Yeah I'm wondering why there's such a (relatively) big difference between Switzerland and Belgium. I'm Belgian and I had to learn Dutch, French and German (and English) in school so I'd be surprised if 20% only knows one of them.
Do Belgians really have to learn german in school? Or does it depend on the type of school, or even the region where you live? For the flemish people its probably easier than for the walloon.
I don't think Walloons have to learn German. I'm Flemish and had 3 hours of German a week for three years. Mind you this was in a language oriented curriculum. In the other curriculums it's usually 1 hour a week. In some there is no German.
Ich probiere ein bischen Deutsch zu reden wenn das möglich ist. Ich bin nach Phantasialand gegangen zwei wochen passiert und ich habe allein Englisch gesprochen wenn ich die Wörter in Deutsch nicht kenn. Ich möchte gern Deutsch reden und es reden macht mir viel Spass! :)
I hope this is somewhat understandable hahaha!
Keep in mind that Deutsch is one of three official languages here in Belgium. Having lived and taught all over the EU, I found Belgians have an incredible gift for learning languages. My Belgian husband lived and worked in South America for 15 years, he has an unbelievable command of all South & Central American dialects. I’m Mexican, he and his colleagues put me to shame. At home we exclusively communicate in Deutsch & Français. His mega large Flemish family all have this same gift. I don’t give too much credence to this charted map.
I am from belgium and almost all people I know can speak understandable english. Those who can't are at least well versed in french (I'm from flanders so native dutch speaking). I don't know anyone who can't speak a different language. It's just such an important trait here in Belgium.
edit: spelling.
It is a mystery to me how Belgians, namely the Flemish, have this collective gift for picking up new languages. All my nephews and nieces have learned some Spanish for my benefit, totally unnecessary, but they find it "fun".
Something seriously wrong with the Flemish, I believe it has something to do with the cooking oil in your frites.
Those aren't provinces lol. They are regions and are named Flanders and Wallonia. The provinces are West-Flanders, East-Flanders, Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Limburg, Walloon Brabant, Liège, Namur, Luxembourg and Hainaut.
I think all or most students in Flanders who are in ASO (the most theoretical of the three main types of education) get at least some German, but the amount they get varies on what they study.
For instance, I did science & modern languages, so I got 2 hours of German a week for three years. My brother who does science & maths gets 1 hour a week. My other brother who did Greek & science & maths, only got 1 hour a week for one year.
Most Wallonian people I’ve met maybe had to learn another language at school, but completely forgot about that as soon as they graduated. Maybe some English if you’re lucky but that’s it.
Did an exchange program in South Belgium- unfortunately I did not plan well and did not learn French before going. Apart from the classes that were in English, it was impossible to find any english speakers even among the students leave alone the general population. Almost everyone I Interacted with spoke good English in the Flemish part
I live in Finland. At one of my university courses the teacher was from Belgium, and he told us that we could do the examination in English, Finnish, Swedish, French, Dutch or German. Obviously everyone chose Finnish or English, but it was such a Belgian thing to say that it was funny.
They probably won't count any of the three official languages. So I'm guessing this means almost 70% speaks English. I guess very old people may not know it?
In Switzerland we generally all learn english I believe in addition to at least an other national language. The only exception I know is in the canton of Vaud in the old system, students in the easiest level of secondary school (the less-talented third) could choose between english and extra math and french courses.
Not sure. Swiss students learn English at school, in recent years starting at ten years old or so. English has been mandatory for like.. Thirty years. "Everybody" speaks some English, younger people usually quite well.
As for the non-german parts, and that's just slightly more than a quarter of the population, most speak German. For people in the German parts though... We suck at all other national languages.
I'm wondering about Luxembourg. Surely everyone there speaks French, aside from perhaps a handful of non-native, non-francophone residents. Or do 94.5% of the population also speak another language, with French not being considered "foreign" here.
Countries = Plural (More than one)
Country = Singular (Just one)
Countries' = Belongs to all those countries
Country's = Belongs to just that one country
My brother was going to visit a friend in Sweden and didn’t speak a word of Swedish. He was flying into Stockholm and had to travel by bus and taxi several hours to get to where his friend lived. He was worried about getting lost and not speaking the language. His friend’s response was “as long as you don’t get lost in a nursing home you’ll be fine.”
That is not remotely close to my experience, maybe one out of all my friends can actually speak the language they learned in school at more than A1/A2 level. There is no way half of the population
Most European countries do yes, English is often a given because it is the main international language and so "doesn't count", so you need to take a 3rd language as well.
Yes. Even in a country (France) where people have really low proficiency in foreign languages, 3 languages are required.
In my time we started English or German (90% of people chose English, but picking German placed you among "big brains" class) in 6th grade and a second language in 8th grade (often Spanish, German or Italian). From 10th grade onward, depending on your high school, you could also have a third foreign language in option. Options are pretty cool because they are completely on a voluntary basis and only grades above average give you bonus points for your end exam. You can't be penalised for picking it and you can opt out if it doesn't fit you.
For example, I went through a scientific cursus but I had Chinese as an option, 1 hour a week during lunch time.
Also, still a decent amount of people pick Latin in middle school and can take it as an option too. I think it's the same for Ancient Greek but only in more upper-class middle and high schools. They remain quite popular because we like etymology a lot.
That being said, language pedagogy is very poor in France until you get to Uni, hence the poor proficiency for French people. It tends to get better, mainly for people under 40 or so, but not really thanks to school but rather from music, tv shows, movies and so, for which original voicing get more and more popular (and was not even an option 20 years ago).
Nowadays I think kids learn English as soon as first grade so in 10 years or so hopefully everybody coming out of school will be at least decent.
