
France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study - pi314s
https://qz.com/1736699/france-spain-and-italys-english-skills-are-on-the-decline/
======
Al-Khwarizmi
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.

~~~
somberi
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.

~~~
vidarh
> In most places in Paris today I can get by with English and get complex
> transactions done.

First times I went to France (90's), there were people I met who genuinely did
not understand English at all - even simple words -, and I had shopkeepers
who, when my stumbling French was also insufficient, pulled strangers off the
street to translate, and at least in smaller towns it sometimes took multiple
tries to find someone.

By my last few trips it'd become hard to practice my French because people
switch to English the moment I stumble in French...

------
nottorp
My pet theory is that English proficiency is much better in countries where
movies are subtitled, not dubbed.

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.

~~~
yorwba
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.

~~~
aspaviento
I agree to a certain extent but keep in mind that Japanese grammar is
completely different from any latin based language. That makes really
difficult to asimilate full sentences, locate where the action or the subject
are, etc.

~~~
AstralStorm
It's only visually different. Much like Russian. That is a relatively big
barrier though.

Grammar and concepts are comparable. It's no Chinese for sure. Much less alien
than Korean too.

(And let's not try comparing it with Hebrew, Indic languages or Arabic vs
Latin group.)

~~~
aspaviento
It's way more than visual. For example, Japanese plurals aren't evident and
need to be understood from context. Another example is the word order, in
Japanese, the verb goes at the end of the sentence. Add to it Hiragana and
Katakana characters and it becomes quite difficult to learn.

~~~
wahern
In English also verb end can go. Plurality--they can usually be disregarded,
too.

~~~
saagarjha
> In English also verb end can go.

This sounds wrong to me…

~~~
remarkEon
Point this is.

(Though i think the correct pseudo translation would be “In English also verb
can end go”. Subtle difference, but more like German - und auf den Punkt.)

------
chinesempire
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.

------
pjmlp
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.

~~~
flurdy
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.

~~~
asveikau
Important to note that this has probably happened before with other popular
languages. The way you describe the hypothetical future of English sounds a
lot like you could be talking about Latin. The phrase _lingua franca_ itself
came about to describe a very similar story.

------
squiggleblaz
Another article on that page [https://qz.com/1213443/the-world-is-getting-
better-at-englis...](https://qz.com/1213443/the-world-is-getting-better-at-
english-but-some-countries-are-learning-faster-than-others/) 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_/^.

~~~
dfawcus
Which has a link to [https://www.ef.edu/epi/](https://www.ef.edu/epi/), where
neither England nor the UK are listed.

So I guess we don't make the grade :-(

------
donkeyd
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.

------
PeterStuer
2 remarks:

\- 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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture
> these nuances.

Standardized tests don't do well at assessing language fluency in general. For
one example, my sister was born in the US, grew up in the US, was educated in
English, spoke English (exclusively) at home, and graduated from the
University of Pennsylvania. She failed the State Department's test of fluency
in English.

~~~
saagarjha
Similarly, I know a number of fluent Spanish speakers who got caught up in
high school Spanish because they didn’t have an understanding of grammar to
the level of what was required in the class…

------
remarkEon
Fascinating.

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?

~~~
nkrisc
I learned a little bit of Norwegian before traveling there. Sure most people
we met spoke English but it did help when the trams in Oslo were being
rerouted and I was able to read the sign at the otherwise empty tram stop
telling us the stop was closed and where to go instead! Or read the Norwegian
menu and order appetizers (in English), at which point the waitress realized
we weren't Norwegian and gave us the English menus (I didn't realize most
restaurants had English menus as well, good for us). I wouldn't have fared
well with the main courses. I've found lay food terminology is one the least
universal things.

My point is, however, that I found learning Norwegian easier than learning
Spanish, which I was fluent in at one point, years ago. There weren't 14
tenses to learn like in Spanish, sentence structure felt more familiar and
closer to English, and there were many more cognates than I expected. Sure
there were some new things like putting articles before or appended to nouns
to denote indefinite or definite. Or even the gendered articles (my favorite
thing about English is nearly all nouns are neuter).

------
ReptileMan
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.

------
nspattak
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.

~~~
yodsanklai
> 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...

~~~
learner124
Patience is definitely key and most people who only speak one language have no
patience for someone who partially knows their language to talk to them. I've
been learning Spanish and traveling in Latin America and the only people I can
successfully have actual conversations with in Spanish are ones who also know
English because they seem to understand what it's like to have trouble
expressing themselves. I'll speak in Spanish and they listen even though I'm
slower than a normal person and I'll do the same if they talk back to me in
English.

------
bluecalm
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.

------
mschuetz
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.

------
alkonaut
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.

------
toxik
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.

~~~
akie
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](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.

~~~
toxik
I’m a speaker of one of the smaller languages, and every educated person I
know lament the inability to express themselves without resorting to English
idioms. It isn’t that they don’t exist, some people are great at my language,
it’s just that something like 99% of the movies I watch, podcasts I listen to,
or papers I read are in English. I simply am much better at high level English
than my own language. Colloquial English not so much though.

~~~
akie
Is the national language in your country English, or another language?

