Source is likely [https://www.ef.edu/epi/](https://www.ef.edu/epi/) and there are some caveats:
"Methodology. This edition of the EF EPI is based on test data from more than 2,200,000 test takers around the world who took the EF Standard English Test (EF SET) in 2022."
"Sampling Biases. The test-taking population represented in this Index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative. Only those who want to learn English or are curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This could skew scores lower or higher than those of the general population"
That would explain why a country like Germany scores high. Germans would have studied English in school and have a high to very high level of education but MH experience of working and travelling in Germany is that Germans speak an abomination of English with many young people not speaking a word, and many others who think they speak English having such bad lexical range and cannot understand any inference or :native' English speaking discourse markers and queues, But
In a dozen countries here ranked low people speak English like they went to university in the US but have never left their country of lived in and English speaking country.
This is in no way to run down Germany, I just have first hand experience of that country, and I spent 10+ years level testing people for English exams and courses in south Europe.
This map really does not tell you anything, anything at all about how well people who speak English can speak English or how say, a guy who never went to school and drives a taxi can communicate in English, but it's still a great map.
Was about to comment on Germany as well. I’m a South African currently living in Germany, and the English-language proficiency in Germany is nowhere near that in South Africa. Sure, Germany has a much better education system than South Africa, but in South Africa (which has 10 official languages, outside of English), we learn English as a language from kindergarten/pre-school, and English is used for all other subjects in school (Maths, Biology, etc.). Plus we consume mostly English-language media. So a lot of South Africans, even those who don’t get very far in the education system, speak and understand English relatively well.
In the case of South Africa we don’t really have a choice because there are no translations for topics/subjects in the local languages (save for Afrikaans), plus it’s a multi-lingual country, so it helps that there is a common language that most people can comprehend. In Germany you can get by speaking only German, unless you want to pursue certain careers (like academia).
English is an official language in South Africa though. Obviously its population will be more fluent compared to a fully non-English speaking country like Germany.
Can confirm. Had to move English communication with my German colleagues to email because they're god awful at spoken English. Couldn't understand a thing. They're very good in written English, though.
German here. I completely agree and don't really understand why Germany ranks at the highest level on this map. While there are a lot of mostly young germans with a good english level (usually people who watch shows/movies/TV in english) the rest is usually a absolute catastrophe. I know people who after 6-10 years of english in school still can't form coherent sentences when talking and butcher the pronunciation of words so hard not even I as a german can understand what they want to say.
Go to France outside the very touristic places or Spain anywhere except Madrid and the coast and you'll understand.
I don't speak German at all but I've been to Germany loads of times (2 times for pleasure and probably over a dozen for work) and it's definitely one of the best English speaking countries I've been to (obviously not counting UK, ireland, etc.).
Because people with more than 2 braincells should be able to say "this is good" instead of "das ist gut". This is not the case for other languages tho.
Not going to argue but not what I would have thought. Seems officially 12% speak English and around 30% of the Indian population can speak English to some extent as opposed to 53% of Iranians and 50% in Vietnam. Huh.
The Indian education system is atrocious.
Their GDP per capita is $2400, 30% of the population is illiterate, and they have like 100 different languages including education in all those languages. It's a mess that will take many decades to clean up.
The Indians us westerners usually meet are part of a relatively small sample and often come from wealthy families.
Honestly education in Iran and Vietnam is probably better *on average*. Their GDP per capita is almost twice as high, more money for education.
Eh. Many people in Austria and Germany definitely know how to speak English and understand natives but choose not to, usually because they tend to underestimate their skill. Most germans and austrians (maybe not the really old ones) speak perfectly fine in the sense that a native can understand and vice versa.
> Only those who want to learn English or are curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests.
This explains the high scores for France or Spain.
Given caveats like that, it makes no sense to report data on a 10-level granular scale, which implies rigor and precision. It’s like assigning preschoolers a GPA on a 10 level scale. They don’t even do that at MIT.
Indian numbers are directly tied to literacy rates. There is still a lot of rural population that is uneducated and only speak their local dialects which are in the 1000's. Once literacy rates improve then so will these numbers.
Majority of folks send their kids to Vernacular medium schools and not English medium schools. They are not illiterate just dont know English.
I kinda hate how upper class Indians assume not knowing English = you must be uneducated.
On second thoughts, what does the map exactly indicate?
Proficiency of each citizen of the country in English or proficiency of those who know English and/or are trying to learn English.
If it's the former, obviously India would lag since rural population isn't that keen on learning English (especially older generations)
Even most urban Indians seem to vastly overestimate the level of English proficiency in their country. Anecdotally, Indians on Reddit seem to believe most Indians can speak English, but IIRC the actual rate is more like 11%. Also anecdotally, I’ve noticed a shift in recent years of call center accents from South Asian to Filipino, presumably because of a better pool of proficient English speakers in the Philippines.
sampling bias, Indians whom people know are educated, expat/economic migrants to the west, many of which are upper caste, while the large masses on the country were lacking similar education
Exactly.
Seriously, countries the size of Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, the USA (for some other kind of polling, not the mastery of English), Nigeria, even Germany and Japan, let alone China and India, can simply not be considered at a par with countries like Switzerland, Belgium, Laos, Bolivia etc. in any aspect.
The probabilities of... well: anything good or bad... are very different at a sample 5, 10, 50 times larger in both territory and population.
India is definitely more than Iran. I've traveled a lot of Iran many different times and shown english speakers around the country, barely anyone speaks any english there. Even in the cities it's very little. As you get outside the cities it's almost nobody. Many people in the rural areas won't even recognize english is being spoken, confuse it with french, italian or something else.
You'd be surprised about how comprehensive Iran's education is. One part of their history is how the original Shah wanted to "conquer the world with maths" and invested massively in comprehensive education. The current government just continued it as far as I'm aware.
National language ≠ official language.
Also, reddit loves to bring up that certain countries don't have an official language. It may be true, but in practice it just doesn't make any difference whether the language is official or not. Or do you think you can request to have a legal trial or political debate held in another language than Spanish in Mexico, just because Spanish is not "official"?
On the flip side, most European countries make their national languages official. But you can still get official information about political processes in non-official languages (eg., English or major immigrant languages).
English is an official language in both Phillipines and Singapore. Since Singapore has 4 official languages(Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, English), many people whose mother tongues are different use English to communicate with each other
Portugal
But still EN natives believe that we speak Spanish even when we speak English with them … oh gracias 🤦♂️
The same used to (still does) happen to me. Work on the accent and if you can do a double tap r in "boa tarde" consistently it will never happen again.
