Everyone I encountered including housekeepers spoke English.

Most all in tourism and retail speak Dutch well and English with varying degrees of competency, but if you want to learn the language they speak to one another it would be Papiamentu. Google it and you'll find some places with simple phrases to learn. Ayo!

Almost everybody born on the islands will understand at least Papiamentu, Dutch, English and Spanish. They all may not be even fluent in speaking the languages but they will understand.

On our first trip to Curacao 9 years ago, I was playing a game on the beach with my sons and a local boy of around 10 was watching us and we asked him to join us. He spoke perfect English. A few minutes later, some Dutch kids he knew came by and he spoke with them in Dutch. So, I told him I was impressed that he speaks Papiamento, Dutch and English. To which he politely replied, “Yes, and Spanish.” I didn’t ask, but my guess is he was also on his way to being fluent in Portuguese.

Our experience has been that virtually all islanders speak English, with the exception of many Chinese owned Tokos (minimarkets). We have not had problems at those either though, as the words Amstel & Heineken fortunately are universally recognized.

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

This topic has been closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.