
English as a second language: Test results on the most fluent countries  - JCB_K
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/04/english?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/whospeaksenglish
======
ubershmekel
Israel wasn't included. Anyhow here's a copy of the main graph:

    
    
        Rank, Country, EF EPI Score, Level
        1 Norway 69.09 Very High Proficiency
        2 Netherlands 67.93 Very High Proficiency 
        3 Denmark 66.58 Very High Proficiency 
        4 Sweden 66.26 Very High Proficiency 
        5 Finland 61.25 Very High Proficiency
        6 Austria 58.58 High Proficiency
        7 Belgium 57.23 High Proficiency 
        8 Germany 56.64 High Proficiency 
        9 Malaysia 55.54 High Proficiency 
        10 Poland 54.62 Moderate Proficiency
        11 Switzerland 54.60 Moderate Proficiency 
        12 Hong Kong 54.44 Moderate Proficiency 
        13 South Korea 54.19 Moderate Proficiency 
        14 Japan 54.17 Moderate Proficiency 
        15 Portugal 53.62 Moderate Proficiency 
        16 Argentina 53.49 Moderate Proficiency 
        17 France 53.16 Moderate Proficiency 
        18 Mexico 51.48 Moderate Proficiency 
        19 Czech Republic 51.31 Moderate Proficiency 
        20 Hungary 50.80 Moderate Proficiency 
        21 Slovakia 50.64 Moderate Proficiency 
        22 Costa Rica 49.15 Low Proficiency
        23 Italy 49.05 Low Proficiency 
        24 Spain 49.01 Low Proficiency 
        25 Taiwan 48.93 Low Proficiency 
        26 Saudi Arabia 48.05 Low Proficiency 
        27 Guatemala 47.80 Low Proficiency 
        28 El Salvador 47.65 Low Proficiency 
        29 China 47.62 Low Proficiency 
        30 India 47.35 Low Proficiency 
        31 Brazil 47.27 Low Proficiency 
        32 Russia 45.79 Low Proficiency 
        33 Dominican Republic 44.91 Very Low Proficiency
        34 Indonesia 44.78 Very Low Proficiency 
        35 Peru 44.71 Very Low Proficiency 
        36 Chile 44.63 Very Low Proficiency 
        37 Ecuador 44.54 Very Low Proficiency 
        38 Venezuela 44.43 Very Low Proficiency 
        39 Vietnam 44.32 Very Low Proficiency 
        40 Panama 43.62 Very Low Proficiency 
        41 Colombia 42.77 Very Low Proficiency 
        42 Thailand 39.41 Very Low Proficiency 
        43 Turkey 37.66 Very Low Proficiency 
        44 Kazakhstan 31.74 Very Low Proficiency

~~~
bbgm
I find it very hard to believe that China is ahead of India, even if it's a
few percentage points, especially given that there are enough people in India
for whom English is essentially a first language or a parallel first language.

------
JCB_K
There's a few more factors besides the ones in the article.

-Most of the languages high on the list are similar to English

-The countries don't dub movies. This has such a big impact. I learned most of my English from movies.

~~~
rsaarelm
Finland is the odd one out in the language similarity thing. Scandinavian
languages and Dutch are pretty close to English, but Finnish isn't even Indo-
European.

~~~
xiaoma
Strictly speaking, in terms of grammar, Finnish is an Altaic language, like
Korean and Japanese. However, in terms of vocabulary, culture and just about
everything else, Finnish is closer to English. It has not just a great number
of loan words (as Japanese does), but also cognates.

Possibly more importantly, Finland shares a common history and religious
background with Europe. There are many, many idioms and ways of looking at
things that stem from historical and religious influences. Grimm's fairy
tales, for example, spread through Europe widely, but not through Asia or the
middle East. On result is that while Chinese often has sayings with a similar
meaning as English ones, their literal meanings are very different. In
European languages, on the other hand, the sayings are often literal
translations.

