As a Spanish person, I can confirm that average English proficiency in Spain is poor in absolute terms. It has often been reported to be the country that speaks English worst in the EU, and it may very well be (although the French also deserve a honorable mention). But I find the claim that it has been declining since 2014 very difficult to believe, to say the least.
English is studied in primary school, which wasn't the case 20 years ago, let alone 50, so young people all have at least a minimal level whereas most people that are now passing away don't speak any English at all. This alone should be an important factor pushing average proficiency up. The coming of Netflix, HBO and their ilk in the last few years have made viewing TV series in English much more common (regular TV typically only offers dubbed versions). I teach at a university in English, ten years ago we didn't even offer that possibility and now demand is steadily increasing.
OK, I don't have actual data, they do... but given the limitations of their data (acknowledged in the piece itself), I'm taking it with a huge grain of salt.
I have visited Spain a few times over the last 20 years. I do not speak Spanish and I try to get by speaking English (these are few days at a time visit, and not long term stay).
From this one man's experience, it is not that Spain has regressed in its proficiency with English, but I find that other southern European countries (particularly Portugal) has upped the ante - a LOT.
To compare Paris (I understand it does not represent all of France, but it is one view point), 20 years ago I would have difficult time in ordering in a restaurant. A hardship many English-speaking visitors today will find hard to empathize with. In most places in Paris today I can get by with English and get complex transactions done.
Portugal has truly baked-in English proficiency into their national psyche now. Zealotry aside, this enables Portugal to further their economic and cultural interests more, I think.
English is studied in primary school, which wasn't the case 20 years ago...
That's tricky. Years ago primary extended from 1st to 8th grades (6 to 14 y.o. aprox.) so English, that started in 6th was primary. Now 6th to 8th have been moved to ESO.
Anyway I just checked with my son and he started in Infantil, so it's really soon.
The real issue is qualification. To really understand and speak English you need to learn pronuntiation properly. And that's the weakest link in our system. Most teachers have no idea how English is really pronounced and wouldn't be able to understand a native speaker to save their lives. It's impossible to learn English from someone that can't understand or speak it.
I believe it was Aguirre that proposed a plan to invite thousands of native speakers to teach English in Madrid. Of course everybody attacked her as usual whatever she says... I don't like her either, but that was a good idea for once.
20 years ago not many in Spain and France ( or even Germany ) would speak any English. May be they do, but may be they were too afraid, or refuse to speak as in the case of French.
20 years later literally everybody in ( Western ) Europe speaks English. I could go on the street and ask for directions, in places that are not cities or tourist attraction. Even the French. They may not be proficient at it, but they do understand and can do basic communication.
So I dont see any decline. And Thinking back I am surprised at how fast the world has evolved! ( Which also means I am getting old .... )
When I visited a customer in Finland, I noticed that everyone in the office spoke English to each other. I asked if they were just being courteous since I was there. They laughed, and said no, the employees came from all over the world and English was the only language they had in common.
If an American or Brit has passable Spanish, but (of course) excellent English skills, would this help them in the Spanish job market? Assuming of course they could get an appropriate visa?
You're right, here's my anecdotal evidence about it. I've already sent this comment here, but it's been 4 years ago so here it is again:
I live in a small town near the serbian-hungarian border and we can watch both Hungarian and Serbian TV stations. In Serbia movies are subtitled (so you can hear English language all the time) while in Hungary movies are dubbed (so you can't hear anything other than hungarian language on TV). Serbian families who live here watch mostly serbian TV and hungarian families watch mostly hungarian TV stations. Ask any English teacher here and they will all tell you that there is very clear distinction between level of knowledge in serbian vs hungarian kids. They all live in the same town, go to the same school, the only difference is that those kids who watched serbian TV stations had much bigger exposure to english language as opposed to those who watched hungarian TV stations.
The country is split linguistically between Dutch speakers in the northern Flemish region, and French in the southern Walloon region.
The Flemish region's television stations and cinemas run mostly subtitled programs (really, anything outside of children's shows and content made in the region or in the Netherlands).
In the French-speaking areas, the media companies and cinemas buy their content from France, where the vast majority of it comes overdubbed.
As a result, the Flemish have a much stronger command of English than their French-speaking counterparts.
That said, the French-speaking Belgians, at least in my experience of living there for a long time, speak English much better than the French.
A lot of that has to do with how international the country is, where Brussels not only hosts many international institutions, but also a lot of companies have their EU HQs there. Many people need to speak English to get jobs with these firms, so it drives up the English competency among the local population.
> My pet theory is that English proficiency is much better in countries where movies are subtitled, not dubbed.
