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Chapter nine
Mind your language!
If you need a tourist guide who can speak a foreign language the STGA has been providing them for decades. At the time of writing the STGA offers 19 different languages to its clients.
Marianne Everett de Vink, who speaks Dutch, German and French, mainly does extended tours with retired couples who either didn’t learn English at school or what they learned is too long ago. When she started guiding in 1999 the months when demand outstripped supply for French speaking guides were May, June and September.
‘In July and August the French holiday in their own magic country,’ she said. ‘This is more or less still the same today as far as I know. The German passengers on our tours are mainly retired but they will book bus holidays in July and August. Their English is minimal and they feel more comfortable with a German speaking guide for their trip. The only Dutch speaking tours I have done were for Flemish groups.’
Gavin Hunter, who became a Blue Badge Guide in 2002. guides in both French and German.
‘It is interesting in my life that people have perceived me, initially as a teacher, and then as a guide as being exclusively a German speaker!’ he said.
‘My first language is French. I began studying German later and thus I had more catching up to do. As a teacher I seemed to get more of the German classes and I guess that was why I was perceived or “known” to be a German teacher with a bit of French! Similarly I was responding to the demands of the German incoming market. When I qualified there was, as now, no shortage of work in languages, especially German. I can’t speak for other languages. A figure that was bandied about back then was that, after the North American market, the German market was the biggest language market with a 17 per cent share of visitors. Today’s figures seem in the low teens from a quick look I've had. The French work back then was much, much less, as I saw it, and nearly all the foreign language work was in German.
‘The German market was, and I think still is, the second biggest market. On a pro rata basis, you can say that the Germans speak and understand English better than many other nationalities. However, when ‘off duty’ they much prefer to hear German commentaries, added to which their command of English might not encompass some of the more esoteric vocabulary we use in guiding!
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