~~~
DrJokepu
Please note that the theory that Uralic languages such as Finnish or Hungarian
and Altaic languages such as Turkic or Mongolese are somehow related is highly
controversial and not supported by the large majority of the linguicists
today. Japanese is not even considered to be an Altaic language.

~~~
xiaoma
Actually the inclusion of Finnish was the error! Its inclusion is very
questionable, but the language group was proposed by a Finn. That's why I
misremembered (former lingustics/Japanese major here). The inclusion of
Japanese, on the other hand has been steadily gaining momentum for decades.

Linguists whose focus is on Japanese generally _do_ generally consider it an
Altaic language. This includes the most prominent, such as Marshall Unger
(under the name Macro-Tungusic). The classification is still somewhat
controversial, but I think it's largely for historical reasons. Local Japanese
language scholars, who are not linguists, have traditionally subscribed to the
view that Japanese is special and separated from all other languages. Modern
linguists do not generally subscribe to that view, regardless of whether a
proto-Altaic existed or not.

In any case the points about shared cultural, historical and religious
heritage still apply. Finns learning English have far more of a shared
cultural framework to work from than Asians learning English do.

------
sivers
Singapore wasn't in the study because English is Singapore's first language.
(Article mistakenly says that the reason is because it's too small.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore>

~~~
tokenadult
Singapore has four official languages: Modern Standard Chinese, Standard
Malay, Tamil, and English. The majority home language of most Singaporeans
born around the time of independence was one or another southern Chinese
language, with Hokkien being the most common (but perhaps not an absolute
majority of the population). Also by no means all of the sizeable minority of
Indo-Singaporeans were native speakers of Tamil at that time, but Tamil gained
the designation as an official language.

The sole language of instruction in primary and secondary schools supported by
public funds in Singapore since independence has been English, with most
pupils studying one or more of the other national languages. Singapore shows
the lie about excuses for poor educational progress in the United States. Many
school officials in the United States whine about the diverse language
backgrounds in some United States school districts, but nowhere in the United
States do you have primary education being done with a population attending
school in English but the MAJORITY of the population not speaking English at
home, as was the case in Singapore just a generation ago.

I've heard some amusing stories from Singaporeans and from Malaysians of
Chinese ethnicity about how to learn just enough Malay to pass school exams
and then forget it. English is the language it is crucial to know in that part
of the world.

------
compay
Argentina was #16 overall and #1 in Latin America. As an American living in
Argentina I think that sounds about right. Knowledge of English is definitely
more widespread here than in other countries in Latin America that I'm
familiar with, particularly in Buenos Aires.

~~~
GFischer
Uruguay did not have enough data to be listed, but the years I took the
Cambridge and Oxford language tests (FCE, Proficiency, etc.), Uruguayans were
in the top spots (the #1 overall got a scholarship to Oxford, and she was
Uruguayan).

Of course, the demographics very much the same as Argentina's so it wouldn't
be a big difference (we're not an Argentinian province by political accident
and meddling by Britain - not that we mind :) ).

~~~
compay
I believe it. I know quite a few developers from there and aside from being
quite talented at what they do, their English is excellent. But having spent
little more than a weekend in the country I didn't want to assume they were a
representative sample. :)

------
kazuya
Here is my take about Japan:

In Japan people learn English as a part of mandatory public education without
targetting any practical use, and many companies mandate good exam score or
certificate about English, even if they don't need English skills on the job.

This leaves Japanese in a strange parallel world of learning English, where
the goal is scoring good and getting a nice job, not communicating with
others.

Hence people without real incentive are forced to take globally standard
English tests such as TOEFL or TOEIC, resulting in that low average score.

------
Tharkun
The results are pretty much what you'd expect, really. English proficiency is
largely a cultural given. Movie dubbing and such definitely plays a big part
of this, as language is largely assimilated by listening to it. If you're
taught English by a French person and you never hear anyone else speak
English, well, you're going to be a lot worse at English than someone with a
comparable education who has more access to spoken English.

It's a shame that the study only shows results per country, and not per
language region in countries. For instance in Belgium there are three language
regions -- Dutch, French and German -- and I'm willing to bet that the results
in each region are much closer to those of Holland/France/Germany than this
meaningless average.