That is how I learned the basics of the english language when I was a kid. Here in Portugal movies are subtitled.
Incidentally, I went to Milan once to participate in this thing, and neither Italians, Spanish, French, Polish and Russian people could understand each other. I speak a little bit of everything (almost, had to use pseudo-english with the polish and russian) so I had to do the translations. Talk abou information assimetry: I knew everything that happened because I was the unnoficial translator.
The "best" part of that trip was to have to watch Four weddings and a Funeral dubbed in Italian! It went some months before I was able to tolerate italian language again..
My personal observation of people who watch lots of anime with subtitles but only understand a handful of Japanese words and can't pronounce them correctly indicates that passive exposure to a language isn't enough to learn much. You also need to try and practice using it yourself.
It's also the reason why there's a moderate correlation (didn't actually research this) between small EU countries and English ability. Small countries are better, because they don't have the resources to dub their series.
This used to be more true than now. The Netherlands has been regressing a bit in their English speaking ability precisely because children tv shows aren't in English anymore (though there's still plenty of opportunity in NL, there simply used to be more).
Not only English: we had subtitled French, German (with English subs mostly :) and English when I grew up; I watched a lot of English (BBC) and German tv which made me quite fluent in both from
a young age. French less so as I did not like French programs (now I do); I still understand most and when I am in France for a couple of weeks I can make myself understandable. Also; because I picked things up from listening, my pronunciation is good especially after spending some time in the region.
Can people really fully learn a language this way? I've been learning Spanish and taken this approach of consuming media (music and videos) and I'm even at a level where I can follow a well spoken Spanish speaker in a video but I have realized I'm still at a beginner stage in terms of having actual conversations with people. I don't think most people can really fully learn a language without a good deal of direct conversation with other speakers of the language.
> Incidentally it also explains why native english speakers tend to have no idea about other languages.
I've learned traveling in foreign countries that simply learning the native words for please, thank you, hello, goodbye, yes and no goes a long way towards having a pleasant experience. The locals will go out of their way to be nice to you for making the effort.
It could be a correlation rather than a causation. Small countries don't have the financial justification to dub movies and they also must rely on english for professional reading material since there are not enough people to justify publication of local language books. They also tend to rely more on other countries for import and export. Therefore people have to know English just to be able to study and communicate.
The Spanish market is huge and so are other big influential countries like Japan, Germany or France which is still spoken in many other countries, mainly in Africa. So there is less incentive to learn English because everything is available in the local language.
There are other factors like closeness of the language to English(north European countries) and colonialism(the sub continent). The advancement of the Latin American economies makes Spanish a much more viable and influential competition to English so English becomes less necessary. You can even see it in popular culture where Spanish music and tv shows become popular all over the world. As a non Spanish speaker my random vocabulary in this language increased a lot during the last couple of years.
Living in Italy, in Milan, I can try to outline the situation in Italy
Even admitting that the study is true, which I don't believe, there are factors at play
- most Italian English speakers have been moving to foreign countries for the past 20 years (between 100 thousands and 250 thousands a year)
- Italy, after Japan, is the oldest country in the World, many Italians have never met an English speaking person and the last one for many of them was soon after WW2
- English has never been important in Italy, unless you had to communicate with anglophones. German, French and Spanish are much more widespread either because they were studied at school, are easier for us to learn and we have the majority of exchanges with those countries (France is the main commercial partner, Germany is the second largest buyer of Italian products, including tourism)
- immigration brought here a lot of people coming from non-english backgrounds, in Milan the second most spoken language is now (probably) Chinese. It's easier to meet a Japanese on the streets than an American and a lot of workers in base services (transport, delivery, cleaning etc.) come from south america, northern Africa or East Europe
Speaking a very good English is almost irrelevant, the majority of the people an Italian needs to speak to speak a worse English than them, assuming they even speak English at all
it's not uncommon to meet a Tunisian transporter speaking with a Bosnian mason in a Chinese bar and they use Italian - their own version of it - as lingua franca
It's fascinating
Edit: forgot to mention that many Italians in the past migrated to Germany or Belgium, that's why they speak German or French, but not English.
It is not that they are failing in English, rather that they are less dependent on foreign content, having localized versions from whatever might be relevant.
As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages.
English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.
I have a similar background and the wealth of the content that's not in English is incredible and often missed.
From an outsider perspective, the time it took for British media and the political class to take note of the European sentiment on the issue of brexit was around 1 year. It was as if they just found out there was an non-English web out there..
