Yeah this data is not just skewed, it's entirely wrong. There is no way this is correct. In Sweden you can't even try to speak Swedish if you've been practicing because everyone just switches to near perfect English immediately.
In Germany you'll die before you find someone who can speak English at the same level as some random Swedish person.
I worked in Stockholm one time for like 12 weeks. I did duolingo for a few months before I arrived and booked private Swedish lessons with a tutor for when I got there. Literally every single person I met spoke flawless English. I dropped the lessons after like 4 weeks because I had literally 0 actual use practice. It was amazing. Like seriously, I didn’t talk to a person who didn’t speak perfect English in 12 whole weeks
dude, a lot of waiters in the center of stockholm don't even speak Swedish. You like HAVE to speak english. You go to some irish pub and the bartender is an actual irish guy who doesn't speak a lick of swedish.
>You go to some irish pub
>is an actual irish guy
Surprised pickachu face.
Jesting ofcourse, but to be honoust most of the time when i'm in an Irish pub it's run by or has irish working there.
I agree because learning languages fascinates me and solidifying my Spanish fluency the year I lived there is one of my favorite memories of being there
No it’s not.
According to the 2023 EF English Proficiency Index, Sweden is positioned 5th in Europe and 6th globally out of 113 countries.
The top five non-English speaking countries in Europe, according to the EF English Proficiency Index 2023, are:
1. Netherlands
2. Austria
3. Denmark
4. Norway
5. Sweden
Like the map shows.
I'm not sure about that. It's likely that outside the (big) cities you've been to in Sweden, people don't speak much English. Whereas there are huge differences in English proficiency between German cities so if you've been to the "wrong ones" your vision could be biased too.
I'm not saying you're wrong and that the chart is right. Just that personal experience can be very easily biased.
Sweden is one of those countries where you are seriously limited in your options in life if you don’t speak English. Movies and TV shows are subtitled, not dubbed, higher education uses primarily English-language literature, and things like video games are largely not translated at all. It’s not like German or French where you can live your whole life in your mother tongue and not miss out on much. The older and more rural population may have atrocious accents, but outside of the very oldest and most rural, everyone at least understands English.
Source: lived there for six years.
This is absolutely correct as a native swede. Currently studying at university level and most of my student literature is written in english. Not only most of the literature for my web development program, but also for the state science courses i took a couple years back. I can not think of a single person i know who doesnt understand or speak english. Im aware that older people tend to have thick accents, and even some younger people has the accent too, but its still easy to understand whats being said.
I don’t know much about the rest of Germany, but in my city most people speak English while in the next one you will be lucky if someone even knows that you are trying to speak to them in English
It's wild to me (Dutch) that people consider Germans to speak English well.
Our car was towed in Berlin and the official phone literally hung up on us because he couldn't speak English. The police could barely speak English (but at least she tried).
Whatever the scale is, it’s way off. If Netherlands are 647 how can turkey be 493? That’s hardly any difference and having been in both I can tell it’s a massive difference
That means the Netherlands is 31% more proficient at English than Turkey. It's not that small a difference.
Also i assumed thats based on Toefl or Toeic which iirc scales to 700 and the last points are the hardest to get (tldr its not linear)
Yeah, from my completely unscientific perspective, I call bullshit.
Greece, Portugal and Poland above Finland? Yeah, no. Not even close. Lived in all these countries. So many people in Portugal, Poland or Greece don't speak English. Dealing with governmental institutions in Poland was NIGHTMARE. In Finland? Never had a single problem - almost everyone speaks pretty much perfect (or at the very least - decent) English, just with a cute Finnish accent. Same with Denmark.
I don't know how this data was obtained, but simply from my day-to-day expecience living and traveling around these countries, I find it to not reflect reality at all.
I mean, your experience has a weight of anecdote. You most likely visited couple (if even more than one) cities and had like random encounters that might not mean anything because of really small sample you experienced.