The reason why English is rather hard for speakers of Asian languages should
be pretty obvious: there is such a _big_ difference in sounds. The sounds used
in English are _much_ closer to those used in Spanish than Japanese, even
though English and Spanish are already miles apart..

~~~
cletus
> The reason why English is rather hard for speakers of Asian languages should
> be pretty obvious: there is such a big difference in sounds.

I disagree. The problem is the grammar. Asian languages are rather "grammar-
less" (not that such a thing is technically possible), at least compared to
Indo-European languages.

English tenses in particular are hard for even continental Europeans to
understand. I learnt German for awhile and Germans just struggle with English
tenses. There are only a handful in Germans and many in English.

While English grammar is far more streamlined and less brittle than
continental European languages (ie we have almost no case, no gender of nouns
except for people, no agreement of adjectives and a word order that front-
loads the verb in the sentence) native Asian language speakers still struggle
with plurals, tense and the informal way we use tone (compared to the tonal
languages).

The phenomes used in each language seem like the least important part.

Lastly, it's worth pointing out that there is as much variety in Asian
languages as Indo-European languages. Arguably more since several language
families span Asia.

~~~
derleth
> Asian languages are rather "grammar-less" (not that such a thing is
> technically possible), at least compared to Indo-European languages.

Interesting you should say this, given that Mandarin (for example) has nearly
the same grammar as English as far as word order and lack of a case system
goes: Mandarin words, unlike words in French and German, aren't changed based
on their role in the sentence, and Mandarin words don't have grammatical
gender. English happens to be radically unlike most Indo-European languages in
precisely the ways that make it fairly similar to Mandarin.

> While English grammar is far more streamlined

All languages have the same amount of grammar, distributed differently. (It's
like a waterbed: Push the lump down _here_ and it springs up _there_.) English
does more with word order and context than German, for example.

> The phenomes used in each language seem like the least important part.

Heh. Try saying that when you have to hear and reproduce a vowel sound that
sounds like a warped tape, or a consonant that sounds like the speaker is
rubbing gravel together in the back of his throat.

> Lastly, it's worth pointing out that there is as much variety in Asian
> languages as Indo-European languages.

And in Africa. And in the Americas. And so on.

~~~
cletus
> English happens to be radically unlike most Indo-European languages in
> precisely the ways that make it fairly similar to Mandarin.

I don't really view English as radically different. I just view it as more
fluid. Mandarin I only know of peripherally. French I know some and German I
know quite well. English really is very similar to German. Old English and
Altdeutsch (Old German) were almost the same language (800-1200 years ago) but
when French became the court language of England (after 1066), there was no
central authority maintaining what common English was so it evolved into
something very different with Middle English (which is almost recognizable as
Modern English) by, say, the Tudor dynasty.

Linguistically speaking this was a very interesting phenomenon and one that I
don't think has happened too often elsewhere (where the language of the
aristocracy wasn't the language of the people and was essentially imported).
It led to what I call the democratization of English.

I find it really interesting that the lack of a central authority imposing
standards and maintaining the "purity" of the language actually led to it
becoming much simpler.

> ... given that Mandarin (for example) has ...

Like I said, I'm no expert at Mandarin. A friend of mine has lived in Taiwan
for years and learned Mandarin and he tells me a lot about it. One thing
Mandarin has that English doesn't is formal tone (rising, rising-falling,
etc). This can radically change the meaning. This is a mechanism for
communication that native Mandarin speakers just can't find an analog to when
they learn English.

> All languages have the same amount of grammar

While I think we'll both agree that certain languages are easier to learn for
the speakers of certain languages than others (eg Spanish speakers learn
Italian far easier than Mandarin, Mandarin speakers will learn Vietnamese far
easier than Spanish) I disagree with your waterbed analogy, implying there's
some sort of conservation of language complexity in play.

I believe that some languages are fundamentally easier to learn than others
when you account for starting biases and also that certain languages convey
information better and more easily than others.

Literacy is one measure of this. In 1929 (IIRC), Turkey's president switched
their alphabet from Arabic to a highly phonetic Latin alphabet. Literacy rates
shot up and someone who was previously illiterate could learn to read the new
Turkish in ~6 months.

Compare that with Taiwan where they have competitions in _high school_ at how
fast you can find words in the dictionary.

Also, as a speaker of English, if I'm talking to you on the phone, I can tell
you a new word and how to spell it. There is no equivalent for Mandarin (with
a new character).

My argument is there is a "cognitive price" to be paid for arbitrary
complexity in a language as well as not front-weighting of information by
importance.

An example of the latter: separable verbs in German. (jdm/etw) bringen = "to
bring". (jdm) umbringen = "to kill" so:

Ich bringe meine Frau (I bring my wife) and: Ich habe meine Frau gebracht (I
brought my wife) but:

Ich bringe meine Frau um (I kill my wife) and Ich habe meine Frau umgebracht
(I killed my wife)

Likewise, the arbitrary rules about the agreement of number, gender, case and
article (eg German can change depending on whether you're saying "a student"
(indefinite article) vs "the student" (definite article) all other factors
being equal).

------
kylemathews
I was disappointed the Philippines didn't make it on the list. I spent two
years there and they are ridiculously obsessed with learning English. Add to
that the 50 years they spent as an English colony and they, as a nation, are
exceptionally good at English. Even slum dwellers I'd find were often fairly
proficient.