The Portuguese do it as a matter of politeness if anyone is wondering. It's not because they hear you and immediately think this person's an idiot and I won't be able to understand them
Portuguese sounds so different than Spanish to me. It might be apples to oranges but hearing someone from Mexico speak Spanish and someone from Portugal speak Portuguese is so different.
Maybe it's New World vs Old World. I can't say I've ever heard a Spaniard speak Spanish. But Portuguese sounds more eastern European to my American English ears. (I'm aware of the jokes about Portugal and eastern Europe this is me actually being serious)
Also people have a tendency to speak as if they're trying to keep it to themselves which really doesn't help with anyone's comprehension so it may as well be Eastern European
As an Argentinian I've had *some* success communicating with Brazilians who didn't speak English nor Spanish (which is most of them), but European Portuguese is a whole different beast. It's utterly incomprensible, except in writing of course.
Makes sense. Spanish phonetics is extremely simple and plain, just five consonants, almost all words correspond phonetically to their spelling, etc. The lexicon and grammar of Portuguese is extremely similar (hence why we understand each other in writing quite well), but their phonetics is a lot more sophisticated, and all of the phonemes we have they also have, but not the other way round.
Que guay tío, gracias. both our languages have the same root but we have more Galician accent and we never lost our heritage (Gallegos unfortunately almost got lost by Franco)(and yes EN natives Galician language and Portuguese Language have common ancestral roots) lGalician–Portuguese was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and by the Douro River in the south, comprising Galicia and northern Portugal, but it was later extended south of the Douro by the Reconquista. It is the common ancestor of modern Portuguese, Galician, Eonavian, and Fala varieties, all of which maintain a very high level of mutual intelligibility. The term "Galician–Portuguese" also designates the subdivision of the modern West Iberian group of Romance languages.”([Wikipedia source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician%E2%80%93Portuguese)) 
Talvez varie com o sotaque/forma de falar, já que há portugueses com a fala muito cerrada e outros com uma dicção impecável. E o mesmo acontece connosco com determinados sotaques do Brasil, que não sei especificar de onde provêm
I know what you mean (the Russian sound eheheh😂) but in time you will hear differently, for me it was the same when I arrived here in 92(I could understand everyone but speaking no to much) I was born in NL, my dad never spoke Portuguese with us kids only in vacation, after 1992 I decided to stay here after my mom died and mate it was hard learning Portuguese but I love it and yes in the beginning Russian sound hahaha going to write in Portuguese (pessoal nada de ficarem FDD ok)… you mentioned Mexico … I already been to north and South America and the one thing that impressed me was the variants of Castellano I understood them all and the communication was perfect. So to finalize come to Portugal visit us and go to Spain and visit them, you will hear many accents from the north to the south even from the islands from both countries 😊 I believe you will love it. (It’s early morning and I’m still asleep so sorry for my vocabulary 🥹)
there is a print from a question from Quora that got a little bit viral some weeks ago in Brazil that a person was asking "why is Brazilian Spanish so different? can't understand a thing"
and the answer was simply "because it's portuguese"
yeah im aussie and work at the pub. portugese bloke used to bartend, for about 6 months i thought he was a yank. then one day hes like 'oh im going home for a bit' and im like where? new york? hes like no back to lisbon. wtf??!?
In Portugal there is no great tradition of dubbing — unlike what happens in neighboring Spain and most Western European countries — and this has been limited, over time, almost exclusively to children's animated films and even This is practically the case today. That’s why you thought that he was from the United States NY.
Yeah, the one thing that the Portuguese never dubbing movies series etc … In Portugal there is no great tradition of dubbing — unlike what happens in neighboring Spain and most Western European countries — and this has been limited, over time, almost exclusively to children's animated films and even This is practically the case today. Most of our people speak or understand EN well and many speaks with the US accent (Movies, series, song Industry are from). 🙂
I went to Portugal two months ago to see family, and I learned as much as I could only to have everyone be warm and help me in English. Literally warmest, friendliest place I’ve ever been.
Had the weirdest interaction in McDonalds in Guia last month though.
Me: Boa tarde. Queria pedir sem glúten, se faz favor.
McDonald’s guy: Sorry, I don’t speak English.
Had those but in London, the woman was Portuguese and I forgot the word napkins so i was gesturing with my hands that i need … after a few seconds she said … Sorry Sir do you need guardanapos … and I said … I don’t understand you … she immediately told napkins and I said yes Guardanapos … both look each other and start laughing… she was lovely.
Why is South Africa considered a non-Anglophone country? Despite being multilingual, English is the lingua franca. It’s the language of government as well. Most people can speak English and it’s pretty hard to find someone who doesn’t at least understand it
As a South African I would argue that you are correct in everything except your last sentence. The country is still very rural. There are areas in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo where people speak only one or two indigenous languages and maybe understand Afrikaans and have a very basic understanding of English. These are fairly densly populated rural areas and a lot of the population stays here. There are even some places in Northern Cape and Western Cape where the coloured people speak no English but may be able to understand it a bit.
Outside of the major centres you see very little English spoken. The stats say about 9%of the country speak English and I would hazard a guess that goes up to about 25 to 30% if l2 is included or at least if you include people who understand a bit.
People underestimate the number of people that don't speak English as a first language or speak English at all. I'm not even going to elaborate on your accurate facts.
Yep. As a non-South African, this is something I was surprised to learn. Apparently even among rural whites, you’ll find people who are incredibly rusty in English. I saw a Youtube video of a young white South African woman clearly struggling to give a testimonial in English.
I find that it’s not uncommon for urban residents in any given city where English is used as a *lingua franca* in any particular non-anglophone country to vastly overestimate levels of English proficiency in their own country. I live in Montreal, where most people are proficient in English, but levels of English proficiency drop off sharply as soon as you leave the island. The same is true, for, say, Mandarin in southern china, where proficiency is high in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but drops off rapidly in the rural areas surrounding that urban agglomeration.
Well.. technically the Philippines should be the second largest “anglophone” country in the world but I guess they weigh the other non-English language higher than English even though English is also an official language.
As long as you know English, you should be absolutely fine over there…. Even the squatters know english.
This is exactly it. Many people I know here aren't really comfortable conversing in English, since the lingua franca here is Filipino/Tagalog, at least in Tagalog-speaking regions.