~~~
toxik
It is a different language, notably it's a northern Germanic language so the
compatibility is fairly high. It also isn't mutually intelligible with English
at all. I should maybe just say it's Swedish.

~~~
gerdesj
English started out life as a Germanic language but has changed somewhat over
the last 1500 years. For example _scir gerefe_ which becomes _shire reeve_ and
eventually sheriff. Yes, Rosco P Coltrane and company have a job title that is
over 1500 years old. A shire is roughly a county in modern terms. For example
Devonshire, Lanarkshire, Sir Fynwy etc in Britain. That last is Welsh.

Look at words like day, tag, dag and so on in the various Germanic languages.
When you see that in English, the letter g morphed into y in a lot of words,
it makes sense and of course we have to allow for some rather random spelling
in the past and a great vowel shift or two. I live in Yeovil which was
recorded as gifle (a fork in a river) in about 900. The nearby river Yeo seems
to be named after the town which is named for its location on a feature of the
river ...

These islands from 55 BC to 1066 AD became a revolving door to various
invasions, some of which included Swedes and Danes generally as vikings,
Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Italians (Romans) and any other tom, dick or harry that
could find a boat and fancied duffing up a few Britons and settling down and
raise a few apples and chickens! When the Northmen - Norsemen - Normans ie
Duke William of Normandy turned up in 1066 they eventually did the job
properly and ... eventually became English themselves and simply gave the
language a bit of a twist. For example we have both Saxon and Frankish
(French) words for many things eg meat: cow and beef, sheep and mutton,
chicken and errr chicken, pig and pork.

I think that because English has had so many influences in the past that it
has developed a certain flexibility that many languages do not. It is also a
relatively new language - only 1500 years old! I learned Latin at school for
several years, along with French and lived in Germany for 10 years (off and
on). English can be warped and twisted and generally abused and yet the
meaning remains intact better than some other languages.

The ultimate irony here is that I am talking about the new kid language on the
block on HN!

------
papafe89
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.

------
virtualritz
This makes no sense to me.

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
> 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?

Surely these are both true.

~~~
mikk14
> 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.

No, if your samples aren't representative then any conclusion you draw can be
flawed for thousands of different reasons and in all possible directions. Two
examples.

1) Let's say that the top 1% of English speakers of countries A and B took the
test. You say "the gaps then would be wider than reported". Wrong, even if in
this 1% sample country A scores the highest, it might very well have _lower_
overall proficiency. If proficiency is normally distributed, but has a much
greater variance in country A than country B, the maximum of A will be higher
than of B, even with a lower average.

2) Now you take the tests at time t and t+1. However, at time t the test was
less popular, so only 0.5% of the top speakers took the test, while at t+1 1%
of the top speakers took the test. You would conclude that a lower score a
time t+1 implies that the skill got worse, while it might have very well
improved by a lot.

(In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I never heard of EF before
2017, so I couldn't have taken the test before then)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> 2) Now you take the tests at time t and t+1. However, at time t the test was
> less popular, so only 0.5% of the top speakers took the test, while at t+1
> 1% of the top speakers took the test. You would conclude that a lower score
> a time t+1 implies that the skill got worse, while it might have very well
> improved by a lot.

I agree with this in full. I don't see what it's responding to in my comment,
though.

> 1) Let's say that the top 1% of English speakers of countries A and B took
> the test. You say "the gaps then would be wider than reported". Wrong, even
> if in this 1% sample country A scores the highest, it might very well have
> lower overall proficiency. If proficiency is normally distributed, but has a
> much greater variance in country A than country B, the maximum of A will be
> higher than of B, even with a lower average.

I'm not following you here. I claimed that when the test pool for each country
is strongly self-selected for interest in English, the gap between the
countries' average proficiency levels (in reality) is very likely to be larger
than the gap between those countries' average test scores. The test scores are
suffering from restriction of range.

An example in which country A has higher test scores than B at the same time
it has _lower_ proficiency looks like an example of that phenomenon, not a
counterexample.

If A and B have the same mean proficiency and different variance, and
selection into the test pool is driven only by proficiency, then the country
with higher variance will test better under this system while having the same
mean proficiency, that's true.

------
Camillo
Isn't this potentially beneficial for those countries?

\- 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
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...

------
aaron695
> 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"

[0] [https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/](https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/)

[1]
[https://www.ef.com/epi/regions/europe/](https://www.ef.com/epi/regions/europe/)

[2]
[https://www.ef.com/__/~/media/centralefcom/epi/downloads/ful...](https://www.ef.com/__/~/media/centralefcom/epi/downloads/full-
reports/v9/ef-epi-2019-english.pdf)

------
aspaviento
This reminds me the comments in the different app or video game stores (like
steam). Spanish people ALWAYS complain about apps or games not being
translated to Spanish and vote them very low because of it. I can't understand
how people haven't realized yet how important is to know English nowadays.