~~~
samatman
The Philippines were in point of fact an American colony; I presume you meant
English-speaking, as the English did their colonizing under the flag of Great
Britain in any case and it is customary to refer to their colonies as British.

------
jaysonelliot
The full report describes their methodology as including (but not limited to)
results from people who took an online test at ef.com - this is the test:
<http://www.ef.com/master/tests/>

------
wilhelm
As one would expect, the top of the list is dominated by small, peripheral
European nations. As a Norwegian, I'm painfully aware that both my country and
my language is too small to matter to anyone else. If I wish to interact with
people abroad, I will have to do so on their terms, in their language.

And I do have to interact with people aboard. If you have a national economy
or a cultural ecosystem consisting of fifty or hundred million people – like
France, Germany or Japan – there's rarely a real _need_ to talk to anyone on
the outside. There are enough newspapers, books, movies and records being
produced in Japan to satisfy the domestic market – and the imported stuff can
be translated and adapted without adding too much to the cost for each
consumer.

For a country and language with less than five million people – not so much.
We produced a total of 20 movies last year, and the climate on this frozen
rock made sure our crops yielded only half of the food we actually need. If we
didn't talk to anyone else, we'd be bored and starving.

Which regional great power dominates our trade and cultural input has varied
over time. Norway was in the Hanseatic League's sphere of influence from the
1300s, and German language and culture had the greatest influence for almost a
millennium. The harbour area of my home town of Bergen is still named “the
German Wharf”. And my great grandmother told the German soldiers approaching
her in April 1940 to fuck off in perfect German.

During and after the war, the Anglo-american economic and cultural influence
quickly surpassed the German. The Cold War brought us even closer to the US,
despite the American culture being rather … incompatible with the Norwegian.

The stories are similar for most of the other small European countries. But
how the English language influences the native tongue varies wildly from one
country to the next. The differences are especially noticeable between Norway
and Denmark.

Some more historical background first:

Norway is a very young nation-state. From 1380 to 1814, Norway was part of
Denmark. From 1814 to 1905, Norway was in a personal union under the Swedish
king. As of the 19th century, we didn't have our own written language. We
spoke Norwegian, but wrote Danish. As Norwegian nationalism grew during the
1800s, a charming gentleman called Ivar Aasen set out to create a Norwegian
written language. He traveled around the country, taking note of how people
actually spoke. Dialects vary wildly between different parts of the realm (I
haven't seen this much internal variation in any other country), but he did
distill what he heard down to a set of grammar and vocabulary.