English is dominant now, and as you say history shows the dominant lingua francas changes over time - all the time. But I don't think another existing nation's language will take over. Not Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. Instead, I think an evolved version of English will dominate in 100-200 years time.
We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, but also in politics, business, social media there are "New Speak" version of English in those contexts.
One of these will evolve to be the lingua franca of the young connected people and dominate. And then be superseded by the next evolved language.
Once we colonize Mars and elsewhere there will be some interesting forks in languages I am sure.
Another article on that page https://qz.com/1213443/the-world-is-getting-better-at-englis... lists English proficiency by country. English proficiency is measured by average score on a test by a certain English testing company, which is obviously a flawed measure but ^\_o_/^.
From my experience, English has been mostly useless in these countries as far back as I can remember. Even in touristy Paris, there are plenty of places where nobody speaks a word of English and this gets even 'worse' when you venture outside of cities. I'm from the country with the highest English proficiency (Netherlands), so I'm used to everyone speaking English. The benefit of this though, is that I can do basic stuff, like ordering coffee, in about 6 languages.
I wonder, though, whether the conclusion from the data is correct. It could be that more people are getting access to the internet, so even people who didn't have a reason to learn English half a decade ago are now looking for courses online.
- of course Europe's largest economies are going to be the least incentivized to adopt English due to their larger internal market both in terms of culture as well as economics.
- The International Englishes (plural) are different from both UK and US English. The scientific community has its own 'dialect', and the EU political/administration/diplomatic English is different still. Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture these nuances.
Native English speaker, here. Can speak “emergency” Spanish and German, but that’s about it (asking for directions, ordering food, making limited small talk in a hideous accent I’ve been told, etc). Tried French for a while but stopped because it’s way too hard to learn without immersion.
In a way it’s not really surprising to me that Germany is the country retaining English proficiency - English is a Germanic language after all. That the Romance language countries are drifting away from English is not surprising in that regard.
Still, as economies continue to globalize it is curious that there’s a regression at all. English has been the language of business for probably a generation or more at this point. Is this a leading indicator of an economic decoupling we’ll see in the coming decades?
I think it is the opposite - everybody is speaking english a bit, so less people bother to test or obtain any formal proof. And google translate makes it easier to get away with poor English when communicating.
Also we are in an age in which native english speakers are a minority, so what is good english will inevitably change.
I moved to France a few years ago. I did know that French don't know English as much as they do not want to speak English yet I am still amazed by how much. I think that the main reason for that is that they have their own French speaking view of the planet in which they happily live. There are French businesses, French universities and research, French (ex-)colonies, French tourism etc. One could say that the same are true for other countries, eg Germany where English are much more/better spoken, but apparently it's not like this and I have no explanation for that.
> I did know that French don't know English as much as they do not want to speak English yet I am still amazed by how much.
I hate it when I hear the stereotype "French people do speak English but they're not going to because they are so proud" (maybe not exactly what you're saying...). It's simply untrue. People who speak good English will very happy to practice whenever the opportunity shows up.
It's not easy to learn a foreign language, and most French people who didn't have the opportunity to study abroad, or who don't need English at their workplace don't speak English very well. However, I think most of them speak some English, as long as you're patient and don't expect them to be fluent. For many people, it's intimidating to speak English, even if they've learnt the basics at school.
> they have their own French speaking view of the planet
Indeed, they live in a country where they can get by using their own national language and most of them don't have enough opportunities to meet English speaking foreigners. Why should you expect them to learn your language, especially if you're the one moving there?
> Germany where English are much more/better spoken
English is hard for roman languages speakers. It seeems Italian, Spaniards, French have a harder time than Germans or Dutch...
You're right French have everything dubbed in french, also English teachers are very bad, which doesn't help, I would say that most French kind of understand basic written English, but when spoken, it is so different than anything they heard that they are not able to translate sounds to the written words they might know.
French has a lot of words which are close or exactly the same as English, but doesn't sound the same or mean completely different things, which doesn't help. (example: 'argument' in English as in 'having an argument' and 'argument' in French as in 'ton argument ne mène nulle part' don't mean the same at all, other words can mean the same such as 'agile' but sounds like two different words when pronounced in French vs English)
And then you have pride (the wrong kind) coupled with the fear of sounding ridiculous, which is why 99% of French you hear speaking English has a very strong accent, they're not trying.
My two explanations (as a French): all English contents on the TV is dubbed and English classes often have 24+ students which makes it hard for the teacher to have everyone speaking (even a bit).
Whereas in Finland, subtitles on foreign TV programs are common and classes have less students (I think).
Thus I believe it entirely comes down to the government not being smart enough.
