Garbage and the Queen of Sweden

There are a lot of ex-pats here but you can tell the Italians.  They speak Spanish to you right away.  Non-Nicaraguans from almost any other country will usually start off in English but not the Italians. And why should they?  I just discovered I have an Italian neighbor in a mostly Nica neighborhood.  I discovered this because we were both waiting for the garbage truck to come by.  We knew it was nearby-  they come MWF at around 8am and yell, "basura" and everyone runs out with their garbage. In a place where you can't flush your toilet paper and where the ants come marching in (and not two by two) as soon as you set down the mango peel, you don't want to miss a garbage pick-up.  Anyway,,,, even people from Spain will often greet you in English.  The other day I met a Spanish woman (who greeted me in English) and her two sons and I assumed her husband was Spanish until I heard him tell the little kid, "Pojd' sem",  I asked him if he was speaking Czech (he was!) and then attempted to speak Czech with him.  I had managed English, Spanish and Swedish already that day and I have to admit that adding the fourth language turned out to be a little beyond me.  Yes, I could say a few sentences but not without interjecting Spanish.  

If you are not interested in languages you should TUNE OUT NOW.  

Here's what happened: In both Spanish and Czech (but not Swedish) you would use a polite form in asking someone's name (assuming they are not a kid).  In Czech and in the Spanish the Czech guy had learned in Spain you would use a plural you form.  But in Latin America (with a couple of exceptions), Spanish-speaking people use the third person singular as the polite form.  So it ends up sounding a little bit like you're saying "How is s/he?" if you are not used to it.  Having been used to speaking Spanish and using that form I then asked this Czech guy, "What is his/her name?" and he, understandably, thought I was asking his kid's name.  But I wanted to know his name.  I eventually got that out of him but I must have used 4-5 Spanish words in the 2-3 sentences I attempted in Czech,  Incidentally, if not interestingly, I made a similar mistake when I was living in Prague.  I met a Swedish person on the tram and as I was so used to using the polite Czech form (the plural), I was using the 2nd person plural for this woman and she finally stopped me and said, you really don't need to be that polite.  I am not the Queen of Sweden.