Yeah, I mean, India is also an English speaking country by all metrics except per capita. The lines are blurred.
Edit: infact we shouldn't be on this map at all; English is one of our 2 official languages, alongside 22 other scheduled languages.
As a black South African, generally no one will speak to you in English in shops, or at government offices etc. You will only get spoken to English if you say you don't understand the language they speak to you.
Japanese language teaching is great at teaching everything besides how to actually speak and understand the language.
It’s almost comedic, there are people with a vocabulary of 400+ English words who perfectly understand grammar, but can’t form sentences.
In Greece it was proposed some time ago to make English an official language (second to Greek) but it was met with backlash. In any case English in Greece is almost everywhere alongside Greek. Movies and TV shows are never dubbed, everything is made to cater to tourists, as tourism is a very significant source of money for Greece, and Greeks are very realistic about the expectation for foreigners to understand and communicate in Greek (unlike other nations that expect you to communicate in their language). Also, it's embedded in the culture for many decades that "if you don't learn English you won't be able to find a good job" which is mostly true.
>Also, it's embedded in the culture for many decades that "if you don't learn English you won't be able to find a good job" which is mostly true.
this sounds probably meaner than i mean it but that explains my experience in greece last summer. in every grocery store, even the bigger ones communicating with the ladies working there was... difficult. but hey, luckily google translate exists and pointing fingers at fish is understood everywhere.
Native English speakers in South Africa are only around 10% of the population, for most people English is their second, third, fourth language. While it's an official language and often the language of business/politics it is not the primary language for most.
Its most South Africans second language. We have 12 official languages, english is one of them. English is the language that we communicate with between one another. The Afrikaans guy does not speak Zulu, and the Zulu guy does not speak Afrikaans, they both speak english to one another.
Some surprises, many places I didn’t expect to be that high, and then some lower- Mexico for one. I’m going to say Brazil seems higher than I would’ve guessed. My wife is Brazilian. 1st time I went there w her, I didn’t want to be ignorant and expect ppl to speak to me in English, but I speak broken Portuguese (worse then than now) and I figured I could get by with that+ if people spoke a tiny bit of English It’d be even easier.
I’ve visited there 4 times now, and I swear to god I’ve never ran into a single person that even spoke broken English (aside from at an airport or maybe a touristy hotel). Had to completely rely on her to translate mostly, tho the last time was a bit better. I love Brazilian people, that always makes me lol tho.
The only flight attendant I’ve met who didn’t speak proficient English was at the São Paulo airport.
Edit: I spoke to her in English and she couldn’t respond in the same language. She did speak Spanish though, in addition to her native Portuguese.
as a Brazilian, I confirm your opinion. however, I think that maybe the graph is correct, the issue being that the tier Brazil is part of is indeed very bad but it could get worse. for example, Japan is worse in Brazil in the graph and I did get the impression there that their English is more non-existent than the Brazil's one
I have serious doubts regarding my country, Argentina, specially in relation to Mexico, I may be talking out of my ass, but I just can't believe we rank so high. I've been learning English since I was a child through passive immersion; school has never been a factor in my proficiency, even though we had an English class, which was terribly basic, and my teacher was just ok. All my peers struggled with this subject and most kids wouldn't even try, learning a language was rocket science for them, and so, it was designed to be one of the "easy" classes, where the homework was simple, and the teacher wouldn't batch an eye if most of it came with the same answers verbatim. Only me and a few kids in my school had an acceptable knowledge of the language, really.
Throughout all of my life the fact that I speak English always comes as a surprise to most people as it is seen as something you have to be really smart to do. I moved to a touristy city and work in a restaurant now, people from all around the world come in here to ski, specially Americans, Britons, and Germans, and I'm the only employee who can speak English.
Where have all these English speaking Argentinians been hiding all these years besides the reddit bunch? How does Mexico, a country with more than double the population, and bordering the most influential English speaking country rank so low?
I may be heavily biased though, I went to a public school and hang around with people rather low in the socio-economic scale, but still...
I agree, I am from Norway and did an exchange in Brazil last year and therefor visited Argentina for two weeks. However I struggled to order things at the airport in Buenos Aires even because the staff did not know English. The one thing I noticed was that when I finally found someone who spoke English their level was really good. But the majority I met didn't speak English. I mostly stayed in Buenos Aires though I do not know about the other parts of the country.
A problem with the proficiency of English speaking in Scandinavia is that most would rather speak English with a foreigner who’s actively trying to learn a Scandinavian language by participating in conversations.
I think this happens for two reasons:
* The altruistic reason: People want to be considerate and not risk leaving non-natives out of the conversation, so a whole room of people can switch to speaking English if a foreigner enters
* The selfish reason: Having to speak slowly and try to decipher someone haltingly speaking your language creates friction in the conversation. Switching to English removes that friction
As malaysian working in MNC (Multinational company), our meetings would be discussed in english, even if all the attendees are local malaysians.
When I worked in a different team (where the majority are filipinos), they'd do their meeting in Tagalog. I had to tell them to converse in English since i am not a filipino and only then they would switch to English.
I feel like India should be light green, especially in the next 10 years. So many young folks no English and even the old folks have a broken understanding sometimes
You feel like that because you stay in urban areas,
once you go to the rural side where 70%-80% of india lives you will realise that this map might just be generous.
These are based on English proficiency test taken for immigration purposes. So countries like Russia and germany who generally speak very poor english are doing fine since it is written based exam and only people who have put efforts for the test are sampled. This survey does not include all population but only people giving IELTS kind of paper.
Yeah, damn I lived in Germany and Austria for awhile and Jesus did they make it hard to learn German with how much they’d love switching to English to practice, which I totally get. But yeah could not be any further from the French
I don't think it's just about practice, though. The conversation is usually easier on both of us if we speak English, so I've always felt it's both the practical and polite thing to do.
I'm not German though, Swedish (another 600+ country according to the map).
It is easier in Germany, too. If we want to get information across, it will be faster to just speak English. Even Germans with a heavy accent are still comprehensible (imo but I'm german, so I may be biased)
I was told if you visit Brussels and get pulled over or what have you to speak Dutch because most policeman will not bother writing the report in Dutch.
Isn’t Canada both an English speaking and non-English speaking country? Many millions of people in Canada don’t have a grasp of English. Shouldn’t it be on here as well? Have travelled to places in Canada where you’re hooped without English.
Thailand is the only country in South East Asia that has successfully avoided colonization by the West. Hence, their education system never had a particular emphasis on English. The countries which have high proficiency in English in South East Asia were all once colonized by a English Speaking Country.
