Which Balkan country is it easiest to live in without good knowledge of the local language?
Posted by Happy-Hour88@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 68 comments
I see some rural coastal properties in Greece are cheaper or same price as the ones in the Bulgarian Black Sea coast but in far more exotic locations with prettier nature so with so many Bulgarian buying property there it got me thinking. Realistically I know I can never pick up Greek. Most people I met in Athens and Thessaloniki speak English so I wonder in which Balkan countries can one live and get by with English?
Hot_Speech900@reddit
I have met an English lady that has a cocktail bar in Agia Marina, in Crete and when I asked her how long she has been there she said 18 years.
She didn't speak Greek.
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
My mum is the same. Has been in Greece for 30 years but only really got confident in the last 10 or so when she started forming friendships with locals. She lived essentially in a bubble for the 20 years before that with only other expat friends.
Hot_Speech900@reddit
I'm not surprised.
Did you help her to learn Greek then?
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
She wasn't really interested. She knew enough to get by but not to have a deep conversation. She still talking Greeklish and most people just accept it lol. To get to a native level is quite hard and you have to understand the grammar which takes active studying rather than just repetition. It also gets exponentially harder after every decade of your life.
Only time I get annoyed is when she complains about entitled expats and talks about the natives of the community with herself included and I have to remind her that her DNA doesn't make her local lol.
KA-1991@reddit
This is so weird. In Germany this comes across really rude.
It takes time to learn a language but not more than 3-5 years if you continously speak with locals, watch local news and listen to their music. I think her will to integrate is very low. And she doesn't really care a lot about the country nor their culture.
Hot_Speech900@reddit
Well, I specifically asked her after visiting that bar a few times with friends, since my friend was visiting from abroad and was curious whether it’s possible to live in Crete without speaking Greek. I don’t think she necessarily has to integrate. I’m local, but I’ve worked abroad in the UK, and most of the locals who hang out and work there speak English, and probably other languages too.
Also, it’s not unusual for some English-speaking expats in places like Spain or other areas with large English-speaking communities to rely mostly on English rather than learning much of the local language.
On the other hand, almost everyone I know here learns English, at least people from the millennial generation, and at school, you can also learn French or German.
Fatalaros@reddit
Wtf is that Minoan flair, lmao.
Hot_Speech900@reddit
You can have this flair if you escape the Minotaur Labyrinth.
Old_Performer8531@reddit
Serbia and Croatia majority of population speaks English. Besides that Serbo-Croatian is a very close cousin of Bulgarian language. You will understand a lot, even without lessons.
Said that Croatia is extremely more expensive real estate vise vs Serbia. Serbia has no sea, if you search for sea coast property Greece is more affordable than Croatia.
casual_philosopher02@reddit
I wanted to be serbian or croatian etc as a kid because then I could say I speak 4 languages.... it was some weird logic I must admit....
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
I've seen Slavic speakers on LinkedIn say that they speak 10 languages from Native to Basic proficiency based on how different they are from their native language.
casual_philosopher02@reddit
so kid me was as smart as these people on Linkeln
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
Greece is by far the easiest. I'd say Romania the second easiest but tbh the gap between Greece and no. 2 is huge. After that maybe Albania or Croatia not sure
adorable-Dance-1724@reddit
I'm very surprised to hear someone saying greece! My husband is Nigerian and he had so hard time finding a job in Greece that he end up going to Bulgaria for the summer season!
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
We are literally bringing in seasonal workers from Bangladesh for everything from hospitality to picking strawberries. There is a huge surplus of jobs (unskilled labour). Bulgarians can vouch for me here but I know lots of them come to Greece to work over the summer for higher wages in hospitality. You'll have more issues getting customer facing employment if you aren't ethnically Greek though I imagine.
ExtremeProfession@reddit
Albania is worse than every ex-Yugoslav country when it comes to English proficiency.
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
Interesting. Anecdotally, I have had a different experience.
ExtremeProfession@reddit
I'm not saying it's bad on a global scale at all, but knowing many people that went there and from personal experience as well, it definitely does rank below other Balkan countries.