The adoption of Ivar Aasen's nynorsk (literally: New Norwegian), too, varied a
lot from region to region. It was generally recieved well on the countryside.
In the cities, the Norwegian upper classes had developed an amalgam dialect
combining the original local tongue and Danish. They were greatly opposed to
this uncivilized new language, and brought much of the urban working classes
onto their team. So for the past 150 years, we've been been fighting,
sometimes almost literally, about how to write. Today we have two official
written languages – bokmål (literally: book language) and nynorsk. There was a
stranded effort in the mid-1900s to unify them, but they have influenced each
other a lot. Bokmål isn't very much like Danish anymore, and standard nynorsk
is quite watered down.

The result of these struggles is that how a Norwegian speaks and writes is a
significant part of his identity. The dialect shows which region you come from
and which social class you belong to (or aspire to belong to), and each one
comes with pride. Not chauvinism or jingoism, but genuine pride. I live in
Oslo, but if I come home to Bergen and show signs of being influenced by the
Oslo dialect, I will be ridiculed by friends and family. For real. (c:

Now, back to my point. The Danish language today is heavily influenced by
English. The frequency of loan words is staggering. A number of English words
have found their way into the Norwegian language too, but an order of
magnitude less. I believe this is due to our history. The Danes were never
colonized by anyone, and haven't spent much time philosophizing about how they
speak or write. We have, and it shows.

(Other interesting tangents: Why have the Norwegian dialects diverged so much?
Why can Norwegians understand Swedish but Swedes have a hard time
understanding Norwegian? Why has Norway stayed out of the European Union? Why
is the English influence of the Norwegian language more noticeable in the
capital than elsewhere?)

~~~
pasbesoin
Thank you. As someone somewhat curious about Norway (and Scandinavia in
general; "it" being part of my heritage), your description provides some
detail I'd not heard.

The regional dialects remind me of my time in Germany. There is considerable
variation between the coastal areas and the Alps. I recall being freshly
arrived in Munich and having a "genuine" (here in the U.S., if we were were
joking or a bit mean, we might say "hillbilly") Bavarian as a neighbor. I
couldn't understand a word he said (unless he made a conscious effort, and
even then...). (He was a really nice guy, BTW, and we go along fine, despite
this.)

I spent a lot of time with students in Munich, a city and university system
that attracted them from all over. And there were plenty of light-hearted
comments about others' accents and where they must be from. I think I was
fortunate to be amongst a younger population for whom such things were more
curiosity than a divisive issue. Older Germans... plenty of genuinely nice
ones, but also sometimes some very entrenched feelings. Like anywhere, I
guess.

I had a question for you, if you don't mind. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark seem
to have so thoroughly integrated English as a second language. Where do you,
and do people in general, seem to find the boundary between their native
language and English in their daily interactions?

I've heard, for example, that if one attendee in a meeting is not a native
speaker, the meeting switches to English and that really seems to be no
problem at all. In Montreal, Canada, amongst the young technologists I
visited, conversations would switch between French and English, and back
again, in mid-sentence.

I don't have a compelling reason for asking; I'm just curious.

~~~
wilhelm
> Where do you, and do people in general, seem to find the boundary between
> their native language and English in their daily interactions?

* If I speak to other Norwegians, I will speak Norwegian. Always. I make a conscious effort to keep the language free of any [recent] loan words.

* If I speak to Swedes or Danes, I will speak Norwegian. If I see they're having trouble following, I will speak slower and tone down my dialect. I will not switch to Swedish or to English. I understand them – they better do the effort of understanding me. (That's the 500 years as a colony kicking in. :)

* If I speak to a non-Scandinavian foreigner who doesn't understand or speak Norwegian, I instantly switch to English.

* If I speak to ten Scandinavians and one non-Scandinavian, I will instantly switch to English.

* If I speak to someone who has been in Norway long enough to understand the language but not long enough to be comfortable speaking it, I will speak Norwegian. I don't mind if he speaks English, but I'll stick to Norwegian if he actually understands it.

* If I speak to someone who doesn't really speak much Norwegian but tries hard to, I'll answer in Norwegian first – but usually switch to English when I see they're struggling.