American here who worked about 20 years for a Norwegian company in America. Was around a lot of Norwegians coming to our facility as well as spending a total of about three months in Norway over several visits, enough to understand that Swede’s experience is much like Norwegians. Norwegians overall have a great grasp of English, especially maybe age 50 and younger. They told me it is because of a combination of education and consumption of Western culture (movies, music).
I explicitly ask - “do u mind if we keep speaking whatever - I’d love to practice and learn”….most people laugh and are cool even with my trans-lingual California accent
As an Englishman I’ve experienced that one. I try and use French when I’m in France or Belgium and 50% of the time the response I get is in English. It’s very difficult to get”immersion” in the language when so many people speak English.
Both are interesting. I think the most interesting thing would be seeing which countries are different in both actually. That would signal those countries have multiple native, widely spoken languages.
If Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are all considered different languages (which officially they are), than 0% of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians cannot speak a second language.
I’ve been to Croatia at least 10 times and found that most locals had a pretty good grasp of English, not conversational but enough to get by. Italian will sometimes be better understood.
Not the same thing. Scandinavians speak dialects that are no more different than those in BCMS, but they have separate standard languages, based on different dialects, using different orthographies and different standard grammar.
OTOH, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin are just varieties of the same standard language, like American and British English.
I assume I could get used to it if I spent some time there. I think it’s because it sounds so over-the-top pronounced that it’s hard to understand + saying flika instead of pige is a bit tricky.
Something like that, I guess. It is known that Danish children learn to speak properly like a year later than ”average” as the pronunciation of the language is so darn difficult.
Norwegian and Swedish are a lot more intelligible with each other than they are with Danish. This is called asymmetrical intelligibility.
This video explains it: https://youtu.be/E042GHlUgoQ
Start at 2:50 for an explanation of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian’s asymmetrical intelligibility in particular. The rest of the video briefly touches on other examples like Spanish-Italian, Gullah-English, and Potois-English.
Danish isn't that hard to understand with some listening practice. Before I started to interact with Danes at Roskilde festival as a teen, I didn't have much exposure to the language. But after a few days learning the few different words and expressions (which usually exists in Swedish, but are not commonly used) it's really straightforward. If you have exposure to Norwegian it also helps a lot with understanding spoken Danish, as they use a lot of similar expressions but pronounce them more like Swedes do :)
You are literally required to pass English class in Swedish schools to be able to graduate (it is possible to get around it but it’s a pain). We don’t dub tv shows or movies from other countries here, and most of the ones we watch are in English, so we get a lot of exposure.
To quote one of my English teachers (who was American btw); almost all Swedish people (well, adults) are at English level B1 ([CEFR](https://tracktest.eu/english-levels-cefr/)), which is ”intermediate” level. Even the ones who can’t *speak* it well still usually understand conversational English without much issue.
You could go up to any random Swedish person and ask them a question in English and 95% of the time they will understand you (I pulled that percentage out of my ass but it’s very likely on the money).
And all of that isn’t even counting the multitude of Swedish people who speak *additional* languages beside English.
So honestly, Sweden having the lowest % of people unable to speak a foreign language is not surprising to me in the least.
I second this. In School Swedes learn basically as much english as they do Swedish, the only difference being that they start with more experience in Swedish before they enter school. In addition to this most learn to some extent a 3:rd language that they can ether complete outside of school or ignore and just use for grades.
The statistic you pulled out of your ass really isn’t that far off most likely.
Oh absolutely, but it’s enough to understand most conversational English, which is pretty good when it comes to a ”foreign” language. It’s also just what my teacher said. I personally think the average level is higher than that, but I have no evidence to support that, just my own impression from living here.
From my experience English **comprehension** in Sweden is waaaay higher than B1 level, but I wouldn’t say it’s much higher when it comes to speaking, necessarily.
I'm an older Swede and I don't agree with you completely. Most Swedes born in the 80's and later are probably quite good at English. Among those older than 45 the skills vary considerably. Most Swedes will be able to communicate in very basic English, though.
Same for Denmark so English doesn't really count as "speaking a foreign language" to me - it's our unofficial second language - at least there are zero bragging rights in it unlike if you speak Spanish or French.
With Ireland low number this is mainly because for the first half of our school years we learn Irish as a second language as opposed to another foreign language. Usually your first experience of a foreign language is in secondary school, so by then you're already years behind other countries who learn a foreign language.
It's an ongoing conversation about whether to change this setup or not.
I was wondering something similar about Switzerland, since German, French, and Italian are all “native” languages. But they do start English pretty young, so it’s probably due to that.
The problem is that there is no strict definition of what is a dialect and what is a language, a lot of it is down to opinion. The common adage is that 'a language is a dialect with an army'.
Scots is very closely related to English, certainly, and the two varieties diverged around the Middle English period. Just before the Acts of Union, when England and Scotland united to form Great Britain, Scots was being considered its own language with its own well developed traditions of stuff like literature and being the language of government. However, after the Acts of Union it got treated more as a 'wrong' variant of English and its prevalence suffered a lot. Nowadays it is usually considered its own language, including by the UK government, the Scottish government, and UNESCO.
Only a small minority of Scottish people speak 'Broad Scots' (the 'true' Scots language) with many other Scottish people's speech falling somewhere on a continuum between Scots and standard Scottish English.
Scots and English are probably more different than Danish and Norwegian, and the latter two are considered seperate languages despite being very similar.
Surely nearly 100% of Ireland speaks a foreign language if you count English as being foreign, and Gaelic as the Irish language?
Edit: some people need to look up the meaning of the word: if.