You mean like English-native speaker have their own English speaking view of the planet in which they happily live. There are English businesses, English universities and research, English (ex-)colonies, English tourism etc. ?
From my experience answering emails from customers all around the world I am not surprised: Spaniards are by far the most difficult to communicate with. It seems even going Google translate way (they write in Spanish and then translate my emails to Spanish) is more difficult with them than with say Koreans or Chinese.
I handle emails for the company I've founded for 5 years now. My experience is that nationality of the customer has big predictive value when it comes to how the communication goes. For example:
Germans - decent English with funny spelling/grammar quirks (der computer, der solver, using gender pronouns when referring to things etc.)
Chinese - rarely write any English but are very smart at using Google translate, I rarely have any communication issues with them. General computer literacy very high.
Japanese - exceptionally polite. Often write perfect English. Some of them don't though but they always make an effort (no pasting of Google Translate) and apologize profusely for their English being not so good.
Scandinavians: write better English than many native speakers, absolutely no issues. If I were to point the best speaking Scandi country it would be Finland.
Russians: often appear rude as I think translating Russian word by word results in rude sounding English. Maybe it's about the culture as well. I like communicating with them though. They sometimes use veiled or not so veiled insults towards me and my software. I keep the tone in my emails sometimes suggesting their brain is just malfunctioning and they are wasting my time. It usually goes well and problems are resolved quickly.
French: surprisingly much easier to communicate with than Spaniards. They rarely write correct English but somehow I am usually able to resolve the issue while when I see an email in Spanglish I brace myself for incoming trouble. French email domains (laposte, orange.fr) suck though. They often lose emails without any message. At this point if someone orders using laposte email I am emailing them from my personal account asking to provide functional email address. It sometimes gets to them but not always. We don't have those issues with any other email provider.
I could do a few more but those I feel strongest about. I am one guy who sells software to a specific niche. I am also not a native speaker so take it for what it is.
I'm surprised to see Singapore behind some other countries. It's the main official language. When I visited Singapore, every person and group we overheard spoke english by default and with the same level of proficiency as american or british people (no accent). Also, everything is labeled mainly in english and only optionally in one of the other 3 official languages.
The solution to this (assuming you see it as a problem in search of a solution) is to stop watching dubbed media. Content targeted at anyone over say 10 years just shouldn't be dubbed, period.
Language isn't merely vocabulary, grammar and pronounciation. It's also nuance in expression, proverbs, slang, idioms. All of this is lost when content is translated and dubbed. When a person in a US sitcom uses an idiom, the spanish dubbed content translates to a similar Spanish idiom. With subtitles not only do I get the pronounciation and vocabulary, I also see in the subtitles a best-effort mapping from the english idiom to the corresponding idiom in my native language.
I think this is solving itself automatically as movies and traditional TV gives way for youtube and netflix where dubbed content isn't as common.
English is on course to eat up smaller languages. Mass communication has brought the world closer together, and with that, diversity is lost. It’s too early to say whether it’s for better or for worse, but here we are.
That's really not true. Many people I know also speak English, but that doesn't mean that they somehow forget how to speak their own language. If anything, small communities with an own language tend to be fiercely proud of that language, and do everything in their power to protect it [see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German]. And if these languages do disappear, it tends to be because the national language is taught in schools and slowly replaces it in younger generations.
Can confirm that this is the case in India. In fact it's much worse - due to a long history of colonization, most govt. services and education are exclusive to English speakers. Due to this unchallenged linguistic apartheid, public education is slowly switching over to "English medium", which is increasingly creating a class of nowhere men, who neither know their own languages nor English. This structural discrimination has knock on effects on the economy which are as yet unknown, and unexplored (due to geopolitical reasons IMO).
India, due to its deeply colonial state apparatus, is well on its way to losing most of its languages in the coming century. I think this is also the case with African nations - which might explain why the sub-continent (not just India) and Africa share so much in terms of human development indicators.
English still hasn't eaten up Irish, Scottish and Welsh. What languages are threatened, aside from those already rendered weak by settler invasions (e.g. in the US and Australia) which are surely not part of your concern mentioned here. (I think they must be excluded since it's not relevant to the topic of the article and because you refer to "mass communication bring[ing] the world closer".)
Going in the reverse direction - "a community speaks one language that then splits to two mutually unintelligible languages" seems so destructive that standardising on one language seems like an obvious and massive win for humanity at large.
But by raw number of languages standardising on English is probably not ideal. Probably some hybrid of Chinese grammar, Korean alphabet and Latin pronunciations would have been my pick for example.
As it stated in an article, probably it is not a very representative example of the general population. People taking an online English tests probably already feel to need one.
