Only if you pronounce them with a bad English accent.

Hopefully a native speaker would realise a basic phrase pronounced with a bad English (or indeed any) accent means the speaker doesn’t speak the local language but has at least made an effort to communicate rather than relying on English (or their own language) being spoken.

@Willeke - my problem, right there; I'm told by my brother-in-law's wife (who is German, from Berlin), that my accent when I try to speak a few words of German is impeccable native Berliner - this leads to complications when my interlocutor quite reasonably assumes I am, or at least speak, German: "Ich spreche kein Deutch" doesn't ring true under the circumstances. Looking stereotypically German doesn't help much either.

This is by far the best approach, well worth the small amount of extra effort. It communicates that you have respect for their language, you are not one of those idiots who thinks everybody should speak English, and shows you have put at least some effort into understanding the culture you are visiting.

Disagree. Speaking in English will be more successful than butchering it in German. From a German's perspective: I much rather go straight to English than trying to figure what the broken German is supposed to mean.

I once said "Mon français est très mal" and the response (in English) was "with that accent, I don't believe you."

@Hilmar Coming from the other side, I would tend to agree. The one time I actually responded to someone starting to talk to me in German when I was in Frankfurt with ‘Entschuldigung, ich verstehe nicht.’, my admittedly somewhat Nordic accent resulted in them thinking I was just a domestic tourist from up around Kiel who was joking around. Ironically, both of us thought it was hilarious after the fact once he finally realized he was mistaken, but it wasted almost five minutes of both of our time.

@WGroleau The dangers of being a classical vocalist.

@Hilmar OTOH the French are normally very unhappy if you don't at least try. And on holiday in Greece, Spain and Italy, I always found it was much easier to get served in a shop or bar if you can start in their language. For me it's a sign of respect that you know it isn't your country. It always annoys me when English people don't show that respect, because a lot of us do try to be better than that.

I'm not a classical vocalist, but an amateur linguist who apparently got the hand of the accent when in a six-week French class fifty years earlier at age seven.

That's my tactic too. Ich spreche kein Deutsch / no hablo español / ya ne gava'ryu pa-'ruski got me pretty far :)

@WGroleau "mauvais", not "mal" ;)

@EricDuminil, like I said, very bad.

@Graham I had no issues getting served in Italy when speaking English (it was in Rome maybe it's a bit different in other regions/cities). And I speak Dutch, English, French and German, do you really think I should learn other languages just to go on a holiday once?

@Jungkook If you're going on holiday somewhere, you certainly can buy a phrase book and practise a few key phrases. Do you need to learn the language properly? Not at all. Can you take the trouble to say a few basics like "two beers please" - and "I'm sorry, I'm English, I don't speak Italian"? Sure. And you're right, it's much more of a thing in smaller towns, and especially with older people who often genuinely don't speak English.

OP asked about areas where most people speak English, not small towns where foreign tourists and English spoken TV are very rare.

+1 for framing it as an apology. This is something you can do even if you can't say it in their language, only in English.

@Graham while I think that some people may find this endearing, as you say, I personally find it just annoying. I am Greek and have lived in Greece, Spain and the south of France and always found it tiresome when people used the one word of the local language they'd learned to mangle. Nothing wrong with just saying "I'm sorry, I don't speak XXXX. Do you speak English?" and nothing particularly pleasant in trying to figure out what word the non-speaker is trying to say. It can even come across as condescending: "see, I learned one word of your gobbledygook!"