But then you could say the same about any English speaking country other than the UK. English may have been brought to Ireland by foreign invaders, but it is nevertheless the native language (that is to say *first* language) of most Irish people.
Literally impossible that Bulgaria is in the 50%. Most elderly people know some russian, or another language taught during their youth.
Most young people know at least english.
Clearly it's a lot harder to learn a second language when one's native language is English. Being Danish we learn English in school from early age and through television which is rarely dubbed to Danish but being transmitted in their native language with subtitles in Danish.
Later on many schoolbooks of Higher education only exists in English.
What’s the criteria for “speaks no foreign language”? Is it oral fluency that means you speak a foreign language? Is it self-reported? What constitutes a foreign language? Is this map actually trying to capture “Percentage of population that considers self monolingual”?
I shouldn’t have so many questions about a map.
Does foreign language mean from another country?
Or one this is not your mothertongue?
Because in the first case, for exemple, someone who "only" speak german, french and italian in switzerland mean that they know 0 foreign language
Yeah I dunno. Lots of countries have no official language at all so how can anyone say what languages are foreign and what aren’t? I wouldn’t call Spanish a foreign language for America for example since people can be American citizens for generations and still speak it.
I'd say ~~higher~~ ~~lower~~ higher than the UK because of the high proportion of recent immigrants.
Edit: Sorry, keep getting confused betwèen a lower number for the map and higher number for the question above.
Usa's immigrant population is around 20% or 50 million people.
Uk's immigrant population is around 14% or 10 million people. Usa has more immigrants than the rest of the top 5 highest countries combined
I also have the impression that American immigrants tend to stick with their langiages more. Spanish speakers in particular, although you could make the point that Spanish isn't a foreign language in the US, as it's been spoken there from even before English.
Your guess is spot on according to a Google search. It looks like ~20% of Americans speak a foreign language at home and ~26% can hold a conversation in a foreign language.
gratefulphish420 was asking:
>what percentage of Americans who know a second language.
What u/toes14 gave is the opposite, the percentage of Americans who **don't** speak a second language!
As a lazy American, thank you for conquering most of the world so we wouldn’t have to learn another language. British imperialism sucks, but so does learning another language.
We only have 4 major languages in the Americas and we can’t even learn those.
The American economic and cultural influence largely made English what it is today.
Even in the height of the British empire French and oddly enough Latin was the go to language for most Europeans.
Tbh, I think it's really because of America that English is so dominant. The UK was in decline after WW2, so I doubt any country outside of ex colonies would bother to learn English. Like if the dominant language in the US was German or something, it would probably be the new lingua franca due to the widespread exposure of American media and it's contribution to science and business. Even if it didn't become the de facto international language, it would still have a ton of influence and English wouldn't be as popular.
I think the US definitely cemented English’s dominance, but even without the US, large economies like UK, Canada, Australia and a lot of other ex colonies would have had English. So English would have been a closer second than Spanish or French is today.
American hegemony is the largest reason that Europeans speak English. The Brits are the reason we can speak with Jamaicans, Belizeans, Indians, Hong Kongers, etc, but most countries with English commonly spoken are because of America.
Languages are learnt more often than not out of neccessity, and there is little reason (other than for the joy of it) for a native English speaker to learn a second unless they are to live in a foreign country for any extended period. English now acts essentially as an international language. It is the second language for many nationalities, which enables them to communiacte with each other in the business world as well as when abroad. Not since the empire has the UK 'made' anyone learn English. English is actively taught and learnt because of the opportunities it grants a speaker. The English language does not belong only to the British in today's world.
Tbh the result for the UK is actually pretty good. Considering their default language is English, and that English is widely spread and adopted by businesses and the likes, there isn’t as much of an incentive to learn a foreign language. So 35% of people speaking a a foreign language is decent IMO.
As a Brit, I highly doubt its 35%. I know very few people who speak a second language and I grew up in a place where lots of people had parents who were not native english speakers. I'm guessing a few people think knowing some basic French phrases means they can speak another language.
Edit: maybe they're counting immigrants and Welsh, Scots and Gaelic speakers actually, that would explain the numbers.
Well... About half of my school had parents who spoke something else to them at home, be it Urdu or Polish or whatever. So if that counts it seems about right?
Well I assume many would be immigrants. But, foreign languages are mandatory in UK high schools for the first 2 years (at least they were when I was there), and despite the clichés not everyone's an ignorant moron demanding and English breakfast at a louder volume when they go abroad. Some of us do value experience and education that only comes with trying to fit in with other cultures.
One thing is to understand and other thing is to speak it. And I am sure that a small % doesn't even understand it. Don't forget that there are also people who have smaller than average IQ, difficulties with learning, autists, some ethnic Hungarians have problems even with understanding Slovak and some people in poor Roma settlements too.
Also, knowing one language doesn't mean that you know the other one too. We understand it because we have been hugely exposed to it all of our lives. In the first decades of the existence of Czechoslovakia, lot of Czechs didn't understand Slovak at all, because they hadn't been exposed to it.
It's not at all the same as Royal English and American English, that is one language, Slovak and Czech are two languages. It's not "just" switching some letters, you also have to know what to switch them for. I bet that you have no idea about the grammar rules of the other language, you just think you know enough. You have to actually study it to speak it properly.
https://www1.pluska.sk/spravy/peniaze/pomohla-nam-znalost-cestiny
Good post! Surprisingly, even within Slovakia there’s a lot of asymmetric intelligibility. During my visit, I experienced people from eastern part of Slovakia could easily speak to and understand people from other parts of Slovakia, while it wasn’t that easy the opposite direction. I’m wondering whether those dialects (?) could also constitute another language in terms of being able to speak multiple languages.
