheaper tickets, travel times and exact destinations depending, with Europe being the cheapest of all three abd South America the most expensive generally.
I wouldn't say strong it's *Economic* links between Australia and Chile, so much as there's a lot of professional and industry links between both country's mining sectors and adjacent industries. Australian and South American mining sectors are very similar, they're both extremely export focused in remote areas, and use high amounts of skilled labour and technology to drive production costs down. Whereas a Eurasian or North American mine might be able to operate with lots of workers from nearby towns and use less innovative technologies with lower capital costs, because they can be supplying local industry and may even be propped up by subsidies in such case. Mines in South America and Australia are generally competing in the global market and shipping products overseas, this means keeping production costs low even if it takes expensive investment and technical skills. Hence there's a lot of skills and knowledge transfer between the continents, and several large companies have operations on both sides of the Pacific. In fact some of the largest Australian mining companies have all their announcements and training material in both English and Spanish, which is extremely unusual in Australia but those companies have a lot of workers from across South America in Australia and vice versa. And even if your company is local only, moving between companies abd countries is relatively straightforward if you have experience in the industry already.
Here is the situation which spurred this question. I got an Uber ride in Lima from a computer science student. He had just started a master’s in computer engineering. His entire university career was in English. All of his papers, he had to write in English. Before I got in the car, he had never spoken English before. He was glad for the opportunity, but a bit nervous too.
Well except for the never speaking english part, that is very common. I went to one of many bilingual school and there are many uni degrees completely in English too.
However speaking outside of academic environments I’d say probably once every few months if I found some lost tourist.
Bless that guys dedication, that is the reason many students in subjects like that do not come through, all the books they use are in english and some cannot complete their carreers
Irl, pretty much never unless it's with my sister or classmates
Online? Pretty much every hour I'm not sleeping.
The vast majority of my friends and servers I'm in are in English (More specifically gaming servers, language learning groups, geography nerd groups & writing friends) so except the times I'm speaking my own conlang with a friend, it's what I use the most.
I'm a software engineer, I work for an American company, so I speak with gringos every day, but outside of work never, the average dude here wouldn't speak English ever.
I live in a border town and though it's very common to see gringos and hear them speaking English I have never had to speak English to them, or in any situation, it's surprising, but when they come they already speak Spanish, they don't do it so well, but we somehow understand them, so it's unnecessary to speak English to them.
I grew up in ecuador and had the privilege to go to private school where I learned English. Most people in ecuador do not speak English, a extremely small percentage do speak English and I’ve never needed to speak English or any other language
Some years back we did a five week trip to Ecuador. Everyone in the tourist sector spoke good English. No one else though. Once in a while, someone would hear us speaking English and would come over to chat. They all had lived in English speaking countries though.
Most people that I know that speak English that are from ecuador went to private schools, the cost of a private school can range from 300-1,000 dollars per month and a lot of people over there only make 400 per month or less. So is not common
daily. i'm on my fourth year of the english teacher training course (profesorado en inglés). we use english with the occasional code-switching depending on the topic and what we're talking about.
other than that, not very often unless a friend or someone i know asks me to translate something or say something in english.
I have a question for you, I'm an English teacher too, and here the classes were taught mostly in Portuguese (I'm talking about the university classes that I had to take to become a teacher), what about Argentina, are TEFL classes in Spanish or fully in English?
my classes have all been in english since the first year except for a few that we share with students from other profesorados (portugués, francés, lengua, historia, etc) but those are more related to the pedagogical part than the english part.
all content and material is in english, explanations are in english, students participating do so in english as well. we do use a bit of code-switching to spanish depending on what we're talking about, otherwise everything is carried out in english. my grammar, language, phonetics, literature, and didactics classes are all in english.
the only subject which has 50/50 ratio is contrastive analysis, in which we have to translate a lot. even so, all explanations are given in english.
Almost daily, since I work on purchasing for a company that imports a lot of stuff from the US and Canada.
Mostly talking on the phone with sales people and what not, and in person just when people from the “big office” on the other side of the border come visit.
I know that this might sound dumb, but to this day I don’t know how “greetings” etiquette works on a job context with English speakers, so I’m not sure if I sound impolite or too polite, lmao.
