
Unlike in US, most European students learn a foreign language - okket
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/06/most-european-students-are-learning-a-foreign-language-in-school-while-americans-lag/
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robertcope
Foreign language was required for two years in high school. People in Europe
seem to forget that I can literally drive for days and not leave my country
nor have any use for a language other than English. If I were to become fluent
in anything other than Spanish, as a second language, I'd rarely get to speak
it unless I sought at some kind of language group.

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gus_massa
There is some important difference, because the current lingua franca is
English, so anyone that is not an English native speaker must study English
sooner or later. [Hi from Argentina!]

It would be interesting to compare the rate of the US with the rate of the UK
to have a comparison of the social interest in learning another language that
is not overshadowed by the effect of the native language.

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phendrenad2
I imagine people in the US would too, if different states spoke different
languages. According to Google, all of europe is only double the population of
just USA.

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bb2018
Yeah. I'm not saying that Americans being able to speak more languages would
be bad, but it's not the same at all. There are only 5M Norwegian speakers
worldwide. Of course you will want to learn another language (probably
English) if you want to be successful and communicate with the rest of the
world.