I travel frequetly around Europe, particularly to these countries.
Felt English proficiency has steadily improved over the last thirty years.
When I visited these countries as a backpacking teenager, in my summer holidays, almost no one spoke English.
Since about a decade everyone who is under thirty seems to speak English quite well. Aka: I do not need to use my crappy Spanish or Italian or more or less non-existing French skills to get along. :)
> EF Education First, a Swedish company based in Switzerland that manages more than 600 language schools across 50 countries.
Wow, I remember the English First billboards in Shanghai around 2009-2010. They showed a white guy and a Chinese woman raising their hands together, and their arms were shackled together at the wrist with a really heavy rope.
This must have worked for the Chinese target audience, but I found it hilarious.
> There are some concerns, as Quartz’s Nikhil Sonnad noted about last year’s report, about how representative the data it collects and analyzes is of the general population of each country. “The proficiency scores are based on free online tests, so the people taking them are self-selected,” he wrote, “They are not a representative sample of the country’s citizens, and may instead represent a group that is particularly interested in English and has access to the internet.” Even so, Sonnad says “it is the best dataset available for measuring English ability across countries.”
This is a weird concern to raise -- the idea that EF's data isn't representative because it's pulled from a sample of citizens extraordinarily interested in English would strongly imply that the true proficiency level in every country is much lower than reported, and to a lesser extent that the gaps between countries are probably wider than reported.
> correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation. Is it, as EF and others argue, that better English skills facilitate global trade and investment, which leads to growth and new jobs? Or is it that rich countries can invest more in bilingual education?
Nice, one thing I noticed in Italy is people eager to practice their Spanish with me everywhere I went
.
Even witnessed French tourists interacting with Italian customer service workers... in Spanish ! On two different occasions. It blew.my mind lol not used to see Spanish used as a Lingua Franca outside Spanish speaking countries...
> France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study (qz.com)
No, they simply are not [2]
France has INCREASED as per the report, Spain has dropped.
"English proficiency levels are rising in the European Union, with more EU countries than ever in the Very High Proficiency band. France’s scores have improved for the past two years"
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|6 years ago|reply
English is studied in primary school, which wasn't the case 20 years ago, let alone 50, so young people all have at least a minimal level whereas most people that are now passing away don't speak any English at all. This alone should be an important factor pushing average proficiency up. The coming of Netflix, HBO and their ilk in the last few years have made viewing TV series in English much more common (regular TV typically only offers dubbed versions). I teach at a university in English, ten years ago we didn't even offer that possibility and now demand is steadily increasing.
OK, I don't have actual data, they do... but given the limitations of their data (acknowledged in the piece itself), I'm taking it with a huge grain of salt.
[+] [-] somberi|6 years ago|reply
From this one man's experience, it is not that Spain has regressed in its proficiency with English, but I find that other southern European countries (particularly Portugal) has upped the ante - a LOT.
To compare Paris (I understand it does not represent all of France, but it is one view point), 20 years ago I would have difficult time in ordering in a restaurant. A hardship many English-speaking visitors today will find hard to empathize with. In most places in Paris today I can get by with English and get complex transactions done.
Portugal has truly baked-in English proficiency into their national psyche now. Zealotry aside, this enables Portugal to further their economic and cultural interests more, I think.
[+] [-] narag|6 years ago|reply
That's tricky. Years ago primary extended from 1st to 8th grades (6 to 14 y.o. aprox.) so English, that started in 6th was primary. Now 6th to 8th have been moved to ESO.
Anyway I just checked with my son and he started in Infantil, so it's really soon.
The real issue is qualification. To really understand and speak English you need to learn pronuntiation properly. And that's the weakest link in our system. Most teachers have no idea how English is really pronounced and wouldn't be able to understand a native speaker to save their lives. It's impossible to learn English from someone that can't understand or speak it.
I believe it was Aguirre that proposed a plan to invite thousands of native speakers to teach English in Madrid. Of course everybody attacked her as usual whatever she says... I don't like her either, but that was a good idea for once.
[+] [-] ksec|6 years ago|reply
20 years ago not many in Spain and France ( or even Germany ) would speak any English. May be they do, but may be they were too afraid, or refuse to speak as in the case of French.
20 years later literally everybody in ( Western ) Europe speaks English. I could go on the street and ask for directions, in places that are not cities or tourist attraction. Even the French. They may not be proficient at it, but they do understand and can do basic communication.
So I dont see any decline. And Thinking back I am surprised at how fast the world has evolved! ( Which also means I am getting old .... )
[+] [-] WalterBright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laurentb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arete314159|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nottorp|6 years ago|reply
Incidentally it also explains why native english speakers tend to have no idea about other languages.