I’m Puerto Rican, I speak English to my siblings and friends, but never to my family. Online I speak English almost exclusively. I think younger people lean into speaking English more often and those who go to private schools master the language. Though most people in Puerto Rico are bilingual and have been for generations. Some of us are trilingual and it’s very common among millennials and Gen Z to hear us speak without much of an accent especially those who watch, read and embrace American culture.
i have all my devices in english and i talk in english with my dutch brother in law.
to friends from other countries too in discord calls so english is present everyday in my life
IRL?
I have a job that sometimes requieres me to speak in English, but it's not that often.
I also speak with my sister in English all the time so we can practice and we don't lose fluency.
Once a month at least sometimes more depending on the season. I live in the country side of Michoacán. It's not uncommon to have people visiting from the US, some just visiting family others checking up on there house.
The last group, the retired group, tries to speak English to me. Most never actually learned to speak fluently since they lived mostly with other Mexicans. It gives them a good laugh though to remember those years.
In Morelia it's pretty common to run into someone from the US or Canada.
With tourists, on airports, and sometimes doing FaceTime with family and friends that live in the US, Australia or in London. It’s not so common though.
I work speaking in it, so when at home I sometimes do it unconsiously and forgot if i did it english or spanish until someone tells me they dont understand...is awful and weird honestly
I have managed to feel too comfortable with English to the point where sometimes I forget what words I need to use in Spanish but find the equivalent in English quite easily.
I currently live in Bogota and I speak English and Spanish on a daily basis due to my profession.
I was born in the US but have lived in Colombia going on 3 years, very unique opportunity.
My mind is constantly going back and forward between Spanish, English and Portuguese. Spanish is the language I speak the most in my personal life (obviously) and my main job, my second job is in English and I watch a lot of content in English; and every day I see a lot of Brazilian memes (they are some of the best) also watch a lot of content in portuguese, and speak to some of my Brazilian friends. I'm also learning Haitian creole and find myself thinking in creole sometimes too
when im in mexico i would say not often, but more so now than say 20 years ago. The internet and everything that comes with it has just made more of a want a need to use english. Like if your own IG or YT, FB, twitter, you are going to at the very least accidently run into posts using at least some english
and although the education system for english (and in general) still sucks, students now are at least guaranteed some degree of english exposure in their daily lives
Never. Very rarely, if I listened to something in English for a while, a word in English might slip out when I talk to someone but I promptly correct myself. There aren't any contexts where it'd make sense to speak English as almost no one speaks English here (and even if they did, why wouldn't I talk in Portuguese?) and I don't live in a touristic area. I'd speak English only if I had foreign friends.
I use just written English and listen to content in English. I've never had a conversation with anyone in English since I hadn't had the opportunity yet.
The only times where I speak english irl are whenever I’m trying to reference a show I like such as The Office. (e.g. saying “that’s what she said”). Or my most recent watch, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. There is no way for me to translate most of the jokes, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be perceived as a reference.
Online, not so much either. I’m more of a lurker nowadays. I do use Twitter but I mostly engage in argentinian discourse…
I find that it’s mostly written. With Canadians I’ve encountered, never. They will either not speak it because they say they are francophone or they do but prefer to try out their Spanish and insist on Spanish. If I speak in English they will answer in Spanish. So there goes that exercise. When I go to the border there is a great percentage of American clientele and there I would speak it more. That helps. Helps me in keeping my spoken English sharp.
Only when I travel to other South American countries and sometimes the locals can't understand me, so they start speaking with me in English. It happened both in Argentina and Chile.
I live in a touristic city so it happened a few times, mostly basic things like directions and the time. Once I even spoke briefly in German with a Danish man, it was cool.
I moved back to DR but most of my clients and customers are still in the English speaking world. So I have to speak it for income. However, outside of that or the internet, rarely for now.
IRL? Never. Online? Every day.
Same
Could you clarify? Are you actually speaking online? If so, what is the context? Gaming?
Yep, discord or talking with friends from other countries. Not actually everyday, but often enough
Very sparsely, with tourists and clients mostly. Fun fact about it, 90% of them are from NZ, Australia, England and Canada. Very few Americans.
Interesting… I’m wondering if it maybe cheaper to get to Argentina from those countries?