Successful_Serve9291@reddit
You forgot 🇹🇷
BeefPicante@reddit
Yeah, if you get ripped off because you are a foreigner 24/7.
Archaeopteryx111@reddit
English literacy/skills is worse in Turkey than other Balkan countries.
Archaeopteryx111@reddit
Everyone in Romania speaks English unless you go to a random village. Also, Romanians have migrated all over Europe and speak Spanish, French, Italian, German…etc.
gushi1-@reddit
I been getting by speaking in English in Montenegro.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
Thanks! It's good to know Greece is so EN-friendly. I know French and some basic Spanish though so maybe picking up the local language in Romania would be easier. The drawback is their cities and towns I like in terms of beauty are all far away from their seacoast. Like with Bulgaria I prefer their Western part. In Greece you're almost never really that far from a coast anywhere.
Kitsooos@reddit
You can definitely survive in Greece by using just English.
That having been said, you will 100% be subjected to societal bullying in order to learn Greek.
No-Pickle-779@reddit
Why do you think so?
Fatalaros@reddit
We don't like speaking english to the same dude for more than a week.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
What about Spanish?
Agreeably0192@reddit
Speaking only English in Greece is something that can work, though many employers (especially smaller ones) will scoff. If you go and stay to a touristic area that attracts foreign workers every year it is way easier, imho. And yes social bullying to learn the language is real :D
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
Don't Greek people realise how hard Greek is though? It takes time. :)
EphemeralOcean@reddit
Croatia and Slovenia very easily, particularly among young people, who all know English.
oldyellowcab@reddit
Probably Turkey. There is significant lifestyle migration, involving migrants from Australia to Russia and the Netherlands, along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts.
Stealthfighter21@reddit
Why not be able to learn Greek. All immigrants, season workers, home carers, etc picked it up when they went there.
MartinBP@reddit
Yeah honestly it's quite intuitive for Bulgarian speakers, at least at a conversational level. Sentences can usually be translated almost 1:1 since the structure is similar and we use the same idioms, pronunciation is also easy.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
Spanish is much easier to me, Greek isn't intuitive at all somehow. With Greek I have to relearn every single word for things. For example they have their own word for "sport". Even Turkish seems to have more borrowings from Latin languages like French, in this case "spor".
Stealthfighter21@reddit
There are a lot of words in Greek that exist in other languages.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
Yes but it's usually scientific or psychological terms like "psychology" itself. Having to kearn a new word for basic things like bread, unrelated to pain/pan/pane; bread/Broth; хляб/хлеб/chleb... They even have their own word for sport/Sport/deportes while Turkish has spor.
Turkish comes somewhat easier for me due to the alphabet and having more French borrowings.
The only easy things in Greek I find is "with" (me) reminds me of some pronunciations of Scandinavian languages med/met (sp) which means the same thing and that "ai" is read as "eh" and "ou" as "ooh", just like in French. The Alphabet is like a mix between Latin amd Cyrillic for obvious reasons and at time sthat can be confusing. Greek has several letters with the same sound "i", lowercase letters don't match their capitals much visually ("N" looks like a "V" in lowercase), etc. And I hate how the language lacks some sounds like "zh", "sh" and even "ch". They say "tsips" for chips and Tzeni for Jenny lol. Spanish at least has "ch".
Greece seems like a great place to retire but to actually try to be part of the culture isn't easy with such a hard language. It's no Finnish or Hungarian but sometimes even (written) Albanian feels easier to gasp than Greek.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
It's just too difficult. It's not related to any of the major languages groups Latin, Germanic, and Slavic.
Mysterious-Put1459@reddit
Because he wants to be an "Expat"
Kitsooos@reddit
Sounds a hell of a lot better than "immigrant".
Plebs become "immigrants". Real Western Chads become "expats". /s
SuspiciousShock8294@reddit
Greece, Croatia, Serbia (depending on the area), Montenegro (also in coastal areas), prolly Romania as well. If it's in the Balkans (depending how it woke up that day) - Slovenia.
PasicT@reddit
None
Strange_Status_7690@reddit
EU Balkan is better than for example other Balkan not just it's more prosperous but it's more people around from abroad and bigger places. Generally Greece and Bulgaria are doing great.