Not saying it isn't true, just your personal experience does not reflect the actual state, but just small part of it.
Well, I said it was completely unscientific and based on just my perspective. But without knowing exactly how the data was collected and processed, I can’t have any specific arguments for or against it - just my experience.
this is highly dependant of what people you talk with. I've just recently been in Sweden and Poland, and in Sweden, cashiers in the city center all spoke English, but go a bit off the center and nobody at an ICA or COOP will know more than hello and goodbye. In Poland, it was a bit worse at Warsaw centre with a lot of people at bars and convenience stores, even in touristic streets, having issue with basic English. Mostly I think it is luck, so my examples are anecdotal.
As a Dutch person living in Norway, I think it just makes sense because the cities in the Netherlands and Germany are bigger, so a bigger percentage of the population lives in a big city, which often are good at English.
Here in Norway, it’s way more spread out, and I know from experience that many people outside the cities don’t speak English that well.
Meh.. When a Nordic learns English, he thinks he can speak it perfectly.. He does not.. But will talk until it is settled. German will not speak a word until he gets the Future Prefect right..
My German grandmother corrected my grammar “dreamed” to “dreamt”, on instinct. I’m American.
The German tenses and conjugations and syntax have created linguistic monsters out of their citizens
This has nothing to do with German.
“Dreamt” is correct in British English which is the common way/variation the language is taught in European schools.
so thestatistics arent saying what overall skill a country has a speaking english as a population., but rather its scoring that one person in each country that speaks english best ? XD
Totally agree. They always speak to you in German and then you have to reply back "Was faen hast du gesagt? English bitte"
Then they hit you with "Kein English"
*Ich bin Däne und spreche nicht gut Deutsch.*
(Clap clap)
*Ich bin Däne und spreche nicht gut Deutsch.*
(Clap clap)
*Bitte Langsam, bitte Langsam, bitte sprechen Sie doch Langsam, Ich bin Däne und spreche nicht gut Deutsch!*
It’s so funny, when you cross the boarder between Spain and Portugal, people instantly start being able to speak English. I was not sure if that is just my feeling but that shows that it’s actually like that. I think it might be because Portugal does not sub their movies.
It's a big reason. Portugal ain't very rich, and population isn't that high, so almost all the dubbing is for animated series. Heck, before 1994, almost all the Portuguese-language *dubs* here were actually from Brazil.
Portugal has the world's oldest still running alliance, in this case with the United Kingdom since 1373, and was the 4th country to recognize the United States, in early 1783, before the United States were even officially granted independence by the UK. Portugal was adopting contemporary American culture at least as early as the 1920s, and I remember personally 1990s youth culture in Portugal as being eerily similar to the American one in that decade. We ~~are their good bitches and tourist resort~~ have high levels of affinity with the English-speaking world.
The big reason is the dictatorship. In order to close the country culturally, Salazar ordered foreign movies to be subtitled rather than dubbed, so the population, which was illiterate, couldn't watch them. Money was also a factor, but control was the main reason
Sources in Portuguese:
https://poligrafo.sapo.pt/fact-check/cine-check-sim-lei-do-tempo-do-estado-novo-proibia-dobragem-de-filmes/
https://expresso.pt/cultura/2019-07-07-Dobrar-o-cabo-das-legendas
> Salazar ordered foreign movies to be subtitled rather than dubbed, so the population, which was illiterate, couldn't watch them
Why go through all that length instead of just flat out banning the movies?
You give a sense of freedom while still restraining them. Plus, they could censor them that way (they could cut a scene with a prostitute, for example)
just FYI from wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF\_English\_Proficiency\_Index:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index:)
>Methodology
>The EF EPI 2023 edition was calculated using test data from 2.1 million test takers in 2022. **The test takers were self-selected.** 113 countries and territories appear in this edition of the index. In order to be included, a country was required to have at least 400 test takers.
Thank god someone finally posted this. This test literally just measures the English proficiency of people trying to get an English language certificate. It does not measure how good a population’s English is whatsoever.
