When locals speak English, they’re doing you a favor

The assumption that English is the natural language of travel says less about communication and more about who gets to move through the world with ease. When Western travelers - including Europeans whose first language is not English - treat English as a global default, they are projecting a regional logic onto contexts where it does not apply.

Within Europe, English functions as a practical intermediary language. It allows people from different countries to communicate across borders that are politically aligned, economically integrated, and historically accustomed to circulation. This arrangement is specific. It emerges from proximity, shared institutions, and a long process of internal negotiation.

Native English speakers get praised when they speak a second language, and expect the rest of the world to adapt to them, as Europe does. It does not turn English into a neutral or universal language, nor does it establish a standard that the rest of the world is expected to follow.

Outside this context, English occupies a very different position. In Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia, it is not a bridge language between neighboring societies. It is a foreign language introduced and reinforced through colonial histories, global labor markets, and tourism economies structured around Western demand. Its presence is not the result of collective choice but of adaptation to external pressure.

What is often overlooked in conversations about language is the asymmetry of movement. Westerners tend to believe that English is the language of travel because they are the ones who travel most frequently and most freely. This mobility is enabled by passport privilege, economic power, and currencies that travel well. It allows millions of people to cross borders as a form of leisure, self-expression, or lifestyle, while the vast majority of the world’s population remains largely immobile. When mobility is one-sided, the responsibility for communication shifts entirely to those who stay.

Local populations learn English not because it is inherently useful to their daily lives, but because their economies have been reorganized around visitors. Tourism creates linguistic expectations that quickly harden into requirements. Speaking English becomes tied to employment, access, and financial survival to many, but not all. Over time, what began as adaptation is misread by travelers as availability.

This misreading is evident in the way language is discussed in travel culture. Statements such as “locals don’t speak English” or “people there speak good English” appear routinely in reviews, forums, and casual recommendations. Framed as practical information, they function instead as evaluative judgments. They imply that a destination’s readiness for visitors can be measured by how easily it accommodates western language needs.

Language, in this framing, is reduced to a service indicator. It becomes detached from its social, historical, and cultural meaning and treated as a marker of education or development. This reduction ignores the fact that speaking a foreign language involves constant cognitive effort and emotional negotiation. It requires individuals to suppress nuance, humor, and precision in order to meet outsiders on familiar ground.

This effort is rarely acknowledged because Western travel culture has normalized being accommodated. From airports to booking platforms, the infrastructure of global tourism is designed to absorb friction on behalf of those who move. Over time, accommodation becomes invisible, and invisibility gives rise to entitlement.

The expectation that people should speak English “because travelers need it” reveals a deeper misunderstanding of what travel entails. Entering another country does not place visitors at the center of its social reality. It positions them on the margins of someone else’s everyday life. Communication, in this context, is not a right but a negotiation.

When locals choose to speak English, they are choosing to adapt. They are not fulfilling an obligation, meeting a standard, or confirming a destination’s quality. They are performing labor shaped by global inequality and uneven mobility.

Recognizing this does not require fluency in multiple languages or perfect cultural competence. It requires awareness of who moves, who adapts, and why. It requires understanding that the world does not revolve around the habits of those who can afford to cross it.

Travel, stripped of entitlement, begins with acknowledging that being understood is often a privilege, not a guarantee.