A (NSFW) reason to learn at least some English:

has anyone who only speaks English ever been pulled over by the police whilst driving.....

Yes, they will speak English if it's in their own interest.

I've only ever been pulled over while driving.

HTH

I was relaying this story to me 'swiss' hubby and he said he didn't believe the police didn't speak English.... however after re-counting my experiences in Zurich asking police for directions ( if you need to know the way ask a police man !! ) he relented and admitted they were probably bureaucratic jobsworths....
am thinking if this happens I will adopt the strongest Manc accent I can....

THIS here
http://www.kapo.zh.ch/internet/siche...rderungen.html
proves that your husband in principle is absolutely correct. They before being accepted into police-service MUST HAVE a finished professional apprenticeship, which includes both French and English (all apprenticeships do). Their English of course may not be really excellent. So that many of them, apparently feeling insecure in English, pretend not to speak English. Lazy maybe, but most of all lacking civil courage.

OK I needed to prepaire the studio I am filming in tomorrow, so I dropped by at 4.00 this afternoon & smelt burning.
I found smoke comming out of an electrical cupboard. Called the fire brigade. Fire brigade arrive, I have actually put the fire out by this point with a CO2 extinguisher.
Schlieren Police turn up followed by plain clothes Kanton Zurich poilice. The Schlieren police spoke OK English, the Kanton police were fluent! Even the firebrigade spoke OK English.

Just ignore them and keep talking. A couple of months ago, my old lady neighbour was shouting "Hilfe!" from inside her apartment.

I called the police.

"Sprechen Sie English?"

"Nein"

"Umm, ok, umm, my neighbour is shouting Hilfe, she's inside her apartment"

"OK, we'll send someone round, they will be with you soon".

Maybe the office spoke french and italian.... somehow, I do not blame them to not speak english. We live in their country at the end of the day. We should learn (I failed) if we want to really get integrated...

Something like this you may encounter if you are not able to explain your situation.

How many police in the UK or US would you expect to speak one of the Swiss national languages? Although they can offer to access someone who can.

For those who asked ... long story short, my neighbour was 99 and had somehow trapped herself under her bed. We'renot sure how or even if she was really trapped, as over the previous 3 to 4 months she started to get easily confused.

Anyway, she was taken to hospital and recently celebrated her 100th birthday in an old people's home. Whether she's aware of that though is another matter.

Police turned up and spoke good English. As did the ambulance staff when they were called. As did her son when he was called. It was a busy night

To say it clearly, I referred to the official requirements of the police forces in the Canton of Zurich (I do NOT refer to the police forces of other Cantons). They are required to have a finished apprenticeship behind them, and all apprenticeship final exams include French and English including oral comprehension and speaking. Reality is rather like the example Adrian gave above

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A) UK & USA are "monolingual" countries
B) business in UK&USA does NOT demand some command of .....

I'd disagree with this. The UK has whole areas where English is not spoken in favour of many Asian languages. Official literature is printed up accordingly and local offices are employing people who are native speakers of these other languages. The languages are not "official" languages of the UK but are widely spoken.

I would say this is also true in the US - many people live there that only speak Spanish and much official literature and services are geared up to cope with this.

That there are vast chunks of the USA where locals only speak Spanish is what I saw when travelling around there and that many folks in the UK generally speak "Asian" languages is obvious, but "mainstream-ers" are not required to have a certain command of certain other languages.

Back to the UK, Your statement implies that the folks in question are unable to speak English. But somebody who rather speaks Urdu or Hindi inside the UK possibly speaks English fairly well.

Not necessarily.

i had a similar situation in schaffhausen, the officers here had not even the slightest knowledge of cantonese!

in the end i had to resort to a mish-mash of english and german to muddle through.

If so, the UK should adopt Urdu and Bengal as official languages, and drop French from its vastly useless role in British schoolls

With some decent Schaffuuserisch, you would have been splendidly off

Has anybody ever been pulled over while walking?