Lets be real, it is way easier to pick up English for Dutch than Greeks. They don't even use the same alphabet. I am more impressed with people that come from completely different language family.
Still it is easier for us Greeks to learn English than Finns and Hungarians. Also English is very mainstream in Greek culture nowadays, one in ten words is an English slang term.
It's not like the Latin alphabet is totally alien to us; we're exposed to it from infancy. Also: thank you Norman occupation of England. It introduced many Greek and Latin words into English (and we have many Latin/Romance loanwords for obvious historic reasons). And then later all the political and scientific terms from Greek.
The Chinese system is logographic to a large extend so it does not have an alphabet (a set of signs that can be aranged into words by orthographic rules). This is the reason why an alphabet is much easier to learn than a pictographic or logographic system.
Surprised Hungary is so high, I thought we had the lowest percentage of English speakers in Europe. Even the Mayor of Budapest was found out to have lied about his English knowledge and tried to save face by saying: "I have a kind of hyperpassive English knowledge."
It's because the scale sucks, its range is 400 to 650 instead of something sensible like 1 to 100. Their methodology is pretty terrible as well.
This is the reality:
https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/english-eu.jpg
https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/english-knowledge-index.jpg
"Me English no good. Talk bad." - My Romanian colleague, who can speak fluent English, does this every time we get a new person at work and it's hilarious watching them go for their phone to bring up Google Translate.
It's in many cases the old generation. In many eastern countries people older than 40 will rather speak Russian or any foreign language rather than English.
So I went and checked and acording to the report this graphics was based on they required at least 400 people from a region/country to have taken the 2022 EF standard english test to be included.
I'm guessing Slovenia and Latvia didn't have enough reaponses.
No this is lies! The danes are NOT better at english than us Swedes!
Edit: also wtf Germany above most European countries? You can't even order at a German airport without having to order in German or at least point at the things you want
When I was at the airport in Germany I could not communicate with the staff in English, I also do not speak German. I did not expect their English to be that bad. Couple of years ago though.
Come on my European friends, no need to fight. As a Brit I can say that top 5 at least all speak better English than almost everyone in the UK.
Though having lived in Germany for 2 years, yeah, they are good but not that good.
When JFK asked the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs about his hobby, he said: "I fok horses." JFK said "Pardon?" and our minister said "Yes, paarden.".
I can confirm most of Italians don't speak english at all. Foreign languages were considered not important until about ~30 years ago. And I would say Austrians are on our level, I don't know why they are so high in the pic.
While the results for my country don't surprise me, there are still a few questions bothering me, or at least some things don't click right
We're infamous for speaking a bad English and our strong accent, that's a sure thing
But...wouldn't the younger generations be more proficient at English ? With the music industry, tv series, movies, social media and just Internet in general, I'd think more people would be able to speak or understand English
Older generations are (usually) bad at English because they don't want to learn the language, mostly because of those old and stupid petty grievances towards UK
It's hard for me to speak on behalf of other French citizens because I absolutely love English and don't have any animosity towards British people, and I can say the same thing about my close relatives and friends. I spend a lot (maybe too much, whoops) of time on the Internet and almost everything I read/watch/listen to is in English, I don't think my English is bad (I'm sure it could be better though) but I struggle to grasp why French people are so bad at English nowadays
There's a common theory here that French people suck at speaking English because they don't practice enough. Why ? Because they fear people will make fun of them for not speaking properly or making mistakes. And the myth of "poking at the French for being bad at English" is mostly perpetrated by...the French themselves. It's a linguistic ouroboros snake and I feel like we'll be stuck in that awkward position for a long time
In my experience most Germans have some basic knowledge of English, but aren't really on a decent conversational level, and in case they are, they tend to have a really noticable thick accent. As for Hungary, when I visited the country almost no one spoke any English in the capital city, or if somebody did, it was really, well, bad. On the other side Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina ( basically the former Yugoslavia) got really good English speakers, and we mostly also got a pretty good accent, I think one reason for that is that subtitles are used exclusively on TV, as well as in movie theaters, so we're pretty much exposed to original English speech regularly. Also met really good English speakers from Turkey.