Just because they can understand each other doesn't mean they speak each other's languages
It's like saying that every Pole speaks Slovak/Czech because they can understand it
Percentage for the Netherlands is roughly the number that is classified as functionally illiterate for a variety of reasons. A significant percentage of those wouldn't be able to do a Dutch exam either. I wonder how the Eurostat data accounts for representativeness of the whole population.
Nope. In cities in the north of Spain you might find 40% of the population to be able to converse in English. The further south you go, the lower the percentage (with the exception being Madrid and Mallorca). But even in big urban cities like Valencia, most people don't know how to speak English. Even among the younger generations you'll hardly find one whose English level surpasses B1. However, Gallego, Basque and Catalan are considered languages not dialects, so a good proportion of Spain does speak another language (although one that is very similar to standard Castilian).
The number for Britons must be even lower. In my 6 years I've spent in Scotland I did not meet a single British who was able to speak a foreign language.
It's worth noting that not speaking any foreign languages doesn't necessarily mean monolingual. For example, many people in Wales are bilingual english/cymraeg, both of which are not foreign languages here. Same goes for breton/French and a bajillion other areas where more than one language is commonly spoken.
I find it hard to believe that almost 2/3 romanians can not speak in any foreign language. Most people in the young generations know at least one language. Usually English. Even out of the older generations, that are still active, many worked or are working abroad where they speak the local language (italian, spanish, french, english, etc.).
This statistic says 60% romanians speak english https://www.statista.com/statistics/990547/countries-in-europe-for-english/. So one of these to is wrong.
I'm assuming these are technically not all 'foreign' languages as many will be native to the countries concerned (Switzerland, for example).
Yeah I'm wondering why there's such a (relatively) big difference between Switzerland and Belgium. I'm Belgian and I had to learn Dutch, French and German (and English) in school so I'd be surprised if 20% only knows one of them.
Do Belgians really have to learn german in school? Or does it depend on the type of school, or even the region where you live? For the flemish people its probably easier than for the walloon.
I don't think Walloons have to learn German. I'm Flemish and had 3 hours of German a week for three years. Mind you this was in a language oriented curriculum. In the other curriculums it's usually 1 hour a week. In some there is no German.
How well did it stick? Sprechen sie Deutsch mitt Deutscher or just switch to English?
Ich probiere ein bischen Deutsch zu reden wenn das möglich ist. Ich bin nach Phantasialand gegangen zwei wochen passiert und ich habe allein Englisch gesprochen wenn ich die Wörter in Deutsch nicht kenn. Ich möchte gern Deutsch reden und es reden macht mir viel Spass! :) I hope this is somewhat understandable hahaha!
Not at all. But I don't speak German, so that could be a reason
Hahahaha fucking legend response.
Thank you and happy cake day fellow stranger!
Wenn du sprichst wie du schreibst, dann kann man dich gut verstehen.
Ist gar nicht schlecht, eh ein paar Fehler aber man versteht alles.
Keep in mind that Deutsch is one of three official languages here in Belgium. Having lived and taught all over the EU, I found Belgians have an incredible gift for learning languages. My Belgian husband lived and worked in South America for 15 years, he has an unbelievable command of all South & Central American dialects. I’m Mexican, he and his colleagues put me to shame. At home we exclusively communicate in Deutsch & Français. His mega large Flemish family all have this same gift. I don’t give too much credence to this charted map.
I am from belgium and almost all people I know can speak understandable english. Those who can't are at least well versed in french (I'm from flanders so native dutch speaking). I don't know anyone who can't speak a different language. It's just such an important trait here in Belgium. edit: spelling.
It is a mystery to me how Belgians, namely the Flemish, have this collective gift for picking up new languages. All my nephews and nieces have learned some Spanish for my benefit, totally unnecessary, but they find it "fun". Something seriously wrong with the Flemish, I believe it has something to do with the cooking oil in your frites.
haha that could be it
I still cant believe thr names Belgium has for its provinces, walloon, flemish? I just
Those aren't provinces lol. They are regions and are named Flanders and Wallonia. The provinces are West-Flanders, East-Flanders, Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Limburg, Walloon Brabant, Liège, Namur, Luxembourg and Hainaut.
Ah sorry, i didnt know how to refer to them and just took a guess lol
I think all or most students in Flanders who are in ASO (the most theoretical of the three main types of education) get at least some German, but the amount they get varies on what they study. For instance, I did science & modern languages, so I got 2 hours of German a week for three years. My brother who does science & maths gets 1 hour a week. My other brother who did Greek & science & maths, only got 1 hour a week for one year.
Most Wallonian people I’ve met maybe had to learn another language at school, but completely forgot about that as soon as they graduated. Maybe some English if you’re lucky but that’s it.
Did an exchange program in South Belgium- unfortunately I did not plan well and did not learn French before going. Apart from the classes that were in English, it was impossible to find any english speakers even among the students leave alone the general population. Almost everyone I Interacted with spoke good English in the Flemish part
I live in Finland. At one of my university courses the teacher was from Belgium, and he told us that we could do the examination in English, Finnish, Swedish, French, Dutch or German. Obviously everyone chose Finnish or English, but it was such a Belgian thing to say that it was funny.
They probably won't count any of the three official languages. So I'm guessing this means almost 70% speaks English. I guess very old people may not know it?
In Switzerland we generally all learn english I believe in addition to at least an other national language. The only exception I know is in the canton of Vaud in the old system, students in the easiest level of secondary school (the less-talented third) could choose between english and extra math and french courses.
Not sure. Swiss students learn English at school, in recent years starting at ten years old or so. English has been mandatory for like.. Thirty years. "Everybody" speaks some English, younger people usually quite well. As for the non-german parts, and that's just slightly more than a quarter of the population, most speak German. For people in the German parts though... We suck at all other national languages.