------
asimpletune
On the other hand, as an American I was blown away by how good most
Icelanders’ English was. The young people for the most part spoke perfect
English that was about on par with your average American college student.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
I talked to an Icelander about this, and he said it was entirely because of
YouTube. There's not a lot of Icelandic content, so all the kids just watch
English videos.

------
habosa
Anecdata: I spent 5 weeks in Spain in 2009 and 2 weeks in Spain 2019. I can
tell you for sure that people who work in customer-facing industries speak
MUCH more and better English now than they did 10 years ago.

------
dr_dshiv
No one cares about perfect English, queen's English, when speaking with
Europeans. The place it matters is in writing, where improper constructions
can be really irritating. And writing well is a real skill.

------
throwyweather
"English is becoming less relevant in developed economies"

~~~
Joe-Z
Doesn‘t sound right, does it?

Even weirder is this re-phrasing: „The more integrated into the global economy
you are, the less you need english“

Greetings from Austria!

------
Patrick_Devine
I was recently in both Barcelona and Paris, and if I compare English
proficiency in both cities compared to 20 or 30 years ago, it's night and day
different. So many more people speak English now than ever before.

Being able to speak a few key phrases in French, Spanish, or Catalan still
goes a long way.

------
GreeniFi
It’s interesting that the countries which score lowest are where the Romance
languages are spoken. I wonder what the reasons for that are. FYI I’m an
English speaker who speaks 2 other Germanic languages and Spanish. The Spanish
I find by far the hardest and that could also be reversed. Just an hypothesis.

~~~
alexgmcm
Weird, I had the opposite experience - I moved to Spain after Uni but during
Uni I worked in Germany for half a year.

I found Spanish much easier to learn than German because the grammar is
simpler and the words are often similar to Latin words which are in turn
similar to English words.

I never had to use Flash Cards when learning Spanish, they were vital for
German.

For example, Mano is similar to Manual which is related to the Hand, obviously
in German it is simpler as the word is the same.

However, negocio is similar to negotiate which reminds me of business...
Betrieb on the other hand - probably going to need the flash cards.

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UptownMusic
My wife and I (both Americans) got married in Italy, have lived in Spain near
her family and visited France to see friends we made when our children were in
French school together here in the US. In numerous visits we have rarely met
anyone in Italy, Spain or France who speaks English as well as my wife speaks
their native language. A classic that never gets old for some reason is the
reaction when she tells French people that it would be better for all of us to
speak French rather than English.

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pgcj_poster
As an American, I always feel stupid when Europeans apologize for their
countrymen's language skills. Sure, French people might not be as good at
English as Germans, but nevertheless, I've met a significant number of French
teenagers who spoke better English than I did French, even though I'd been
studying longer (sometimes much longer) than they had.

~~~
adventured
There is a strong imbalance there. There are three dozen common languages in
Europe. As an American, you stand no chance against that language diversity
when it comes to matching up with a given person in Europe who only needs to
learn English to match up with you.

~~~
pgcj_poster
Sure, but I don't know even one foreign language as well as similarly-
positioned Europeans tend to know English, and neither do most Americans.

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xiaodai
That's cos they are all learning Chinese.

~~~
adventured
Language adoption figures indicate that essentially nobody is learning
Mandarin outside of China. It's such a small percentage as to be rounding
error versus the major international languages like English, Spanish, French,
German. Due to the tightly controlled culture of China (eg the firewall),
which barricades foreigners to the outside and natives to the inside, that
will continue to be true. The difficulty of learning Mandarin makes that even
worse.

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fargle
And in the US.

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gsich
No shit, learning English from a romanic language is hard. German to English
is easy mode.

~~~
donkeyd
I'm sure that's a factor, but it's also a bit cultural. Countries with the
highest proficiency tend to use subtitles in stead of dubbing for foreign
language movies. Because of this, you get much more familiar with other
languages. I learned most of my English from watching movies and the internet.
I was pretty much fluent in English before I even started getting English
classes in High School, so I never had to actively learn it.

~~~
antupis
Also smaller languages usually don't have a lively community around niche
topics (specific games, cartoons, startups, programming, etc) so you end up in
discussing things in English. Personally I learned English from fantasy books
and WOW.

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bsder
I didn't see it mentioned, but Greece speaks English quite well. I often
comment that Greece is like Europe on easy-mode for Americans.

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Glosster
Nationalism, which leads to dubbing or subbing every piece of English content
that's on TV... this is one of the issues.

~~~
saagarjha
What’s wrong with subtitles? Subtitles are great.

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mytailorisrich
English is just one of thousands of languages in this world.

Europe has many languages and most European countries trade most with their
neighbours. IMHO it makes sense to learn the language of a neighbouring
country before trying "fit the American mold" (and I say that from the UK).

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thbr99
That's good news for Québec where they have made laws to treat English
speakers as second class citizens. Businesses in Québec are advised not to
greet customers with "Bonjour-Hi" but just "Bonjour" to preserve the identity
& French culture in Québec.