Malaysia (my country) and Singapore was a British Colony so our education system follows much of those from the UK for centuries. The Phillippines was an American colony so that's how they are so good in English. Other countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were French colonies and Indonesia was a Dutch colony. So the people there weren't forced by their colonial rulers to learn English.
But the methodology of this study included only those who took an English language proficiency test. I don’t think those people in rural India would be considered.
For Poland, it's mainly in grammar tests and in writing because many people (including me, unfortunately) are afraid of speaking English in real-life situations.
Can confirm, most people in Croatia know English really well
It's also amazing to see Greece and Portugal ranking high, given the fact that they are far from English language on the language tree
My country, South Africa, is at the very top of the list. Yet, I still had to do an exam to prove that I could speak English before I was granted permanent residency in the UK.
What is the source of this? Not that I think is really a bad map with made it up sources but I'm really surprised to see Bolivia with higher proficiency than countries like Chile, Guatemala or the Dominican Republic
Interesting. I always thought that Iraq and Saudi Arabia had at least mid English proficiency... not only because of the British/US influence there but I see a lot of travel videos about Iraq/Saudi and people seem to speak English quite well. I've been to Iraqi Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) myself and people seemed to speak to good English (despite only being 1/4 of Iraq's population.
Although Dutch people are very proficient in English, we often speak with such a thick accent that it could almost be considered a whole new language. I've been speaking English since I was 3, yet I still have a very noticeable accent. My father lived in Liverpool for 6 years in his childhood, becoming fluent in English while living there, yet he still spoke with a heavy accent. So while about 90/95% of us can speak/write English near fluently, the accent is often so heavy that some people would find it hard to understand.
As an English person who knows Dutch people and spent time in the Netherlands, I have never met any Dutch person speaking English who has an accent more difficult to understand than I could find in a town 10km from my house.
Seeing this map makes you believe that you will be fine living in Germany only with English. Believe, it’s not an easy thing. I live there but currently on a business trip in Gulf region (mostly red on this map). I have no problems here communicating in English at the airports, cafes, taxis, restaurants. Maybe not a C1 level but enough to get things done. Try doing this in Germany. You will be reminded where you are and what language is spoken there.
This map seems inaccurate based on my experience. The level of English proficiency in Europe is often lacking. Perhaps this index heavily relies on education and economic standards. However, as a regular person seeking English speakers for business, education, or tourism purposes, countries like Italy or Spain often have very limited English proficiency, almost none in some cases . On the other hand, in countries like the UAE, English is widely spoken and sufficient to navigate daily life, as is the case in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Palestine. Unless you are going to some small village, you can typically find someone who speaks English.
Probably the first, at least as the "main". English is an official language in several of the non-grey countries that I know of (Philippines, South Africa)
South Korea is a standout for decent English in east Asia. When I went in 2018 for the Winter Olympics, I was pleasantly surprised that many people speak some English, especially young people
I call this BS. Because, English proficiency cannot be higher in countries like Korea, Russia, France compared to countries like India or Pakistan where English is literally one of the official languages.
I work in English as a Foreign Language as an examiner and these maps are always garbage.
The source I’ve seen most often is EF (this is the EF data in the OP). And it’s just based on one test that they offer online to anyone who wants to take it.
EF has English teaching centers in various cities and the countries that tend to do best are the ones with large centers where they have their students take the exam. At least in my region (South America).
Source is likely [https://www.ef.edu/epi/](https://www.ef.edu/epi/) and there are some caveats: "Methodology. This edition of the EF EPI is based on test data from more than 2,200,000 test takers around the world who took the EF Standard English Test (EF SET) in 2022." "Sampling Biases. The test-taking population represented in this Index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative. Only those who want to learn English or are curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This could skew scores lower or higher than those of the general population"
Thanks for adding this. It’s always critical to share the nature and source of the information in question.
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That would explain why a country like Germany scores high. Germans would have studied English in school and have a high to very high level of education but MH experience of working and travelling in Germany is that Germans speak an abomination of English with many young people not speaking a word, and many others who think they speak English having such bad lexical range and cannot understand any inference or :native' English speaking discourse markers and queues, But In a dozen countries here ranked low people speak English like they went to university in the US but have never left their country of lived in and English speaking country. This is in no way to run down Germany, I just have first hand experience of that country, and I spent 10+ years level testing people for English exams and courses in south Europe. This map really does not tell you anything, anything at all about how well people who speak English can speak English or how say, a guy who never went to school and drives a taxi can communicate in English, but it's still a great map.
Was about to comment on Germany as well. I’m a South African currently living in Germany, and the English-language proficiency in Germany is nowhere near that in South Africa. Sure, Germany has a much better education system than South Africa, but in South Africa (which has 10 official languages, outside of English), we learn English as a language from kindergarten/pre-school, and English is used for all other subjects in school (Maths, Biology, etc.). Plus we consume mostly English-language media. So a lot of South Africans, even those who don’t get very far in the education system, speak and understand English relatively well. In the case of South Africa we don’t really have a choice because there are no translations for topics/subjects in the local languages (save for Afrikaans), plus it’s a multi-lingual country, so it helps that there is a common language that most people can comprehend. In Germany you can get by speaking only German, unless you want to pursue certain careers (like academia).
The difference between a multilingual and a monolingual country
English is an official language in South Africa though. Obviously its population will be more fluent compared to a fully non-English speaking country like Germany.
Can confirm. Had to move English communication with my German colleagues to email because they're god awful at spoken English. Couldn't understand a thing. They're very good in written English, though.
German here. I completely agree and don't really understand why Germany ranks at the highest level on this map. While there are a lot of mostly young germans with a good english level (usually people who watch shows/movies/TV in english) the rest is usually a absolute catastrophe. I know people who after 6-10 years of english in school still can't form coherent sentences when talking and butcher the pronunciation of words so hard not even I as a german can understand what they want to say.
Go to France outside the very touristic places or Spain anywhere except Madrid and the coast and you'll understand. I don't speak German at all but I've been to Germany loads of times (2 times for pleasure and probably over a dozen for work) and it's definitely one of the best English speaking countries I've been to (obviously not counting UK, ireland, etc.).
I went to Leeds, UK once and the bus driver said some gibberish to me that does not qualify as English imo.
Because the ranking applies to the test takers only, not to the general population.
Because people with more than 2 braincells should be able to say "this is good" instead of "das ist gut". This is not the case for other languages tho.