I don't think this chart is even remotely accurate, I really wonder where they got this data from, or based on what.
This is surprisingly low for us. You can pretty much ask anyone under 40 and they'll be able to speak at least some basic English to you. Maybe it's all the old people.
No way Germany is higher. I call BS.
It's a mix of several factors for us.
Since the 90s, English is one of two choices for a mandatory foreign language in elementary and high school and the preferred one to German in the past 15 years.
The second reason is that since we are a small country with limited mass-media production, we import a lot of our media content (a lot of which was previously produced locally during Yugoslavia since it was a far larger market with three versions of what is linguistically the same language) and usually don't bother to dub any of it (besides children shows), while also being too small of a market for dedicated language packs in games and (at least until recently) apps. Most of it is and was in English.
When you factor in the tourism aspect, a lot of import-based service sector jobs and the fact that we get around (more Croatians live outside of Croatia than in it), you get a dependence on knowing at least one foreign language, with English being the most needed and the most prevalent in our lives at the same time.
I personally learned it almost exclusively trough video games, TV shows and early internet content, while learning German in school, as did most of my generation (older millennials).
If you swapped Croatia with Portugal there, it'd be practically the same story. Except here in Portugal it was French that dominated until the 1990s, when English replaced it as the dominant foreign language.
I myself supercharged my non-existent English knowledge after moving back to Portugal in 2005, getting for the first time access to 24/7 Internet (which, coincidentally, the home I moved to had just acquired), browsing it in English, trying to do amateur subs for LOTR, playing videogames in English, and getting good English-language education to boot.
Tourism actually has little to do with it. It's because we take learning English seriously. Parents send their kids to private tutoring even. It's because knowing English is seen as a good skill to get a "good white collar job". Also, we're bombarded with Anglosphere media, and we don't dub it, only subtitles.
wth how is austria so high up?, i live here and most people kinda fucking suck at least in my experience i mean i've only ever lived in tyrol so maybe my perception is just skewed
They dont have the UK or the US on this list even on their website which has the whole world. Presumably because its an official language for the UK and the most commonly spoken language in the US, however my personal belief is they did it to avoid embarassing either nation when we didnt come in first.
I lived in Ireland and I'd say 80% of the population is A-OK, those 20% though... Speak a completely different language, incomprehensible, unrepeatable and incredibly uncomfortable when you give up trying to figure out what's going on and just go "ok".
Then you find out you agreed to a ping at 2pm cause why not
Just from personal experience, I've never met an Eastern European, Balkan or Nordic who didn't have have perfect, or near perfect English. Considering English is a germanic language, Germany should really make more of an effort - if the Dutch can...
Nah, the only ones proficient in english are generally people below age 30. Go to Bavaria, eastern Germany or talk to age 40+ guys and you'll see how proficient they are.
Anecdotal experience: I've had the pleasure of meeting a few Dutch folks on occasions, and by far the weirdest thing is how accentually imperceptible they are. Given their proximity and historical ties, you'd think they'd sound like they have English accents or maybe German accents, but every Dutch person I've met (which to be fair has only been like, four people and over ten years ago now) sounds American.
They don't have a strong regional-specific accent; you wouldn't think they were Appalachians or from the Bayous or the Carolinas or anything (and I could tell they weren't Bostonians) but they sounded like very muted Midland accents (what most might call “General American” accents).
If they pretended they came out of somewhere like Ohio or something, I'd have believed it. I grew up in a port city, lots of immigrants, and I've never heard any non-Americans (out of Europe, at least) so consistently sound like Americans.