All of the above apply within my own country. Abroad, I will try to speak the
local language if I can. If not, I will ask, in the local language, if they
speak English and then switch. If I'm spoken to in English, I will respond in
English.

~~~
mrcalzone
>If I speak to someone who doesn't really speak much Norwegian but tries hard
to, I'll answer in Norwegian first – but usually switch to English when I see
they're struggling.

I'm Norwegian, and had a neighbor from England. He said that it is hard to
learn Norwegian because we tend to switch to English when talking to him. We
often started the conversations in Norwegian, but (too) quickly moved to
English.

~~~
anghyflawn
In my experience as a foreigner in Scandinavia, Swedes are way way faster to
switch to English, many do it almost as soon as I make a small mistake,
whereas Norwegians are much more tolerant and will keep up unless I switch
myself.

------
bambax
Jean-Louis Borloo, who at some point in time was rumored to be the next Prime
Minister of France, just launched (today) a new political formation, called
"Alliance Républicaine, Sociale et Ecologique".

It doesn't really mean anything, but it spells: ARSE.

It's going to be fun when he shows his business card to British
journalists...?

If you don't believe it (I couldn't), see:

[http://www.lecentrisme.com/2011/04/actualites-du-centre-
jean...](http://www.lecentrisme.com/2011/04/actualites-du-centre-jean-louis-
borloo.html)

~~~
rads
"Okay, Lindsay, are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over - an
analyst and a therapist. The world's first analrapist."

------
askar_yu
Very interesting. Evaluating the English skills based on tests is like
evaluating programmers based on how well they do on programming contests (i.e
ICPC). For example, if this test was given to high school students about to
graduate, I would expect China to be in top.

------
tokenadult
"This was not a statistically controlled study: the subjects took a free test
online and of their own accord."

This is by far the most important point made in the article in The Economist,
but so far it is little reflected in the comments here on HN. The reported
results have some broad plausibility to me, as a native speaker of General
American English who has lived overseas (including living in an international
dormitory with residents from all over the world, who variously used English-
as-a-second-language, French-as-a-first-or-second language, Spanish-as-a-
first-language, or Chinese-as-a-second-language as interlanguages). But the
reported results may or may not reflect the reality of the situation in the
real world, as the editor of The Economist takes care to note.

It's time to dust of the electrons on my FAQ post on voluntary response polls.

VOLUNTARY RESPONSE POLLS

As I commented previously when we had a poll on the ages of HNers, the data
can't be relied on to make such an inference (what the average age of HN
participants is). That's because the data are not from a random sample of the
relevant population. One professor of statistics, who is a co-author of a
highly regarded AP statistics textbook, has tried to popularize the phrase
that "voluntary response data are worthless" to go along with the phrase
"correlation does not imply causation." Other statistics teachers are
gradually picking up this phrase.

\-----Original Message----- From: Paul Velleman [SMTPfv2@cornell.edu] Sent:
Wednesday, January 14, 1998 5:10 PM To: apstat-l@etc.bc.ca; Kim Robinson Cc:
mmbalach@mtu.edu Subject: Re: qualtiative study

Sorry Kim, but it just aint so. Voluntary response data are worthless. One
excellent example is the books by Shere Hite. She collected many responses
from biased lists with voluntary response and drew conclusions that are
roundly contradicted by all responsible studies. She claimed to be doing only
qualitative work, but what she got was just plain garbage. Another famous
example is the Literary Digest "poll". All you learn from voluntary response
is what is said by those who choose to respond. Unless the respondents are a
substantially large fraction of the population, they are very likely to be a
biased -- possibly a very biased -- subset. Anecdotes tell you nothing at all
about the state of the world. They can't be "used only as a description"
because they describe nothing but themselves.

[http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...](http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tstart=36420)

For more on the distinction between statistics and mathematics, see

<http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF>

and

<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz>

I think Professor Velleman promotes "Voluntary response data are worthless" as
a slogan for the same reason an earlier generation of statisticians taught
their students the slogan "correlation does not imply causation." That's
because common human cognitive errors run strongly in one direction on each
issue, so the slogan has take the cognitive error head-on. Of course, a
distinct pattern in voluntary responses tells us SOMETHING (maybe about what
