Nothing to do with your comment, but as happy as I am that comment likes are now a thing, I'm sad that only comments on new quizzes will ever get likes. Kalbahamut had some great ones I'd "like" to find and "like".
Huh? It is not like quizzes that were made in the past are locked, or that you can't like comments that were made before this was implemented. I don't "year-discriminate" I ve liked many comments as old as 2013 and I think 2012 even (and 2019/2020 might not even be the top receiving year for my likes, I have a feeling it is 2018)
The only Icelandic word I know, because my geography teachter taught me that 10 years ago. It is the name of one of the largest shield volcano's in Iceland and the name is translated to 'shieldvolcano'.
I am continually amazed at the abilities of some Nations to speak other languages, I have Dutch and German friends that speak English as well as any English people, better than some. Not just correct, but using regional jargon as well.
I think there's also a significant difference between countries whose dominant languages aren't usually dubbed over English-language tv and movies. Dubbing does nothing to teach language; subtitling does lots.
As for Germany pretty much everything is dubbed. I like to watch movies in English though (if that's the original language of the movie) because it feels more authentic to me. This and chatting with foreigners in English probably improved my English. I mean I wasn't bad at school but learning or improving a language through something you enjoy is way easier and more efficient.
We had to take a foreign language in my high school back in the '60s, and I took two years of Spanish. However, I can remember very little of it now. Even my daughter who majored in French, did study abroad in France, and has vacationed there more than once now has trouble remembering the language. I have a friend who grew up in Germany but has been in the US over twenty years. She says she is losing some of her native language. I think with language it holds true, "Use it or lose it."
After my first 30 years in Germany, I've been living the last 12 years or so in the UK. Luckily I still have a habit of talking to myself a lot in my native language, so I never forget it. :)
I work internationally on a fairly constant basis. My experience is consistent with these statistics, although it is hard for me to imagine who the 10% of Dutch are who are not English proficient. Damn near 100%, if you ask me. And much higher in Germany and Austria. Yes, I have observers' bias, because I generally am in contact with other businesspeople or folks at airports/restaurants/hotels or other service providers that generally will have contact with English speakers. But, pretty much, English is so invasive due to the cultural impact of the US, even those who are not 'proficient' have a decent working knowledge.
I dont think it has that much to do with the us at all. My contact with the english language has mainly come from books, and later on having the television on the bbc channel (I never have the tv on any of the national channels, it is either bbc, discovery, or national geographic, and when we still received it, animal planet). So I dont see where the us comes into that.
ok if you watch movies a lot, I suppose the biggest share of those comes from the us.
It really isn't the cultural impact of the US that brought English proficiency to its current levels in Northwestern Europe, because that phenomenon predates even the US' existence as a country. Back in the 18th century, Dutch and Danish colonies in the Caribbean already used English as their lingua franca for convenience's sake, and they could count on Dutch and Danish officers and government officials to speak English. Of course the sheer number of people speaking English in the Netherlands, Denmark and other countries has gone up since, but that has more to do with the rise of universal education in the 19th and early 20th centuries than with the rise of the US as a cultural influence. In fact, in most European countries, the variety of English that is taught in schools is very clearly British English, not American English.
If there are any Welsh people who can't speak English, the numbers must be in the double figures at most. I was born in Wales and spent the first 21 years of my life there, but have never met anybody who can only speak Welsh.
Don't forget Scottish Gaelic - although admittedly, if you know Scottish Gaelic but don't know English and you live in the U.K., you're not going to fare too well.
I met one Welsh person who couldn't speak English, and that was in 1995 and she was very old at that point. She was a rarity even then. I seriously doubt there is more than a handful of monoglot Welsh speakers these days, if any at all.
It's pretty much a daily occurrence that I meet someone unable to speak English in London, whether in a Korean shop, Indian shop or someone just on the streets. It personally doesn't bother me though, I'll be leaving the UK for a country where I barely speak the language so I can't exactly by a hypocrite about it.
^ Exactly! I'm sure that English is offered as a second or third language in all European countries (I know that I had a choice of English, German, French and Spanish). Just about all educated Europeans have at least a working knowledge of English.
French is a completely different language family from English, so it is harder to learn. All of the countries in the quiz have the same language family.
I was, briefly, a language assistant in France (teaching 15-16 year olds). While a handful of students in each class were good at English, the rest had a pretty low standard of English, no different from the standard of French in my GCSE class back in England. Even the English teachers were of varying standard, with two of them speaking it fluently, but the other three speaking it with an at times incomprehensible French accent.
Would really love to see the figures for the microstates: Monaco, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and the Vatican (all 600 priests that live there or whatever). Kinda surprised none of them made the list.
Depends on where you go in the countries you visit. In the major cities the inhabitants speak English (even in France where they pretend not to, perhaps because they take such pleasure in making fun of Americans' attempt to speak French, that they fear the same treatment from Americans when they attempt English) but in rural areas most of the inhabitants speak some form of their native language.
Just because it is many in the nordic countries who sprak english do not sprak goot english. Meant speeak good. The quality is bad, but good enouff to communicaite with oters
In rea life, speaking from experience as a central european residence, I can confirm that in Switzerland you are way more likely to find English speakers than in both Germany and Austria.
I visit Germany often and have never found one single person who could not speak decent English. However in France and Spain you can find yourself struggling sometimes.
Kinda surprised not to see Iceland. I feel like it would easily make 80%, but I can't find the figures. In my experience pretty much everyone there speaks English.
I am shocked to see Finland. I thought the Uralic language of Finnish was super distant from English, so seems like a lot of work to put in to have so many people know it.
How is it so shocking? Lol you realise that we hear and see English literally EVERYWHERE so it's kinda hard not to learn it, and this is coming from a native Finnish speaker.
Similarity to English is not the only factor - another major one is the size of your linguistic community and the subsequent need to learn another means of communication. Spanish, French or Russian speakers for instance speak less English overall because they don't have as much need to speak it as their native language has a large community. And in that regard, native English speakers are the most monolingual group by far.
What's the source for this? I don't believe that 30% or more of people in Australia (or, even more, New Zealand) can't speak English. Nor does the wikipedia page you get when you google "english proficiency" - it looks completely different to this quiz ...
vantage (or, in reality, the disadvantage) of being born in the United States is that we are surrounded by "countries" (read states) that
speak English. Even so, some states are advanced enough to require the teaching of foreign languages in their High School and Colleges/Universities.
ok if you watch movies a lot, I suppose the biggest share of those comes from the us.
Not sure where this data is coming from.
Love this quiz, nonetheless. I know where to go now when I visit Europe xD