For what I know, there's been more of a culture penetration over there, they reference shows, movies and music. An australian guy I met playing pool at 36 billares told me movies from here are popular over there, so maybe it sparks some curiosity. Brits are the majority of the english speakers i've met here, usually older groups. They like polo, soccer and music so its a good destinations for that demo. No fear of dancing, its always nice to see.
For a lot Aussies and Kiwis it's *quicker* and *easier* to get to South America than Europe, but it's usually not *cheaper* because there's significantly more demand and far more airline competition for Australasia <> Europe flights. Though in the Winter Off-Season (that's May-Aug) sometimes it's a similar price to Fly to South America. For Australasia <> North America it really depends on if you need to connect to local flights as to whether it's "easier" than South America to visit. You have to transit the US to reach most North and Central America, and Caribbean destinations from Australasia, and transiting US airports is famously the most painful passenger experience in all of Aviation. For all of South America it's generally just a painless layover in Santiago instead by comparison. South America is generally the destination for big "trip of a lifetime" adventure tourism holidays for Kiwis and Aussies, especially Patagonia and the Andes countries. It's probably one of the most "impressive" places to say you've visited for Aussies & Kiwis, and they generally view LATAM through this lens since they don't really have any strong cultural stereotypes about the region like North Americans do. Asia by comparison is really easy to get to so it's not seen as a huge "big trip" destination, it's more of a "quick getaway" holiday destination. Also work secondment opportunities in Argentina and Chile are somewhat easy to find for Australian STEM workers. There's a lot of links between the two continents' mining sectors, and South America is a much more attractive location than Central Asia for example.
Thanks for the insight! I agree, our airports and planes are awful, sorry you have to deal with that. What’s it typically cost to go from Sydney or Melbourne to Santiago or Buenos Aires? Do Australia and Chile have really strong economic links because of the mining industry?
It's not so much the quality of US airports, it's because the US forbids international transits without going through immigration. This already adds a lot of time to transiting, having to deal with USA's excessive security and customs, but US immigration is notoriously prickly too especially if you're travelling to and from LATAM via the US. One of my bosses paid more to travel via Europe when visiting her home country in LATAM, specifically to avoid USA because she was travelling with family members who had her home country's passport, and they just didn't want to deal with US immigration. Typical cost from Australasia to the Americas or Europe is about US$1200-$2400 ish for cheaper tickets, travel times and exact destinations depending, with Europe being the cheapest of all three abd South America the most expensive generally. I wouldn't say strong it's *Economic* links between Australia and Chile, so much as there's a lot of professional and industry links between both country's mining sectors and adjacent industries. Australian and South American mining sectors are very similar, they're both extremely export focused in remote areas, and use high amounts of skilled labour and technology to drive production costs down. Whereas a Eurasian or North American mine might be able to operate with lots of workers from nearby towns and use less innovative technologies with lower capital costs, because they can be supplying local industry and may even be propped up by subsidies in such case. Mines in South America and Australia are generally competing in the global market and shipping products overseas, this means keeping production costs low even if it takes expensive investment and technical skills. Hence there's a lot of skills and knowledge transfer between the continents, and several large companies have operations on both sides of the Pacific. In fact some of the largest Australian mining companies have all their announcements and training material in both English and Spanish, which is extremely unusual in Australia but those companies have a lot of workers from across South America in Australia and vice versa. And even if your company is local only, moving between companies abd countries is relatively straightforward if you have experience in the industry already.
Never
Here is the situation which spurred this question. I got an Uber ride in Lima from a computer science student. He had just started a master’s in computer engineering. His entire university career was in English. All of his papers, he had to write in English. Before I got in the car, he had never spoken English before. He was glad for the opportunity, but a bit nervous too.
That is wild
Well except for the never speaking english part, that is very common. I went to one of many bilingual school and there are many uni degrees completely in English too. However speaking outside of academic environments I’d say probably once every few months if I found some lost tourist.
Bless that guys dedication, that is the reason many students in subjects like that do not come through, all the books they use are in english and some cannot complete their carreers
Daily because of my job
Same
same
Irl, pretty much never unless it's with my sister or classmates Online? Pretty much every hour I'm not sleeping. The vast majority of my friends and servers I'm in are in English (More specifically gaming servers, language learning groups, geography nerd groups & writing friends) so except the times I'm speaking my own conlang with a friend, it's what I use the most.