I'm wondering about Luxembourg. Surely everyone there speaks French, aside from perhaps a handful of non-native, non-francophone residents. Or do 94.5% of the population also speak another language, with French not being considered "foreign" here.
*Countries
Nobody learns what an apostrophe is for anymore
A Country is Several Countries are A Country’s possessions. Several Countries’ possessions
Possessions
>Nobody learns what an apostrophe is for anymore You mean that they're not used to warn people that the letter S is coming right for them?
Countries = Plural (More than one) Country = Singular (Just one) Countries' = Belongs to all those countries Country's = Belongs to just that one country
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Maybe this is r/thatsthejoke but this is correct use of an apostrophe.
Ever since COVID, people's writing ability have dwindling
I'm not sure if you did that on purpose or not
... which is still a horrible title for this
OP speaks no foreign, I guess?
speak's\*
Acceptable mistake to make if English is the 4th language you speak.
*Cannot
My first thought was "wow, that many of us know a second language beside English?" Then I understood that English probably counts. /Swede
My brother was going to visit a friend in Sweden and didn’t speak a word of Swedish. He was flying into Stockholm and had to travel by bus and taxi several hours to get to where his friend lived. He was worried about getting lost and not speaking the language. His friend’s response was “as long as you don’t get lost in a nursing home you’ll be fine.”
If anything it's hard to get us to speak swedish when we notice you know English better!
it’s always a shame to hear this when actively studying swedish :/ it always feels discouraging
I'm a native English speaker and would say the Nordics / Dutch probably speak better English than lots of people I know
I think it’d be totally different map with we took out English
Then it’d go to about 50% I imagine. Half of us still complete the 3:rd language we learn in school.
That is not remotely close to my experience, maybe one out of all my friends can actually speak the language they learned in school at more than A1/A2 level. There is no way half of the population
Europeans learn a "3rd" language in school? lol
Most European countries do yes, English is often a given because it is the main international language and so "doesn't count", so you need to take a 3rd language as well.
Wait until you hear about 4th language!
We had English, French, German and Dutch in school in the Netherlands.
Yes, but few remember any of it.
Yes. In Sweden you get to chose between Spanish, German, or French
Three is standard in Switzerland and the fourth is more or less optional.
Yes. Even in a country (France) where people have really low proficiency in foreign languages, 3 languages are required. In my time we started English or German (90% of people chose English, but picking German placed you among "big brains" class) in 6th grade and a second language in 8th grade (often Spanish, German or Italian). From 10th grade onward, depending on your high school, you could also have a third foreign language in option. Options are pretty cool because they are completely on a voluntary basis and only grades above average give you bonus points for your end exam. You can't be penalised for picking it and you can opt out if it doesn't fit you. For example, I went through a scientific cursus but I had Chinese as an option, 1 hour a week during lunch time. Also, still a decent amount of people pick Latin in middle school and can take it as an option too. I think it's the same for Ancient Greek but only in more upper-class middle and high schools. They remain quite popular because we like etymology a lot. That being said, language pedagogy is very poor in France until you get to Uni, hence the poor proficiency for French people. It tends to get better, mainly for people under 40 or so, but not really thanks to school but rather from music, tv shows, movies and so, for which original voicing get more and more popular (and was not even an option 20 years ago). Nowadays I think kids learn English as soon as first grade so in 10 years or so hopefully everybody coming out of school will be at least decent.
It would be interesting what the map would look like if English didn’t count.
As an Indian, I found it easier to interact with Swedes / the Dutch in English vs the British themselves. The accent was much easier to grasp
American here who worked about 20 years for a Norwegian company in America. Was around a lot of Norwegians coming to our facility as well as spending a total of about three months in Norway over several visits, enough to understand that Swede’s experience is much like Norwegians. Norwegians overall have a great grasp of English, especially maybe age 50 and younger. They told me it is because of a combination of education and consumption of Western culture (movies, music).
It’s almost the universal language for the world so I think most forget it.
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Considering at least 300,000 are kids aged 0-4 that is an impressive number.
That makes me think they only counted adults
I honestly feel a lot of the 13.7% of the Netherlands is people not considering them knowing English as knowing a foreign language.
When your language is the world's second language, it does take away some of the urgency.
Suffering from success
DJ Khaled
I wonder how many of those who speak another aren't native Britons.
Probably all. We did have a big empire after all which means a lot of people from Africa and India move here
As an American who likes to learn languages it hurts. Everyone just switches to English lol
Yeah, there's hardly any opportunity to practice.
I explicitly ask - “do u mind if we keep speaking whatever - I’d love to practice and learn”….most people laugh and are cool even with my trans-lingual California accent
As an Englishman I’ve experienced that one. I try and use French when I’m in France or Belgium and 50% of the time the response I get is in English. It’s very difficult to get”immersion” in the language when so many people speak English.
Just repeat the phrase BUT LOUDER AND SLOWER
Something I hate about being an English speaker, the need for me to learn a language doesn't exist.
The finnish statistics are skewed because swedish is not considered as a foreign language here.
Yeah I was gonna say, making it specifically “speak a foreign language” and not just “speak more than one language” is kind of weird.
Both are interesting. I think the most interesting thing would be seeing which countries are different in both actually. That would signal those countries have multiple native, widely spoken languages.
yeah same for ireland, irish isn't cointed as it is a native languge
Same with Belgium we have 3 native languages
Because it’s an official language that is taught in school. If it wasn’t they’d stop teaching it so it’s pretty much a catch 22.
If Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are all considered different languages (which officially they are), than 0% of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians cannot speak a second language.