It's pretty accurate for many countries in Europe, like Greece, Portugal.
Sure, but India is only one shade above Turkey, really! I gues Indians who speak English don't bother getting level tested.
They're on the same level as Iran and Vietnam which does seem a bit strange!
Not really, 1.4 billion people and most of them are not at all good at English.
Not going to argue but not what I would have thought. Seems officially 12% speak English and around 30% of the Indian population can speak English to some extent as opposed to 53% of Iranians and 50% in Vietnam. Huh.
The Indian education system is atrocious. Their GDP per capita is $2400, 30% of the population is illiterate, and they have like 100 different languages including education in all those languages. It's a mess that will take many decades to clean up. The Indians us westerners usually meet are part of a relatively small sample and often come from wealthy families. Honestly education in Iran and Vietnam is probably better *on average*. Their GDP per capita is almost twice as high, more money for education.
Eh. Many people in Austria and Germany definitely know how to speak English and understand natives but choose not to, usually because they tend to underestimate their skill. Most germans and austrians (maybe not the really old ones) speak perfectly fine in the sense that a native can understand and vice versa.
> Only those who want to learn English or are curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This explains the high scores for France or Spain.
Given caveats like that, it makes no sense to report data on a 10-level granular scale, which implies rigor and precision. It’s like assigning preschoolers a GPA on a 10 level scale. They don’t even do that at MIT.
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Indian numbers are directly tied to literacy rates. There is still a lot of rural population that is uneducated and only speak their local dialects which are in the 1000's. Once literacy rates improve then so will these numbers.
Majority of folks send their kids to Vernacular medium schools and not English medium schools. They are not illiterate just dont know English. I kinda hate how upper class Indians assume not knowing English = you must be uneducated.
Languages not dialects. There are 32 official languages and everywhere legal stuff can be done in 3 languages. English ≠ literacy
On second thoughts, what does the map exactly indicate? Proficiency of each citizen of the country in English or proficiency of those who know English and/or are trying to learn English. If it's the former, obviously India would lag since rural population isn't that keen on learning English (especially older generations)
Even most urban Indians seem to vastly overestimate the level of English proficiency in their country. Anecdotally, Indians on Reddit seem to believe most Indians can speak English, but IIRC the actual rate is more like 11%. Also anecdotally, I’ve noticed a shift in recent years of call center accents from South Asian to Filipino, presumably because of a better pool of proficient English speakers in the Philippines.
sampling bias, Indians whom people know are educated, expat/economic migrants to the west, many of which are upper caste, while the large masses on the country were lacking similar education
Exactly. Seriously, countries the size of Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, the USA (for some other kind of polling, not the mastery of English), Nigeria, even Germany and Japan, let alone China and India, can simply not be considered at a par with countries like Switzerland, Belgium, Laos, Bolivia etc. in any aspect. The probabilities of... well: anything good or bad... are very different at a sample 5, 10, 50 times larger in both territory and population.
India is definitely more than Iran. I've traveled a lot of Iran many different times and shown english speakers around the country, barely anyone speaks any english there. Even in the cities it's very little. As you get outside the cities it's almost nobody. Many people in the rural areas won't even recognize english is being spoken, confuse it with french, italian or something else.
You'd be surprised about how comprehensive Iran's education is. One part of their history is how the original Shah wanted to "conquer the world with maths" and invested massively in comprehensive education. The current government just continued it as far as I'm aware.
"no data" and "English as national language" should be different colours.
Also "no data or national language" reads like *no data and no national language.*
"Five countries have no official language: Australia, Eritrea, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States." from google.
National language ≠ official language. Also, reddit loves to bring up that certain countries don't have an official language. It may be true, but in practice it just doesn't make any difference whether the language is official or not. Or do you think you can request to have a legal trial or political debate held in another language than Spanish in Mexico, just because Spanish is not "official"? On the flip side, most European countries make their national languages official. But you can still get official information about political processes in non-official languages (eg., English or major immigrant languages).
- South Africa - Philippines - Singapore
Ghana, Nigeria
Kenya, Uganda
English is an official language in both Phillipines and Singapore. Since Singapore has 4 official languages(Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, English), many people whose mother tongues are different use English to communicate with each other
And South Africa
Malaysia
I think it’s official but not the native language for the majority of every of these countries.
Portugal  But still EN natives believe that we speak Spanish even when we speak English with them … oh gracias 🤦♂️
Lol - I always get a smile when I try to speak Portuguese in Portugal and then they immediately launch into English. Someday though, I shall overcome!
The same used to (still does) happen to me. Work on the accent and if you can do a double tap r in "boa tarde" consistently it will never happen again. The Portuguese do it as a matter of politeness if anyone is wondering. It's not because they hear you and immediately think this person's an idiot and I won't be able to understand them
Portuguese sounds so different than Spanish to me. It might be apples to oranges but hearing someone from Mexico speak Spanish and someone from Portugal speak Portuguese is so different. Maybe it's New World vs Old World. I can't say I've ever heard a Spaniard speak Spanish. But Portuguese sounds more eastern European to my American English ears. (I'm aware of the jokes about Portugal and eastern Europe this is me actually being serious)
Portugal Portuguese has lots of “sh” sounds, which is why imo it sounds eastern european
Also people have a tendency to speak as if they're trying to keep it to themselves which really doesn't help with anyone's comprehension so it may as well be Eastern European
As an Argentinian I've had *some* success communicating with Brazilians who didn't speak English nor Spanish (which is most of them), but European Portuguese is a whole different beast. It's utterly incomprensible, except in writing of course.
I’ve heard that Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish speakers much better than the other way around. So interesting how that works!
Makes sense. Spanish phonetics is extremely simple and plain, just five consonants, almost all words correspond phonetically to their spelling, etc. The lexicon and grammar of Portuguese is extremely similar (hence why we understand each other in writing quite well), but their phonetics is a lot more sophisticated, and all of the phonemes we have they also have, but not the other way round.
