As minority or someone who looks like the locals do you get treated better for speaking English and being from the West?

[Yohan]

I think we are talking about two different groups. I'm mostly talking about travellers. For instance, you are German, right? Many German travellers actually did not want to speak German with me. They would switch to English each time I would try to speak to them in German....

Yes, I am a native German speaker, from Austria (EU).

In general if you make contact to somebody you will finally after a short time use the language which is easier for both participants to communicate.

We in Continental Europe learn obligatory basic English in school, starting with 8 years old.
Therefore often the English language skill from a German native speaker is better than the German language skill from an English native speaker.
German is not such an easy language due to complicated grammatical rules.

On the other side, often educated people from East Europe are fairly good with German and despite I was working for East Europe for 5 years while still living in Europe I never learnt any East European language... because they could communicate with me in fluent German. -

You are just choosing the language which is easier for BOTH of you.
My Japanese family is not good in foreign languages - I never use any other language than Japanese....

However my former neighbour while living in Tokyo was from Korea, and as my Korean language knowledge is not fluent, but his Japanese was very good, we used Japanese ....

Often English and French are useful as an intermediate language. I cannot speak Khmer and my few Thai words are not enough either and most people in Cambodia cannot speak German, so I try in English or French....

It depends on the situation - on language knowledge of BOTH persons talking to each other. It has nothing to do with boys or girls, not about your race or if you are looking like a local or foreigner etc.

[Archibault]

I think we are talking about two different groups. I'm mostly talking about travellers. For instance, you are German, right? Many German travellers actually did not want to speak German with me. They would switch to English each time I would try to speak to them in German....

Yes, I am a native German speaker, from Austria (EU).

In general if you make contact to somebody you will finally after a short time use the language which is easier for both participants to communicate.

We in Continental Europe learn obligatory basic English in school, starting with 8 years old.
Therefore often the English language skill from a German native speaker is better than the German language skill from an English native speaker.
German is not such an easy language due to complicated grammatical rules.

On the other side, often educated people from East Europe are fairly good with German and despite I was working for East Europe for 5 years while still living in Europe I never learnt any East European language... because they could communicate with me in fluent German. -

You are just choosing the language which is easier for BOTH of you.
My Japanese family is not good in foreign languages - I never use any other language than Japanese....

However my former neighbour while living in Tokyo was from Korea, and as my Korean language knowledge is not fluent, but his Japanese was very good, we used Japanese ....

Often English and French are useful as an intermediate language. I cannot speak Khmer and my few Thai words are not enough either and most people in Cambodia cannot speak German, so I try in English or French....

It depends on the situation - on language knowledge of BOTH persons talking to each other. It has nothing to do with boys or girls, not about your race or if you are looking like a local or foreigner etc.

Do you think the Japanese prefer their citizens not to learn other languages since they would stop following the Japanese way of doing things? I took a Japanese class in college, and that's the conclusion my class, and I came to. It seems that many Japanese that studied abroad or became fluent in English, French, or even German decided to move somewhere else and no to be so "work orientated." I remember we even read an article about a Japanese who studied in the UK, and he would want to do things differently, and the Japanese saw the situation as an inconvenience.

[Gali]

https://japantoday.com/category/feature ... at-english