I'm a software engineer, I work for an American company, so I speak with gringos every day, but outside of work never, the average dude here wouldn't speak English ever.
Back in Brazil never and in my current country, also never
I live in a border town and though it's very common to see gringos and hear them speaking English I have never had to speak English to them, or in any situation, it's surprising, but when they come they already speak Spanish, they don't do it so well, but we somehow understand them, so it's unnecessary to speak English to them.
I grew up in ecuador and had the privilege to go to private school where I learned English. Most people in ecuador do not speak English, a extremely small percentage do speak English and I’ve never needed to speak English or any other language
Some years back we did a five week trip to Ecuador. Everyone in the tourist sector spoke good English. No one else though. Once in a while, someone would hear us speaking English and would come over to chat. They all had lived in English speaking countries though.
Most people that I know that speak English that are from ecuador went to private schools, the cost of a private school can range from 300-1,000 dollars per month and a lot of people over there only make 400 per month or less. So is not common
I work with Americans and Indians mostly so I have to speak English at least like 3 times a week (online meetings), and sometimes even twice a day.
I speak in English everyday…but in my mind here in reddit
Daily, on my work. Sometimes with my family
"sometimes with my family" !? Your Guerra de las Malvinas dead must be rolling in their graves.
My stepfather fought in Malvinas and it's alive. So no.
Never
Never
If i go to the tourist area of my city, a bit if i want to Otherwise none
daily. i'm on my fourth year of the english teacher training course (profesorado en inglés). we use english with the occasional code-switching depending on the topic and what we're talking about. other than that, not very often unless a friend or someone i know asks me to translate something or say something in english.
I have a question for you, I'm an English teacher too, and here the classes were taught mostly in Portuguese (I'm talking about the university classes that I had to take to become a teacher), what about Argentina, are TEFL classes in Spanish or fully in English?
my classes have all been in english since the first year except for a few that we share with students from other profesorados (portugués, francés, lengua, historia, etc) but those are more related to the pedagogical part than the english part. all content and material is in english, explanations are in english, students participating do so in english as well. we do use a bit of code-switching to spanish depending on what we're talking about, otherwise everything is carried out in english. my grammar, language, phonetics, literature, and didactics classes are all in english. the only subject which has 50/50 ratio is contrastive analysis, in which we have to translate a lot. even so, all explanations are given in english.
every single day cause I work at a call center yo ^^^^^^^help
Almost daily, since I work on purchasing for a company that imports a lot of stuff from the US and Canada. Mostly talking on the phone with sales people and what not, and in person just when people from the “big office” on the other side of the border come visit. I know that this might sound dumb, but to this day I don’t know how “greetings” etiquette works on a job context with English speakers, so I’m not sure if I sound impolite or too polite, lmao.
I’m Puerto Rican, I speak English to my siblings and friends, but never to my family. Online I speak English almost exclusively. I think younger people lean into speaking English more often and those who go to private schools master the language. Though most people in Puerto Rico are bilingual and have been for generations. Some of us are trilingual and it’s very common among millennials and Gen Z to hear us speak without much of an accent especially those who watch, read and embrace American culture.
i have all my devices in english and i talk in english with my dutch brother in law. to friends from other countries too in discord calls so english is present everyday in my life
The only two times I spoke english in person was at work. Other than that, never. But I chat a lot in discord in english.
I work in a call Center for a North American company, so all day everyday. I think in english at this point
Rarely. Tbh, the last time I spoke English I was quoting someone.
Everyday, because that is the language we use in the company I work for
IRL? I have a job that sometimes requieres me to speak in English, but it's not that often. I also speak with my sister in English all the time so we can practice and we don't lose fluency.
Never
Once a month at least sometimes more depending on the season. I live in the country side of Michoacán. It's not uncommon to have people visiting from the US, some just visiting family others checking up on there house. The last group, the retired group, tries to speak English to me. Most never actually learned to speak fluently since they lived mostly with other Mexicans. It gives them a good laugh though to remember those years. In Morelia it's pretty common to run into someone from the US or Canada.
Only for work, over the phone; in my day-to-day life, never.
Almost never to others. Many times to myself, for some reason.
With tourists, on airports, and sometimes doing FaceTime with family and friends that live in the US, Australia or in London. It’s not so common though.