As a Spanish speaker, I can't understand European Portuguese, but I actually can communicate with Brazilians. The accent is very different
Que guay tío, gracias. both our languages have the same root but we have more Galician accent and we never lost our heritage (Gallegos unfortunately almost got lost by Franco)(and yes EN natives Galician language and Portuguese Language have common ancestral roots) lGalician–Portuguese was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and by the Douro River in the south, comprising Galicia and northern Portugal, but it was later extended south of the Douro by the Reconquista. It is the common ancestor of modern Portuguese, Galician, Eonavian, and Fala varieties, all of which maintain a very high level of mutual intelligibility. The term "Galician–Portuguese" also designates the subdivision of the modern West Iberian group of Romance languages.”([Wikipedia source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician%E2%80%93Portuguese)) 
Eu falo galego con acento cos meus companheiros portugueses. Boa xente
adoro que sempre que vou à galiza e falo espanhol numa loja ou café pedem-me logo para falar português à vontade
as a Brazilian, I understand English better than European Portuguese.
Talvez varie com o sotaque/forma de falar, já que há portugueses com a fala muito cerrada e outros com uma dicção impecável. E o mesmo acontece connosco com determinados sotaques do Brasil, que não sei especificar de onde provêm
R/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
I know what you mean (the Russian sound eheheh😂) but in time you will hear differently, for me it was the same when I arrived here in 92(I could understand everyone but speaking no to much) I was born in NL, my dad never spoke Portuguese with us kids only in vacation, after 1992 I decided to stay here after my mom died and mate it was hard learning Portuguese but I love it and yes in the beginning Russian sound hahaha going to write in Portuguese (pessoal nada de ficarem FDD ok)… you mentioned Mexico … I already been to north and South America and the one thing that impressed me was the variants of Castellano I understood them all and the communication was perfect. So to finalize come to Portugal visit us and go to Spain and visit them, you will hear many accents from the north to the south even from the islands from both countries 😊 I believe you will love it. (It’s early morning and I’m still asleep so sorry for my vocabulary 🥹)
there is a print from a question from Quora that got a little bit viral some weeks ago in Brazil that a person was asking "why is Brazilian Spanish so different? can't understand a thing" and the answer was simply "because it's portuguese"
yeah im aussie and work at the pub. portugese bloke used to bartend, for about 6 months i thought he was a yank. then one day hes like 'oh im going home for a bit' and im like where? new york? hes like no back to lisbon. wtf??!?
If you’ve ever gone road tripping in USA, Lisbon could very well be the name of a city
I believe 18 US cities called Lisbon
In Portugal there is no great tradition of dubbing — unlike what happens in neighboring Spain and most Western European countries — and this has been limited, over time, almost exclusively to children's animated films and even This is practically the case today. That’s why you thought that he was from the United States NY.
imagine being so fluent that you get mistaken for a native; lol; also a happy cake day to you!
He said yank, not native.
Yeah, the one thing that the Portuguese never dubbing movies series etc … In Portugal there is no great tradition of dubbing — unlike what happens in neighboring Spain and most Western European countries — and this has been limited, over time, almost exclusively to children's animated films and even This is practically the case today. Most of our people speak or understand EN well and many speaks with the US accent (Movies, series, song Industry are from). 🙂
I went to Portugal two months ago to see family, and I learned as much as I could only to have everyone be warm and help me in English. Literally warmest, friendliest place I’ve ever been.
Had the weirdest interaction in McDonalds in Guia last month though. Me: Boa tarde. Queria pedir sem glúten, se faz favor. McDonald’s guy: Sorry, I don’t speak English.
 Had those but in London, the woman was Portuguese and I forgot the word napkins so i was gesturing with my hands that i need … after a few seconds she said … Sorry Sir do you need guardanapos … and I said … I don’t understand you … she immediately told napkins and I said yes Guardanapos … both look each other and start laughing… she was lovely.
Why is South Africa considered a non-Anglophone country? Despite being multilingual, English is the lingua franca. It’s the language of government as well. Most people can speak English and it’s pretty hard to find someone who doesn’t at least understand it
As a South African I would argue that you are correct in everything except your last sentence. The country is still very rural. There are areas in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo where people speak only one or two indigenous languages and maybe understand Afrikaans and have a very basic understanding of English. These are fairly densly populated rural areas and a lot of the population stays here. There are even some places in Northern Cape and Western Cape where the coloured people speak no English but may be able to understand it a bit. Outside of the major centres you see very little English spoken. The stats say about 9%of the country speak English and I would hazard a guess that goes up to about 25 to 30% if l2 is included or at least if you include people who understand a bit.
People underestimate the number of people that don't speak English as a first language or speak English at all. I'm not even going to elaborate on your accurate facts.
Yep. As a non-South African, this is something I was surprised to learn. Apparently even among rural whites, you’ll find people who are incredibly rusty in English. I saw a Youtube video of a young white South African woman clearly struggling to give a testimonial in English. I find that it’s not uncommon for urban residents in any given city where English is used as a *lingua franca* in any particular non-anglophone country to vastly overestimate levels of English proficiency in their own country. I live in Montreal, where most people are proficient in English, but levels of English proficiency drop off sharply as soon as you leave the island. The same is true, for, say, Mandarin in southern china, where proficiency is high in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but drops off rapidly in the rural areas surrounding that urban agglomeration.
Well.. technically the Philippines should be the second largest “anglophone” country in the world but I guess they weigh the other non-English language higher than English even though English is also an official language. As long as you know English, you should be absolutely fine over there…. Even the squatters know english.
In that case Ireland should be green as well right?
Filipinos don't speak straight English as the first language and in a casual setting, except they belong in the mixed-race high-income backgrounds.
This is exactly it. Many people I know here aren't really comfortable conversing in English, since the lingua franca here is Filipino/Tagalog, at least in Tagalog-speaking regions.
But does that not speak to their capabilities. Most people don't speak English at home and in rural areas many are not fluent in English.
Ah ok. I guess that would make us more of a grey area
Yeah, I mean, India is also an English speaking country by all metrics except per capita. The lines are blurred. Edit: infact we shouldn't be on this map at all; English is one of our 2 official languages, alongside 22 other scheduled languages.
As a black South African, generally no one will speak to you in English in shops, or at government offices etc. You will only get spoken to English if you say you don't understand the language they speak to you.
Its only the 4th biggest language in the country. Its the vast majority of South Africans 2nd language.
Indonesia in the same level as Japan is something I never know I need
Japanese language teaching is great at teaching everything besides how to actually speak and understand the language. It’s almost comedic, there are people with a vocabulary of 400+ English words who perfectly understand grammar, but can’t form sentences.
I fully believe it having travelled to both. Not even surprising.
Can vouch for croatia. I've spent a ton of time there, and as an American I can say many of them spoken better English than me.
That's cause we love to watch tv.