I believe Albania can be a good place for someone wanting to buy property also as it's cheaper and it's coast is like a Mediterranean country. But personally don't know about language barriers.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
"Bulgaria are doing great"
We're not, not all of us. Hence why I want to escape from here.
No-Championship-4632@reddit
Yeah, Greece.
Logical_Muffin_7685@reddit
Probably Serbia
MartinBP@reddit
Stick to EU countries. Romania for the cities, Greece for the seaside. Croatia also has cool cities on the seaside and the language is related to ours, but property prices are insane.
Catman_192@reddit
I think that Greece would be good option for something like that, but I think that you can live in any Balkan country without any knowledge of the local language.
Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit
I think cro is one of the best non eglish speaking countries at speaking english.
Hour-Promotion-2496@reddit
Compared to the Balkans, yes. Globally? No way.
PersimmonTall8157@reddit
Nah that’s Netherlands or Scandinavia. Even older people speak English there
Pigeonofthesea8@reddit
Yeah. Everyone speaks English. They get English better than Macedonian (or claim to).
Efficient_Resource15@reddit
I wonder if people didn't mention Romania because it's too similar to bulgaria, because they don't see it as balkan or if they really don't about our language skills.
Not only is english is very commonly spoken in the big cities at this point but we also have many speakers of french and italian. I think in Romania it would be pretty easy to get by without knowing romanian(unless you visit villages)
Visible-Climate-6920@reddit
Montenegro. The language is similar to Serbian and Croatian. English is spoken well.
Complex_Shine_1113@reddit
Statistically Macedonia and Croatia are the countries with the most English speaking populations.
chrstianelson@reddit
Turkey. There's a sizeable English, Irish, Scot, German and Dutch expat community in the Turkish riviera region. Everybody speaks English, world-class scenery and beaches, can even find pork at shops.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
Which cities or towns would you recommend? The first season of a Bulgarian reality TV show was shot in and around Fethiye and it looked amazing, like fairtytale-like. I couldn't believe a place like this exists so close to home. Would you say it's good to live there?
chrstianelson@reddit
Yep. Fethiye, Gocek, Kas, Marmaris, Kusadasi all beautiful, lovely places to live in. Though cost of living might be a little higher than other places along the coast.
If you're looking for cheaper, quieter places, towns like Didim, Koycegiz, Dalyan and Datca might be more to your liking.
Just pull up a map and look along the coast between Izmir and Antalya. You couldn't go wrong with any of the towns you see there (except Bodrum, which competes with St. Tropez in terms of cost of living).
lovinGamin@reddit
If you don’t care the costs yes you can live there. I would suggest any west town, for a Bulgarian search for Çanakkale , which has similar sea privileges also close to your country.
GlitteringLocality@reddit
Greece! Like everyone has said. Lots of tourists.
TinyAsianMachine@reddit
We spent 2 years in Greece recently with my wife who only speaks English and Polish and she managed to be more involved in society than me. Everything from ordering building supplies to meeting people. People are very used to dealing with foreigners here.
In some ways it feels a bit like a Disney Land Greece edition but I guess it's nice for foreigners.
GlitteringLocality@reddit
I think Athens has way more westerner tourism than Thessaloniki.
notnotnotnotgolifa@reddit
Cyprus 🤡
EveningChemical8927@reddit
Probably Romania: all the big cities are fluent in English, including a lot of immigrants that o Lu speak English..on top of that is a romance language so if you know some Spanish, french, Italian or Portuguese you will manage to buy food and tram tickets with absolutely no difficulty.
blonde_fae@reddit
Some of my former foreign colleagues were going up on 2 years of living here without speaking the language (other than simple words like hi, bye, bread, water, etc), so yeah, Romania.
Happy-Hour88@reddit (OP)
Do you think knowing French and some Spanish would help?
blonde_fae@reddit
Maybe, there are some similarities between some Romanian and some French/Spanish words (due to language-loans from French and to common Latin roots).
Many Romanians also speak English, so that's gonna be helpful (especially at your job).
Itachiultra@reddit
Bosnia