kind of people come forward to respond), just as a correlation tells us
SOMETHING (maybe about a lurking variable correlated with both things we
observe), but it doesn't tell us enough to warrant a firm conclusion about
facts of the world. The Literary Digest poll intended to predict the election
results in the United States in 1932

<http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/>

<http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/data/LiteraryDigest.pdf>

is a spectacular historical example of a voluntary response poll with a HUGE
sample size and high response rate that didn't give a correct picture of
reality at all.

When I have brought up this issue before, some other HNers have replied that
there are some statistical tools for correcting for response-bias effects, IF
one can obtain a simple random sample of the population of interest and
evaluate what kinds of people respond. But we can't do that in the case being
discussed here in this thread on HN.

Another reply I frequently see when I bring up this issue is that the public
relies on voluntary response data all the time to make conclusions about
reality. To that I refer careful readers to what Professor Velleman is quoted
as saying above (the general public often believes statements that are
baloney) and to what Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, says about
research conducted with better data,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

that even good data (and Norvig would not generally characterize voluntary
response data as good data) can lead to wrong conclusions if there isn't
careful thinking behind a study design. Again, human beings have strong
predilections to believe certain kinds of wrong data and wrong conclusions. We
are not neutral evaluators of data and conclusions, but have predispositions
(cognitive illusions) that lead to making mistakes without careful training
and thought.

Another frequently seen reply is that sometimes a "convenience sample" (this
is a common term among statisticians for a sample that can't be counted on to
be a random sample) of a population offers just that, convenience, and should
not be rejected on that basis alone. But the most thoughtful version of that
frequent reply I recently saw did correctly point out that if we know from the
get-go that the sample was not done statistically correctly, then even if we
are confident (enough) that Norwegians who responded to an online poll are
reasonably fluent in English, we wouldn't want to extrapolate from that to
conclude that any particular social or educational factor present in Norway
provides an advantage in learning the English language, or that Panamanians on
average are some of the least fluent speakers of English in the world.

On my part, I wildly guess that most western Europeans who have completed
secondary education in the last three decades are moderately fluent in
English, if only because they have occasion to use English as an interlanguage
when speaking to other Europeans (something I have seen happen many, many
times) and because they have much exposure to English-language media content
(books, movies, radio broadcasts, TV shows). People who live in Latin America
and who have occasion to travel to neighboring countries (including Brazil)
have considerably more occasions to use Spanish as an interlanguage, even with
native speakers of Portuguese, and thus somewhat reduced tendency to keep
their English in practice.

The way to know which social or educational or economic factor is most
important in the spread of world English as the global interlanguage would be
to do an even more careful study than the interesting preliminary study
reported here. Meanwhile, we will be trading anecdotes based on personal
experience, which I will read with interest to supplement my personal
experience.

------
Krshna
Empirical Forum... English = Technology = World Domination..

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leon_
I can guess why the Dutch are better english speakers than we here in Germany.
In the Netherlands movies and tv-shows are not dubbed - only subtitled. In
Germany everything is dubbed.

Since I decided to watch movies and shows in english my (actively spoken)
english improved (reading and understanding was never a problem). It's not
perfect but it's far better than the english I was speaking after I left
school.

Blame the TV :)

~~~
antirez
Yep, same reason strongly applies to Italy too. (also Italian dubbers are
among the best in the world, Italian versions of popular US shows won prizes
for the best dubbed edition, so from time to time I even happen to see
original versions thinking I enjoyed more the Italian one).

I tried to put my son in front of a TV with just English things, but it is
hard for a 10 years old to accept to understand just one word from time to
time in a moment that should be about relax (cartoons time).

~~~
hessenwolf
No kidding: As a result of the quality of Italian dubbers, Italians do not see
anything unusual in Keanu Reeves acting skills. I brought this up in
conversation multiple times a few weeks ago in Italy near Bologna. They think
he can act.