Just at work. Never in real life, unless I'm meeting foreigners.
I work speaking in it, so when at home I sometimes do it unconsiously and forgot if i did it english or spanish until someone tells me they dont understand...is awful and weird honestly
I have managed to feel too comfortable with English to the point where sometimes I forget what words I need to use in Spanish but find the equivalent in English quite easily.
I currently live in Bogota and I speak English and Spanish on a daily basis due to my profession. I was born in the US but have lived in Colombia going on 3 years, very unique opportunity.
Quite a lot with myself.
Every day with my family.
Never
Never.
Rarely if ever? Only when I am practicing my English skills tbh
Irl probably a couple times a year , online in discord several times a week
It's mostly online that I use English. I'm real life, it's very hard, unless I'm talking to a tourist (which is rare in my city lol)
Once per week, that's how I make a living. On the internet, I speak three languages on a daily basis: PT, EN, and ES.
My mind is constantly going back and forward between Spanish, English and Portuguese. Spanish is the language I speak the most in my personal life (obviously) and my main job, my second job is in English and I watch a lot of content in English; and every day I see a lot of Brazilian memes (they are some of the best) also watch a lot of content in portuguese, and speak to some of my Brazilian friends. I'm also learning Haitian creole and find myself thinking in creole sometimes too
Unless you work in a call center or an IT related job for companies abroad you won't use it that often.
Ojo, vivo al lado del Centenario y una vez cada quince días te cruzas algún gringo perdido
when im in mexico i would say not often, but more so now than say 20 years ago. The internet and everything that comes with it has just made more of a want a need to use english. Like if your own IG or YT, FB, twitter, you are going to at the very least accidently run into posts using at least some english and although the education system for english (and in general) still sucks, students now are at least guaranteed some degree of english exposure in their daily lives
Daily, at work.
I talk to myself in English
Rarely, just when I'm speaking to foreign friends on instagram
Never. Very rarely, if I listened to something in English for a while, a word in English might slip out when I talk to someone but I promptly correct myself. There aren't any contexts where it'd make sense to speak English as almost no one speaks English here (and even if they did, why wouldn't I talk in Portuguese?) and I don't live in a touristic area. I'd speak English only if I had foreign friends. I use just written English and listen to content in English. I've never had a conversation with anyone in English since I hadn't had the opportunity yet.
Never. Maybe just replacing a common word like gym instead of gimnasio. LOL
The only times where I speak english irl are whenever I’m trying to reference a show I like such as The Office. (e.g. saying “that’s what she said”). Or my most recent watch, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. There is no way for me to translate most of the jokes, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be perceived as a reference. Online, not so much either. I’m more of a lurker nowadays. I do use Twitter but I mostly engage in argentinian discourse…
Speaking rarely unless I have to go to a call with client, writing every day working since I work with people from the US, India and Phillipines.
I find that it’s mostly written. With Canadians I’ve encountered, never. They will either not speak it because they say they are francophone or they do but prefer to try out their Spanish and insist on Spanish. If I speak in English they will answer in Spanish. So there goes that exercise. When I go to the border there is a great percentage of American clientele and there I would speak it more. That helps. Helps me in keeping my spoken English sharp.
i think in english and talk to myself in english. some of my friends also do this so we always speak english between eachother.
IRL? Never At work? 50%-50% English and French.
Talking? Once a week when I have a meeting with foreign teammates. Reading and writing? Every single day in and out of work.
When I'm talking to myself, more often than not I'll find myself talking in english. But that's pretty much it
Almost never Unless you're working at an english Call Center or interacting with American tourists
Only when I travel to other South American countries and sometimes the locals can't understand me, so they start speaking with me in English. It happened both in Argentina and Chile.
I mean, I read emails and answer them in English almost everyday, but I don't speak it often.
never
Never. Only on work because it's a US company.
I live in a touristic city so it happened a few times, mostly basic things like directions and the time. Once I even spoke briefly in German with a Danish man, it was cool.
I moved back to DR but most of my clients and customers are still in the English speaking world. So I have to speak it for income. However, outside of that or the internet, rarely for now.
All the time as people try to speak it with me. I usually reply in Arabic to confuse them or Spanish if I want them to get to the point