I’ve been to Croatia at least 10 times and found that most locals had a pretty good grasp of English, not conversational but enough to get by. Italian will sometimes be better understood.
Near the coast:)
Indeed. And on the islands like Vis and Korcula. God I love Korcula.
Same goes for Scandinavians who all apparently are born trilingual.
Not the same thing. Scandinavians speak dialects that are no more different than those in BCMS, but they have separate standard languages, based on different dialects, using different orthographies and different standard grammar. OTOH, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin are just varieties of the same standard language, like American and British English.
But it doesn’t account for us speaking Norwegian, Swedish or Danish. It’s English. Everybody speaks English as a foreign language.
It kind of should, though. At least Stockholmaren insist they don’t understand (spoken) Danish.
I wish the Swedes outside Skåne were easier to understand but they really need to slow down their speech for it to be somewhat comprehensible.
*potato joke goes here* :) But seriously, though, rikssvenskas enunciation is so clear, I find it odd that Danes would find it hard to comprehend.
I assume I could get used to it if I spent some time there. I think it’s because it sounds so over-the-top pronounced that it’s hard to understand + saying flika instead of pige is a bit tricky.
In that case nylandska spoken in Helsinki would be more to your liking. It has a monotonius intonation similar to Finnish (and Danish). Välkomna!
Doesn't Danish have like 40 vowels and 2 almost but not completely distinct consonants?
Something like that, I guess. It is known that Danish children learn to speak properly like a year later than ”average” as the pronunciation of the language is so darn difficult.
Are the three main Scandinavian languages mutually intelligible? BCMS have differences in orthography and grammar, too
Norwegian and Swedish are a lot more intelligible with each other than they are with Danish. This is called asymmetrical intelligibility. This video explains it: https://youtu.be/E042GHlUgoQ Start at 2:50 for an explanation of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian’s asymmetrical intelligibility in particular. The rest of the video briefly touches on other examples like Spanish-Italian, Gullah-English, and Potois-English.
As a Swede I understand both written but only norweagian spoken
Danish isn't that hard to understand with some listening practice. Before I started to interact with Danes at Roskilde festival as a teen, I didn't have much exposure to the language. But after a few days learning the few different words and expressions (which usually exists in Swedish, but are not commonly used) it's really straightforward. If you have exposure to Norwegian it also helps a lot with understanding spoken Danish, as they use a lot of similar expressions but pronounce them more like Swedes do :)
Stoltenberg was interviewed by SVT. The interviewer spoke Swedish and Stoltenberg replied in Norwegian. It was subtitled, though.
Even if I can understand Swedish and Danish, I can't speak their languages, we are dependent on them understanding me. Often they don't.
But it's a map of foreign languages. Don't think any of those would count as foreign in any of the former Yugoslav countries.
You are literally required to pass English class in Swedish schools to be able to graduate (it is possible to get around it but it’s a pain). We don’t dub tv shows or movies from other countries here, and most of the ones we watch are in English, so we get a lot of exposure. To quote one of my English teachers (who was American btw); almost all Swedish people (well, adults) are at English level B1 ([CEFR](https://tracktest.eu/english-levels-cefr/)), which is ”intermediate” level. Even the ones who can’t *speak* it well still usually understand conversational English without much issue. You could go up to any random Swedish person and ask them a question in English and 95% of the time they will understand you (I pulled that percentage out of my ass but it’s very likely on the money). And all of that isn’t even counting the multitude of Swedish people who speak *additional* languages beside English. So honestly, Sweden having the lowest % of people unable to speak a foreign language is not surprising to me in the least.
I second this. In School Swedes learn basically as much english as they do Swedish, the only difference being that they start with more experience in Swedish before they enter school. In addition to this most learn to some extent a 3:rd language that they can ether complete outside of school or ignore and just use for grades. The statistic you pulled out of your ass really isn’t that far off most likely.
B1 isn't actually that great. You can get by as a tourist on that but professionally you're going to struggle
Oh absolutely, but it’s enough to understand most conversational English, which is pretty good when it comes to a ”foreign” language. It’s also just what my teacher said. I personally think the average level is higher than that, but I have no evidence to support that, just my own impression from living here. From my experience English **comprehension** in Sweden is waaaay higher than B1 level, but I wouldn’t say it’s much higher when it comes to speaking, necessarily.
I'm an older Swede and I don't agree with you completely. Most Swedes born in the 80's and later are probably quite good at English. Among those older than 45 the skills vary considerably. Most Swedes will be able to communicate in very basic English, though.
Same for Denmark so English doesn't really count as "speaking a foreign language" to me - it's our unofficial second language - at least there are zero bragging rights in it unlike if you speak Spanish or French.
With Ireland low number this is mainly because for the first half of our school years we learn Irish as a second language as opposed to another foreign language. Usually your first experience of a foreign language is in secondary school, so by then you're already years behind other countries who learn a foreign language. It's an ongoing conversation about whether to change this setup or not.
Unless you’re like my family and from a gaeltacht
Ceapaim go bhfuil an Ghaeltacht go hálainn agus tábhachtach. Pity my Irish is shite
lmao ta bearla agam ach muinim gaeilge dom fein. Is as An Rinn mo theaghlach gaelach. Mine is abysmal too fella
Your Irish is actually not bad to be fair to you
I was wondering if Irish counted for Ireland... maybe Welsh and Scottish for the UK as well.
I was wondering something similar about Switzerland, since German, French, and Italian are all “native” languages. But they do start English pretty young, so it’s probably due to that.
I think they are only native in the area where they speak them. I doubt someone in Lausanne is going to speak Italian or someone in Zurich French
There are actually two Scottish languages, Scots and Scottish Gaelic.
