Costa Concordia: Language barrier exacerbated crisis for survivor

During a harrowing five and a half hours on a listing ship, Costa Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias of Downey cited “extreme language barriers” as one of the obstacles she and her family faced during their struggle to survive.

“The information only came out in Italian and Spanish,” she told KPCC, talking about the announcements made while the ship was going down. Ananias pieced together some of the words from her limited Spanish. She and her family were among the last off the cruise ship that became submerged Jan. 13 near Isola del Giglio off Italy’s west coast. Eleven passengers and crew members died and 23 are still missing, according to media reports.

The language barrier that Ananias faced raises an interesting point for travelers who want to experience different cultures when going abroad. Costa Cruises, a company owned by Carnival, was known for drawing more European and other international passengers than, say, bigger cruise lines that cater to the North American market.

So do Americans prefer to be with their countrymen when going abroad on a cruise? Maybe so.

Peggy Goldman, owner of Friendly Planet Travel, says her company used to sell a lot of spaces on Costa Cruises, specifically on the Concordia. But she stopped a few years back -- not for safety reasons but because of complaints from her primarily U.S. and Canadian clientele who found it difficult to communicate with others aboard ship. “The feedback was precisely that, not enough people from the U.S. were on the cruises,” she said Wednesday.