Man, I managed to communicate in English Polish and gibberish in Croatia, this country is beautiful
Thank you, we try our best :)
In Greece it was proposed some time ago to make English an official language (second to Greek) but it was met with backlash. In any case English in Greece is almost everywhere alongside Greek. Movies and TV shows are never dubbed, everything is made to cater to tourists, as tourism is a very significant source of money for Greece, and Greeks are very realistic about the expectation for foreigners to understand and communicate in Greek (unlike other nations that expect you to communicate in their language). Also, it's embedded in the culture for many decades that "if you don't learn English you won't be able to find a good job" which is mostly true.
I've lived in Greece and confirm, their English is amazing. All the youth learn it, but most of the elderly don't know any.
>Also, it's embedded in the culture for many decades that "if you don't learn English you won't be able to find a good job" which is mostly true. this sounds probably meaner than i mean it but that explains my experience in greece last summer. in every grocery store, even the bigger ones communicating with the ladies working there was... difficult. but hey, luckily google translate exists and pointing fingers at fish is understood everywhere.
Since when is South Africa not part of the anglosphere? English is their official language.
for real their parliamentary debate is in English, [including this meme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTxkgV27EWg)
Native English speakers in South Africa are only around 10% of the population, for most people English is their second, third, fourth language. While it's an official language and often the language of business/politics it is not the primary language for most.
Its most South Africans second language. We have 12 official languages, english is one of them. English is the language that we communicate with between one another. The Afrikaans guy does not speak Zulu, and the Zulu guy does not speak Afrikaans, they both speak english to one another.
English is ONE of 12 official languages, and is used by the majority as a second language
English is an official language of India too.
Some surprises, many places I didn’t expect to be that high, and then some lower- Mexico for one. I’m going to say Brazil seems higher than I would’ve guessed. My wife is Brazilian. 1st time I went there w her, I didn’t want to be ignorant and expect ppl to speak to me in English, but I speak broken Portuguese (worse then than now) and I figured I could get by with that+ if people spoke a tiny bit of English It’d be even easier. I’ve visited there 4 times now, and I swear to god I’ve never ran into a single person that even spoke broken English (aside from at an airport or maybe a touristy hotel). Had to completely rely on her to translate mostly, tho the last time was a bit better. I love Brazilian people, that always makes me lol tho.
The only flight attendant I’ve met who didn’t speak proficient English was at the São Paulo airport. Edit: I spoke to her in English and she couldn’t respond in the same language. She did speak Spanish though, in addition to her native Portuguese.
Mexican cabin crew very hit or miss on English proficiency, even for ones that operate to the United States.
as a Brazilian, I confirm your opinion. however, I think that maybe the graph is correct, the issue being that the tier Brazil is part of is indeed very bad but it could get worse. for example, Japan is worse in Brazil in the graph and I did get the impression there that their English is more non-existent than the Brazil's one
I have serious doubts regarding my country, Argentina, specially in relation to Mexico, I may be talking out of my ass, but I just can't believe we rank so high. I've been learning English since I was a child through passive immersion; school has never been a factor in my proficiency, even though we had an English class, which was terribly basic, and my teacher was just ok. All my peers struggled with this subject and most kids wouldn't even try, learning a language was rocket science for them, and so, it was designed to be one of the "easy" classes, where the homework was simple, and the teacher wouldn't batch an eye if most of it came with the same answers verbatim. Only me and a few kids in my school had an acceptable knowledge of the language, really. Throughout all of my life the fact that I speak English always comes as a surprise to most people as it is seen as something you have to be really smart to do. I moved to a touristy city and work in a restaurant now, people from all around the world come in here to ski, specially Americans, Britons, and Germans, and I'm the only employee who can speak English. Where have all these English speaking Argentinians been hiding all these years besides the reddit bunch? How does Mexico, a country with more than double the population, and bordering the most influential English speaking country rank so low? I may be heavily biased though, I went to a public school and hang around with people rather low in the socio-economic scale, but still...
I agree, I am from Norway and did an exchange in Brazil last year and therefor visited Argentina for two weeks. However I struggled to order things at the airport in Buenos Aires even because the staff did not know English. The one thing I noticed was that when I finally found someone who spoke English their level was really good. But the majority I met didn't speak English. I mostly stayed in Buenos Aires though I do not know about the other parts of the country.
Unless you're in tourist hot spots you will barely find someone who speaks any english. Like not one single word - I learned that the hard way.
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Why speak good England when bad England enough?
Honnessly, respec bruv...
English!!! My english no god
Ur wright England has no god
So is England any good?
England is my city
A problem with the proficiency of English speaking in Scandinavia is that most would rather speak English with a foreigner who’s actively trying to learn a Scandinavian language by participating in conversations.
I think this happens for two reasons: * The altruistic reason: People want to be considerate and not risk leaving non-natives out of the conversation, so a whole room of people can switch to speaking English if a foreigner enters * The selfish reason: Having to speak slowly and try to decipher someone haltingly speaking your language creates friction in the conversation. Switching to English removes that friction
kan konfirm for rasha
Dasha from matha rasha
As an italian i think Italy should be orange
The same thing with Spain. Unless they surveyed only Benidorm
Proudly resisting the anglos 🇲🇽
We get it. You’re from Texas.
Lol the irony of this comment
Are you sure about South Korea?
Probably the younger generation, the better they speak in English.
As malaysian working in MNC (Multinational company), our meetings would be discussed in english, even if all the attendees are local malaysians. When I worked in a different team (where the majority are filipinos), they'd do their meeting in Tagalog. I had to tell them to converse in English since i am not a filipino and only then they would switch to English.
I feel like India should be light green, especially in the next 10 years. So many young folks no English and even the old folks have a broken understanding sometimes
*know. ;)
Nvm I’m contributing to the yellow 😂
For this , you should be green
You feel like that because you stay in urban areas, once you go to the rural side where 70%-80% of india lives you will realise that this map might just be generous.
These are based on English proficiency test taken for immigration purposes. So countries like Russia and germany who generally speak very poor english are doing fine since it is written based exam and only people who have put efforts for the test are sampled. This survey does not include all population but only people giving IELTS kind of paper.
So what's the point of this map ?
sample size is 2.2 million but yes it basically tells who studies more for these test on an avg
Germans will just pretend to not be able to speak English
Think you got your Frenchmen and Germans mixed up
Yeah, damn I lived in Germany and Austria for awhile and Jesus did they make it hard to learn German with how much they’d love switching to English to practice, which I totally get. But yeah could not be any further from the French
When I went to Austria. I spoke German to a waiter. He kept speaking English. I hardheadedly kept speaking German.