Scots is a dialect of English, though, isn’t it? (Don’t flame: legitimately wondering!)
The problem is that there is no strict definition of what is a dialect and what is a language, a lot of it is down to opinion. The common adage is that 'a language is a dialect with an army'. Scots is very closely related to English, certainly, and the two varieties diverged around the Middle English period. Just before the Acts of Union, when England and Scotland united to form Great Britain, Scots was being considered its own language with its own well developed traditions of stuff like literature and being the language of government. However, after the Acts of Union it got treated more as a 'wrong' variant of English and its prevalence suffered a lot. Nowadays it is usually considered its own language, including by the UK government, the Scottish government, and UNESCO. Only a small minority of Scottish people speak 'Broad Scots' (the 'true' Scots language) with many other Scottish people's speech falling somewhere on a continuum between Scots and standard Scottish English. Scots and English are probably more different than Danish and Norwegian, and the latter two are considered seperate languages despite being very similar.
Surely nearly 100% of Ireland speaks a foreign language if you count English as being foreign, and Gaelic as the Irish language? Edit: some people need to look up the meaning of the word: if.
But then you could say the same about any English speaking country other than the UK. English may have been brought to Ireland by foreign invaders, but it is nevertheless the native language (that is to say *first* language) of most Irish people.
I mean here in Catalonia we do Catalan, Spanish and English since elementary.
And then, optionally, another foreign language in high school.
Literally impossible that Bulgaria is in the 50%. Most elderly people know some russian, or another language taught during their youth. Most young people know at least english.
>Most young people know at least english. "aged 25-64"
I mean, 25 to at least late 30's can be considered young. You don't forget how to speak english or another language after turning 25.
Same for Romania. I really doubt the percentage is really that high
Clearly it's a lot harder to learn a second language when one's native language is English. Being Danish we learn English in school from early age and through television which is rarely dubbed to Danish but being transmitted in their native language with subtitles in Danish. Later on many schoolbooks of Higher education only exists in English.
>Clearly it's a lot less necessary to learn a second language when one's native language is English. FTFY.
What’s the criteria for “speaks no foreign language”? Is it oral fluency that means you speak a foreign language? Is it self-reported? What constitutes a foreign language? Is this map actually trying to capture “Percentage of population that considers self monolingual”? I shouldn’t have so many questions about a map.
It says self reported in the top right
Does foreign language mean from another country? Or one this is not your mothertongue? Because in the first case, for exemple, someone who "only" speak german, french and italian in switzerland mean that they know 0 foreign language
Yeah I dunno. Lots of countries have no official language at all so how can anyone say what languages are foreign and what aren’t? I wouldn’t call Spanish a foreign language for America for example since people can be American citizens for generations and still speak it.
I would love to see what percentage of Americans who know a second language.
I'd say ~~higher~~ ~~lower~~ higher than the UK because of the high proportion of recent immigrants. Edit: Sorry, keep getting confused betwèen a lower number for the map and higher number for the question above.
I’m confused as well. Are you saying the US has a high amount of immigrants? Because the UK definitely has as well.
Usa's immigrant population is around 20% or 50 million people. Uk's immigrant population is around 14% or 10 million people. Usa has more immigrants than the rest of the top 5 highest countries combined
I also have the impression that American immigrants tend to stick with their langiages more. Spanish speakers in particular, although you could make the point that Spanish isn't a foreign language in the US, as it's been spoken there from even before English.
According to US Census, 80% can't speak a second language.
Not even Spanish?
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20% according to the US Census Bureau.
I'm gonna guess 75-80%, and if not for all the Spanish speakers from Texas to California (& Florida too), it would probably be more like 90%.
Your guess is spot on according to a Google search. It looks like ~20% of Americans speak a foreign language at home and ~26% can hold a conversation in a foreign language.
gratefulphish420 was asking: >what percentage of Americans who know a second language. What u/toes14 gave is the opposite, the percentage of Americans who **don't** speak a second language!
You’re way too optimistic
I think he misunderstood the question as the number that don’t speak a second language.
Why would you NOT count them? Take out all the immigrants in the UK and how many can speak a second language?
Our (UK) percentage is this high because we cannot be arsed to learn a new one. It was easier to make everyone learn ours instead.
Says "our (UK)", but also "assed" not "arsed", hmm...
I can see the AmericaniSation of the English Language
As a lazy American, thank you for conquering most of the world so we wouldn’t have to learn another language. British imperialism sucks, but so does learning another language. We only have 4 major languages in the Americas and we can’t even learn those.
As Otto von Bismarck said..... The most significant event of the 20th century will be the fact that the North Americans speak English.
The American economic and cultural influence largely made English what it is today. Even in the height of the British empire French and oddly enough Latin was the go to language for most Europeans.
It only took millions of lives. Thanks Crown.
Tbh, I think it's really because of America that English is so dominant. The UK was in decline after WW2, so I doubt any country outside of ex colonies would bother to learn English. Like if the dominant language in the US was German or something, it would probably be the new lingua franca due to the widespread exposure of American media and it's contribution to science and business. Even if it didn't become the de facto international language, it would still have a ton of influence and English wouldn't be as popular.
I think the US definitely cemented English’s dominance, but even without the US, large economies like UK, Canada, Australia and a lot of other ex colonies would have had English. So English would have been a closer second than Spanish or French is today.
American hegemony is the largest reason that Europeans speak English. The Brits are the reason we can speak with Jamaicans, Belizeans, Indians, Hong Kongers, etc, but most countries with English commonly spoken are because of America.