The rise of youtube talking heads should also help... i'm pretty sure my daughter got most of her english from there.
[+] [-] perakojotgenije|6 years ago|reply
I live in a small town near the serbian-hungarian border and we can watch both Hungarian and Serbian TV stations. In Serbia movies are subtitled (so you can hear English language all the time) while in Hungary movies are dubbed (so you can't hear anything other than hungarian language on TV). Serbian families who live here watch mostly serbian TV and hungarian families watch mostly hungarian TV stations. Ask any English teacher here and they will all tell you that there is very clear distinction between level of knowledge in serbian vs hungarian kids. They all live in the same town, go to the same school, the only difference is that those kids who watched serbian TV stations had much bigger exposure to english language as opposed to those who watched hungarian TV stations.
[+] [-] unclesams-uncle|6 years ago|reply
The country is split linguistically between Dutch speakers in the northern Flemish region, and French in the southern Walloon region.
The Flemish region's television stations and cinemas run mostly subtitled programs (really, anything outside of children's shows and content made in the region or in the Netherlands).
In the French-speaking areas, the media companies and cinemas buy their content from France, where the vast majority of it comes overdubbed.
As a result, the Flemish have a much stronger command of English than their French-speaking counterparts.
That said, the French-speaking Belgians, at least in my experience of living there for a long time, speak English much better than the French.
A lot of that has to do with how international the country is, where Brussels not only hosts many international institutions, but also a lot of companies have their EU HQs there. Many people need to speak English to get jobs with these firms, so it drives up the English competency among the local population.
Your theory definitely has some merit.
[+] [-] jventura|6 years ago|reply
That is how I learned the basics of the english language when I was a kid. Here in Portugal movies are subtitled.
Incidentally, I went to Milan once to participate in this thing, and neither Italians, Spanish, French, Polish and Russian people could understand each other. I speak a little bit of everything (almost, had to use pseudo-english with the polish and russian) so I had to do the translations. Talk abou information assimetry: I knew everything that happened because I was the unnoficial translator.
The "best" part of that trip was to have to watch Four weddings and a Funeral dubbed in Italian! It went some months before I was able to tolerate italian language again..
[+] [-] yorwba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AareyBaba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mettamage|6 years ago|reply
It's also the reason why there's a moderate correlation (didn't actually research this) between small EU countries and English ability. Small countries are better, because they don't have the resources to dub their series.
This used to be more true than now. The Netherlands has been regressing a bit in their English speaking ability precisely because children tv shows aren't in English anymore (though there's still plenty of opportunity in NL, there simply used to be more).
[+] [-] tluyben2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] learner124|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|6 years ago|reply
I've learned traveling in foreign countries that simply learning the native words for please, thank you, hello, goodbye, yes and no goes a long way towards having a pleasant experience. The locals will go out of their way to be nice to you for making the effort.
[+] [-] golemiprague|6 years ago|reply
The Spanish market is huge and so are other big influential countries like Japan, Germany or France which is still spoken in many other countries, mainly in Africa. So there is less incentive to learn English because everything is available in the local language.
There are other factors like closeness of the language to English(north European countries) and colonialism(the sub continent). The advancement of the Latin American economies makes Spanish a much more viable and influential competition to English so English becomes less necessary. You can even see it in popular culture where Spanish music and tv shows become popular all over the world. As a non Spanish speaker my random vocabulary in this language increased a lot during the last couple of years.
[+] [-] chinesempire|6 years ago|reply
Even admitting that the study is true, which I don't believe, there are factors at play
- most Italian English speakers have been moving to foreign countries for the past 20 years (between 100 thousands and 250 thousands a year)
- Italy, after Japan, is the oldest country in the World, many Italians have never met an English speaking person and the last one for many of them was soon after WW2
- English has never been important in Italy, unless you had to communicate with anglophones. German, French and Spanish are much more widespread either because they were studied at school, are easier for us to learn and we have the majority of exchanges with those countries (France is the main commercial partner, Germany is the second largest buyer of Italian products, including tourism)
- immigration brought here a lot of people coming from non-english backgrounds, in Milan the second most spoken language is now (probably) Chinese. It's easier to meet a Japanese on the streets than an American and a lot of workers in base services (transport, delivery, cleaning etc.) come from south america, northern Africa or East Europe
Speaking a very good English is almost irrelevant, the majority of the people an Italian needs to speak to speak a worse English than them, assuming they even speak English at all
it's not uncommon to meet a Tunisian transporter speaking with a Bosnian mason in a Chinese bar and they use Italian - their own version of it - as lingua franca
It's fascinating
Edit: forgot to mention that many Italians in the past migrated to Germany or Belgium, that's why they speak German or French, but not English.
