When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or not?

The well-known saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do,"  encourages visitors to adapt to local culture, customs and behaviors.  But is speaking the language of a different country or region part of that advice?  At first glance, I would be tempted to say "yes" because language is an essential part of culture.  But being addicted to foreign language study, I can attest that attempting to speak a foreign language to native speakers is often less than successful.

One of my earliest realizations that native speakers of a language are not necessarily volunteer language teachers occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, where I had enrolled in a Portuguese language school.  I set out confidently the morning after my arrival to find a cup of coffee.

The harried lady behind the coffee counter had to ask twice for my order because my Portuguese accent was not what she was used to hearing.  Then as we were discussing the milk, I became confused about the grammatical gender of milk in Portuguese. (The confusion arose because the word for milk is feminine in Spanish but masculine in Portuguese.)  So I asked the server if the correct word was "o leite" (with a masculine article) or "a leite" (with a feminine article). By now, she was completely confused and quite annoyed. Resorting to gestures, she pointed at the milk jar on the table behind me, shaking her head at the ignorance of tourists.

I had an important ah-ha moment in that small coffee bar.  My goal in using the native language and the server's goals were completely different.  She wanted, quite understandably,  to complete my order as quickly and efficiently as possible.  After all, customers were waiting in line.  I was completely focused on learning more of the Portuguese language.  Small wonder that my first attempt at communication in Lisbon was less than pleasant!

That long ago incident recently came to mind when I read a letter to Dear Abby in the El Paso Times dated September 5, 2016. 

A retired librarian in Texas (white, non-Hispanic) who speaks four languages wrote that a Hispanic friend had advised caution when choosing to speak Spanish to Hispanics. The writer confirmed the advice with a retired college-level Spanish teacher, who explained that languages are often used by speakers as a boundary to identify group members.

Having lived my entire life in El Paso, Texas, a bilingual English-Spanish city, and having had both positive and negative experiences speaking Spanish in my home town, I can affirm, speaking of language choice, that "It's complicated!"  And, I must admit that every time I choose to speak Spanish, I am hoping to get a mini-Spanish lesson, not just communicate or fit into the environment.

I will face a similar decision in Canada about use of the French language when my husband and I take The Canadian, a long-distance train across that country.  My guess is that all of the train employees will be bilingual in English-French, so attempting to use my fairly rudimentary French (along with my American accent!) seems counterproductive.  But maybe I will by chance run into a retired French teacher in the lounge car who really, really likes to discuss in detail the French partitive construction....