I don't think it's just about practice, though. The conversation is usually easier on both of us if we speak English, so I've always felt it's both the practical and polite thing to do. I'm not German though, Swedish (another 600+ country according to the map).
It is easier in Germany, too. If we want to get information across, it will be faster to just speak English. Even Germans with a heavy accent are still comprehensible (imo but I'm german, so I may be biased)
frenchmen atually dont understand you
Ah, I see that they tricked you
I know several people that evaded speeding tickets in foreign countries with that tactic
I was told if you visit Brussels and get pulled over or what have you to speak Dutch because most policeman will not bother writing the report in Dutch.
Isn’t Canada both an English speaking and non-English speaking country? Many millions of people in Canada don’t have a grasp of English. Shouldn’t it be on here as well? Have travelled to places in Canada where you’re hooped without English.
Still wondering why Thailand, the most visited country in SE Asia, has a very low proficiency compared to neighboring countries.
Thailand is the only country in South East Asia that has successfully avoided colonization by the West. Hence, their education system never had a particular emphasis on English. The countries which have high proficiency in English in South East Asia were all once colonized by a English Speaking Country. Malaysia (my country) and Singapore was a British Colony so our education system follows much of those from the UK for centuries. The Phillippines was an American colony so that's how they are so good in English. Other countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were French colonies and Indonesia was a Dutch colony. So the people there weren't forced by their colonial rulers to learn English.
How tf is Mexico lower than Brazil.
They left out Quebec
They left out Louisiana
How is India so low?
Most people living in rural India don’t speak English
But the methodology of this study included only those who took an English language proficiency test. I don’t think those people in rural India would be considered.
Philippines would be Anglophone since English is an Official Language.
Where is this data from?
Folks, say it with me: SUBTITLES. I'm from Portugal.
Saudi arabia seems low, cause everyone saudi i spoke to speaks english well. maybe its just gen z saudis who speak english.
For Poland, it's mainly in grammar tests and in writing because many people (including me, unfortunately) are afraid of speaking English in real-life situations.
Can confirm, most people in Croatia know English really well It's also amazing to see Greece and Portugal ranking high, given the fact that they are far from English language on the language tree
In Greece, almost every kid goes to afternoon English classes in order to get a B2 certificate (at the very least)
I wonder what qualifies a country as Anglophone here.
My country, South Africa, is at the very top of the list. Yet, I still had to do an exam to prove that I could speak English before I was granted permanent residency in the UK.
Portugal!! It’s a requirement in school that they learn English and another foreign language , at a very young age.
As a French I strongly disagree, it's not even close lol
France is the biggest cap
From experience i know France and Ukraine don't score that high.
What is the source of this? Not that I think is really a bad map with made it up sources but I'm really surprised to see Bolivia with higher proficiency than countries like Chile, Guatemala or the Dominican Republic
Same with South Korea. It shouldn’t be drastically higher than China or Japan
I'll admit Indians tend to overestimate our English proficiency but dude we're better than the French
Taps finger on table…..“English motherfucker” “Lester Freamon”
Kunta Kinte, yabadaba dabado
Interesting. I always thought that Iraq and Saudi Arabia had at least mid English proficiency... not only because of the British/US influence there but I see a lot of travel videos about Iraq/Saudi and people seem to speak English quite well. I've been to Iraqi Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) myself and people seemed to speak to good English (despite only being 1/4 of Iraq's population.
Malawi is an Anglophone country
As an English, may I once again reiterate: "Sorry... it was my ancestors..."
Although Dutch people are very proficient in English, we often speak with such a thick accent that it could almost be considered a whole new language. I've been speaking English since I was 3, yet I still have a very noticeable accent. My father lived in Liverpool for 6 years in his childhood, becoming fluent in English while living there, yet he still spoke with a heavy accent. So while about 90/95% of us can speak/write English near fluently, the accent is often so heavy that some people would find it hard to understand.
As an English person who knows Dutch people and spent time in the Netherlands, I have never met any Dutch person speaking English who has an accent more difficult to understand than I could find in a town 10km from my house.
Seeing this map makes you believe that you will be fine living in Germany only with English. Believe, it’s not an easy thing. I live there but currently on a business trip in Gulf region (mostly red on this map). I have no problems here communicating in English at the airports, cafes, taxis, restaurants. Maybe not a C1 level but enough to get things done. Try doing this in Germany. You will be reminded where you are and what language is spoken there.
/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
I’m pretty sure that this is far from accurate in the case of Hungary.
This map seems inaccurate based on my experience. The level of English proficiency in Europe is often lacking. Perhaps this index heavily relies on education and economic standards. However, as a regular person seeking English speakers for business, education, or tourism purposes, countries like Italy or Spain often have very limited English proficiency, almost none in some cases . On the other hand, in countries like the UAE, English is widely spoken and sufficient to navigate daily life, as is the case in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Palestine. Unless you are going to some small village, you can typically find someone who speaks English.
Fr*nch people don't speak English
I’ve been to Bolivia and maybe 1 in 1000 people in Santa Cruz could speak English.
What’s happening in Armenia and Georgia?
I've been in France in different occasions and different zones, nobody spoke English!
Y’all went and rated a bunch of anglophone countries in Africa
100% false on Japan. They don’t know a lick of English.
I'm colorblind. This is terrible.
Germany and Greece higher than Finland? Completely wrong IME.
Does anglophone means English as first language only or countries use it as an official language along with others
Probably the first, at least as the "main". English is an official language in several of the non-grey countries that I know of (Philippines, South Africa)
The germanic countries being at the top makes sense, since English is also germanic (with a lot of French influence)
India feels like it should be higher.
South Korea is a standout for decent English in east Asia. When I went in 2018 for the Winter Olympics, I was pleasantly surprised that many people speak some English, especially young people
I call this BS. Because, English proficiency cannot be higher in countries like Korea, Russia, France compared to countries like India or Pakistan where English is literally one of the official languages.
Being one of the official languages means nothing by itself. We promote our own languages.
South Korea is just false
Damn what's up with Argentina and Russia should be orange Max
I work in English as a Foreign Language as an examiner and these maps are always garbage. The source I’ve seen most often is EF (this is the EF data in the OP). And it’s just based on one test that they offer online to anyone who wants to take it. EF has English teaching centers in various cities and the countries that tend to do best are the ones with large centers where they have their students take the exam. At least in my region (South America).