[+] [-] pjmlp|6 years ago|reply
As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages.
English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.
[+] [-] wannabag|6 years ago|reply
From an outsider perspective, the time it took for British media and the political class to take note of the European sentiment on the issue of brexit was around 1 year. It was as if they just found out there was an non-English web out there..
[+] [-] flurdy|6 years ago|reply
We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, but also in politics, business, social media there are "New Speak" version of English in those contexts.
One of these will evolve to be the lingua franca of the young connected people and dominate. And then be superseded by the next evolved language.
Once we colonize Mars and elsewhere there will be some interesting forks in languages I am sure.
[+] [-] squiggleblaz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donkeyd|6 years ago|reply
I wonder, though, whether the conclusion from the data is correct. It could be that more people are getting access to the internet, so even people who didn't have a reason to learn English half a decade ago are now looking for courses online.
[+] [-] PeterStuer|6 years ago|reply
- of course Europe's largest economies are going to be the least incentivized to adopt English due to their larger internal market both in terms of culture as well as economics.
- The International Englishes (plural) are different from both UK and US English. The scientific community has its own 'dialect', and the EU political/administration/diplomatic English is different still. Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture these nuances.
[+] [-] remarkEon|6 years ago|reply
Native English speaker, here. Can speak “emergency” Spanish and German, but that’s about it (asking for directions, ordering food, making limited small talk in a hideous accent I’ve been told, etc). Tried French for a while but stopped because it’s way too hard to learn without immersion. In a way it’s not really surprising to me that Germany is the country retaining English proficiency - English is a Germanic language after all. That the Romance language countries are drifting away from English is not surprising in that regard.
Still, as economies continue to globalize it is curious that there’s a regression at all. English has been the language of business for probably a generation or more at this point. Is this a leading indicator of an economic decoupling we’ll see in the coming decades?
[+] [-] ReptileMan|6 years ago|reply
Also we are in an age in which native english speakers are a minority, so what is good english will inevitably change.
[+] [-] nspattak|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodsanklai|6 years ago|reply
I hate it when I hear the stereotype "French people do speak English but they're not going to because they are so proud" (maybe not exactly what you're saying...). It's simply untrue. People who speak good English will very happy to practice whenever the opportunity shows up.
It's not easy to learn a foreign language, and most French people who didn't have the opportunity to study abroad, or who don't need English at their workplace don't speak English very well. However, I think most of them speak some English, as long as you're patient and don't expect them to be fluent. For many people, it's intimidating to speak English, even if they've learnt the basics at school.
> they have their own French speaking view of the planet
Indeed, they live in a country where they can get by using their own national language and most of them don't have enough opportunities to meet English speaking foreigners. Why should you expect them to learn your language, especially if you're the one moving there?
> Germany where English are much more/better spoken
English is hard for roman languages speakers. It seeems Italian, Spaniards, French have a harder time than Germans or Dutch...
[+] [-] tsukurimashou|6 years ago|reply
French has a lot of words which are close or exactly the same as English, but doesn't sound the same or mean completely different things, which doesn't help. (example: 'argument' in English as in 'having an argument' and 'argument' in French as in 'ton argument ne mène nulle part' don't mean the same at all, other words can mean the same such as 'agile' but sounds like two different words when pronounced in French vs English)
And then you have pride (the wrong kind) coupled with the fear of sounding ridiculous, which is why 99% of French you hear speaking English has a very strong accent, they're not trying.
[+] [-] herogreen|6 years ago|reply
Whereas in Finland, subtitles on foreign TV programs are common and classes have less students (I think).
Thus I believe it entirely comes down to the government not being smart enough.
[+] [-] ldng|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epsylon|6 years ago|reply
Americans also live in their own universe. And so do many others...
[+] [-] bluecalm|6 years ago|reply
I handle emails for the company I've founded for 5 years now. My experience is that nationality of the customer has big predictive value when it comes to how the communication goes. For example:
Germans - decent English with funny spelling/grammar quirks (der computer, der solver, using gender pronouns when referring to things etc.)
Chinese - rarely write any English but are very smart at using Google translate, I rarely have any communication issues with them. General computer literacy very high.
Japanese - exceptionally polite. Often write perfect English. Some of them don't though but they always make an effort (no pasting of Google Translate) and apologize profusely for their English being not so good.