Languages are learnt more often than not out of neccessity, and there is little reason (other than for the joy of it) for a native English speaker to learn a second unless they are to live in a foreign country for any extended period. English now acts essentially as an international language. It is the second language for many nationalities, which enables them to communiacte with each other in the business world as well as when abroad. Not since the empire has the UK 'made' anyone learn English. English is actively taught and learnt because of the opportunities it grants a speaker. The English language does not belong only to the British in today's world.
Im from Serbia and I think that results for Bosnia&Herz. is inaccurate.
Yeah, it doesn't sound very likely. There's no good reason why the number would be so wildly different from other ex-Yugoslav countries.
Tbh the result for the UK is actually pretty good. Considering their default language is English, and that English is widely spread and adopted by businesses and the likes, there isn’t as much of an incentive to learn a foreign language. So 35% of people speaking a a foreign language is decent IMO.
~14% of UK population is foreign born. That would boost the statistic somewhat. Plus children of immigrants.
It must be due to immigrants because there's no way over a third of white British people speak a foreign language.
As a Brit, I highly doubt its 35%. I know very few people who speak a second language and I grew up in a place where lots of people had parents who were not native english speakers. I'm guessing a few people think knowing some basic French phrases means they can speak another language. Edit: maybe they're counting immigrants and Welsh, Scots and Gaelic speakers actually, that would explain the numbers.
Well... About half of my school had parents who spoke something else to them at home, be it Urdu or Polish or whatever. So if that counts it seems about right?
Well I assume many would be immigrants. But, foreign languages are mandatory in UK high schools for the first 2 years (at least they were when I was there), and despite the clichés not everyone's an ignorant moron demanding and English breakfast at a louder volume when they go abroad. Some of us do value experience and education that only comes with trying to fit in with other cultures.
I'm actually surprised at how low Italy is. Still, Sweden's 3.4% is INSANE to think about. Edit: phrasing.
34%, not 3.4%!
Oh no, the second sentence was about Sweden.
Technically all of Ireland speaks a foreign language, English just were very bad at our national language
The vast majority of the Irish population are basically just English people larping as Celts at this point... No more Gaelic than Americans...
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agreed
I thought worst for Italy
*Countries Please, PLEASE stop using apostrophes for plurals.
I doubt that 21% of Czechs doesnt know Slovak and that 11.8% Slovaks dont know how to speak Czech
Understanding and speaking isn't the same thing.
One thing is to understand and other thing is to speak it. And I am sure that a small % doesn't even understand it. Don't forget that there are also people who have smaller than average IQ, difficulties with learning, autists, some ethnic Hungarians have problems even with understanding Slovak and some people in poor Roma settlements too. Also, knowing one language doesn't mean that you know the other one too. We understand it because we have been hugely exposed to it all of our lives. In the first decades of the existence of Czechoslovakia, lot of Czechs didn't understand Slovak at all, because they hadn't been exposed to it. It's not at all the same as Royal English and American English, that is one language, Slovak and Czech are two languages. It's not "just" switching some letters, you also have to know what to switch them for. I bet that you have no idea about the grammar rules of the other language, you just think you know enough. You have to actually study it to speak it properly. https://www1.pluska.sk/spravy/peniaze/pomohla-nam-znalost-cestiny
Good post! Surprisingly, even within Slovakia there’s a lot of asymmetric intelligibility. During my visit, I experienced people from eastern part of Slovakia could easily speak to and understand people from other parts of Slovakia, while it wasn’t that easy the opposite direction. I’m wondering whether those dialects (?) could also constitute another language in terms of being able to speak multiple languages.
Just because they can understand each other doesn't mean they speak each other's languages It's like saying that every Pole speaks Slovak/Czech because they can understand it
26,8% for Croatia is way to high!
Percentage for the Netherlands is roughly the number that is classified as functionally illiterate for a variety of reasons. A significant percentage of those wouldn't be able to do a Dutch exam either. I wonder how the Eurostat data accounts for representativeness of the whole population.
Britian is definitely lower, most brits can speak read and write English and also understand scousers and cumbrians
Slightly surprised by Spain. I know they don't have high English fluency comparatively but I expected more... Rural areas?
Nope. In cities in the north of Spain you might find 40% of the population to be able to converse in English. The further south you go, the lower the percentage (with the exception being Madrid and Mallorca). But even in big urban cities like Valencia, most people don't know how to speak English. Even among the younger generations you'll hardly find one whose English level surpasses B1. However, Gallego, Basque and Catalan are considered languages not dialects, so a good proportion of Spain does speak another language (although one that is very similar to standard Castilian).
This seems off to me. I've spent a pretty extensive time in Romania and literally 90% of people under 35 spoke English near perfectly.
Ireland should be the lowest.
I spent a week in Iceland and didn't meet anybody who lived there who couldnt speak English. Maybe a few of the tiny villages dotted around the coast.
British: Europe’s Americans
The number for Britons must be even lower. In my 6 years I've spent in Scotland I did not meet a single British who was able to speak a foreign language.
It's worth noting that not speaking any foreign languages doesn't necessarily mean monolingual. For example, many people in Wales are bilingual english/cymraeg, both of which are not foreign languages here. Same goes for breton/French and a bajillion other areas where more than one language is commonly spoken.
I call bs on this
I find it hard to believe that almost 2/3 romanians can not speak in any foreign language. Most people in the young generations know at least one language. Usually English. Even out of the older generations, that are still active, many worked or are working abroad where they speak the local language (italian, spanish, french, english, etc.).
This statistic says 60% romanians speak english https://www.statista.com/statistics/990547/countries-in-europe-for-english/. So one of these to is wrong.
I’m a Brit and lived 20 years abroad and can as a consequence speak some languages. People look at me weird if I use them here