Scandinavians: write better English than many native speakers, absolutely no issues. If I were to point the best speaking Scandi country it would be Finland.
Russians: often appear rude as I think translating Russian word by word results in rude sounding English. Maybe it's about the culture as well. I like communicating with them though. They sometimes use veiled or not so veiled insults towards me and my software. I keep the tone in my emails sometimes suggesting their brain is just malfunctioning and they are wasting my time. It usually goes well and problems are resolved quickly.
French: surprisingly much easier to communicate with than Spaniards. They rarely write correct English but somehow I am usually able to resolve the issue while when I see an email in Spanglish I brace myself for incoming trouble. French email domains (laposte, orange.fr) suck though. They often lose emails without any message. At this point if someone orders using laposte email I am emailing them from my personal account asking to provide functional email address. It sometimes gets to them but not always. We don't have those issues with any other email provider.
I could do a few more but those I feel strongest about. I am one guy who sells software to a specific niche. I am also not a native speaker so take it for what it is.
[+] [-] mschuetz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|6 years ago|reply
Language isn't merely vocabulary, grammar and pronounciation. It's also nuance in expression, proverbs, slang, idioms. All of this is lost when content is translated and dubbed. When a person in a US sitcom uses an idiom, the spanish dubbed content translates to a similar Spanish idiom. With subtitles not only do I get the pronounciation and vocabulary, I also see in the subtitles a best-effort mapping from the english idiom to the corresponding idiom in my native language.
I think this is solving itself automatically as movies and traditional TV gives way for youtube and netflix where dubbed content isn't as common.
[+] [-] toxik|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrwe434234|6 years ago|reply
http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/
India, due to its deeply colonial state apparatus, is well on its way to losing most of its languages in the coming century. I think this is also the case with African nations - which might explain why the sub-continent (not just India) and Africa share so much in terms of human development indicators.
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squiggleblaz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roenxi|6 years ago|reply
But by raw number of languages standardising on English is probably not ideal. Probably some hybrid of Chinese grammar, Korean alphabet and Latin pronunciations would have been my pick for example.
[+] [-] papafe89|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] virtualritz|6 years ago|reply
I travel frequetly around Europe, particularly to these countries.
Felt English proficiency has steadily improved over the last thirty years.
When I visited these countries as a backpacking teenager, in my summer holidays, almost no one spoke English.
Since about a decade everyone who is under thirty seems to speak English quite well. Aka: I do not need to use my crappy Spanish or Italian or more or less non-existing French skills to get along. :)
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|6 years ago|reply
Wow, I remember the English First billboards in Shanghai around 2009-2010. They showed a white guy and a Chinese woman raising their hands together, and their arms were shackled together at the wrist with a really heavy rope.
This must have worked for the Chinese target audience, but I found it hilarious.
> There are some concerns, as Quartz’s Nikhil Sonnad noted about last year’s report, about how representative the data it collects and analyzes is of the general population of each country. “The proficiency scores are based on free online tests, so the people taking them are self-selected,” he wrote, “They are not a representative sample of the country’s citizens, and may instead represent a group that is particularly interested in English and has access to the internet.” Even so, Sonnad says “it is the best dataset available for measuring English ability across countries.”
This is a weird concern to raise -- the idea that EF's data isn't representative because it's pulled from a sample of citizens extraordinarily interested in English would strongly imply that the true proficiency level in every country is much lower than reported, and to a lesser extent that the gaps between countries are probably wider than reported.
> correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation. Is it, as EF and others argue, that better English skills facilitate global trade and investment, which leads to growth and new jobs? Or is it that rich countries can invest more in bilingual education?
Surely these are both true.
[+] [-] Camillo|6 years ago|reply
- The language barrier creates a distinct market for products and services -> good for local companies.
- The language barrier creates a distinct market for media and entertainment -> good for local culture.
- Can't read US media directly -> slightly more political independence.
- People can't speak English -> slightly less brain drain (alas, most educated people learn English anyway, but not all).
[+] [-] pengting77|6 years ago|reply
Even witnessed French tourists interacting with Italian customer service workers... in Spanish ! On two different occasions. It blew.my mind lol not used to see Spanish used as a Lingua Franca outside Spanish speaking countries...
[+] [-] aaron695|6 years ago|reply
No, they simply are not [2]
France has INCREASED as per the report, Spain has dropped.
"English proficiency levels are rising in the European Union, with more EU countries than ever in the Very High Proficiency band. France’s scores have improved for the past two years"
[0] https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/
[1] https://www.ef.com/epi/regions/europe/
[2] https://www.ef.com/__/~/media/centralefcom/epi/downloads/ful...