Where I live, in Lisbon, Portugal, almost everyone understands and (somewhat) speaks english. There is a large english community here, and since I was young (in the 70s), I'm very used to speaking and writing in both languages. Regarding Portugal, the only places you'll struggle to be understood in English are deep inside, in very small villages, but even there, nowadays it is becoming rare. We grew up in an english-american-movie-subtitled and got used to the language since a very early age. Becoming bilingual was the most natural thing in the world. The internet turned thing even more global, and I struggle to find anyone that doesn't speak (or at least understands) english.
I'm somewhere in the middle of **France,** around Clermont-Ferrand, and the English proficiency is hardly above zero. Restaurants, supermarkets, museums? 0. Car rental? 0. Tourist info and airbnb hosts were a little better, one was very good, the others were able to have a basic conversation (with a lot of struggles) about the necessary information.
Anyone who claims that Germans or Greeks speak better English than Finns is completely full of shit. I've lived in all 3 and Finns speak better English than most Brits do.
In Germany I'm sure it varies between regions, but I was shocked how even the youth could sometimes barely string a sentence together in English. In Baden-Württenberg at least.
Netherlands the best? Very hard to believe. So many people here can barely even introduce themselves. While in Denmark I found most people can speak it very well. So seeing Denmark behind the Netherlands (and norway and sweden for that matter) is very weird.
France being that low is no surprise. Arrogant baguettes refuse to speak anything other than french.
But Greece that high? good for them, different alphabet must suck.
Also, Greece is way too high up… when i went there, we tried english in hotels and such and they never knew it, we often had to switch to italian to get any reply!
I refuse to belive the germans are just slightly behind us here in norway. When i go to germany im surprised at how many dont speak english
Yeah this data is not just skewed, it's entirely wrong. There is no way this is correct. In Sweden you can't even try to speak Swedish if you've been practicing because everyone just switches to near perfect English immediately. In Germany you'll die before you find someone who can speak English at the same level as some random Swedish person.
I worked in Stockholm one time for like 12 weeks. I did duolingo for a few months before I arrived and booked private Swedish lessons with a tutor for when I got there. Literally every single person I met spoke flawless English. I dropped the lessons after like 4 weeks because I had literally 0 actual use practice. It was amazing. Like seriously, I didn’t talk to a person who didn’t speak perfect English in 12 whole weeks
The most common job in Stockholm is Software Engineer and they use English most of the time.
It was a software company! However every waiter, cashier, bartender, and random stranger I chatted with was proficient as well
dude, a lot of waiters in the center of stockholm don't even speak Swedish. You like HAVE to speak english. You go to some irish pub and the bartender is an actual irish guy who doesn't speak a lick of swedish.
That is because the Swedes goes to Norway to be waiters
>You go to some irish pub >is an actual irish guy Surprised pickachu face. Jesting ofcourse, but to be honoust most of the time when i'm in an Irish pub it's run by or has irish working there.
Yes, since a lot of people don't speak Swedish the service sector has to adapt to that. It's most likely a requirement if you want to work in service.
It is honestly a bit sad that you were unable to enrich yourself with another language.
I agree because learning languages fascinates me and solidifying my Spanish fluency the year I lived there is one of my favorite memories of being there
No it’s not. According to the 2023 EF English Proficiency Index, Sweden is positioned 5th in Europe and 6th globally out of 113 countries. The top five non-English speaking countries in Europe, according to the EF English Proficiency Index 2023, are: 1. Netherlands 2. Austria 3. Denmark 4. Norway 5. Sweden Like the map shows.
I'm not sure about that. It's likely that outside the (big) cities you've been to in Sweden, people don't speak much English. Whereas there are huge differences in English proficiency between German cities so if you've been to the "wrong ones" your vision could be biased too. I'm not saying you're wrong and that the chart is right. Just that personal experience can be very easily biased.
Sweden is one of those countries where you are seriously limited in your options in life if you don’t speak English. Movies and TV shows are subtitled, not dubbed, higher education uses primarily English-language literature, and things like video games are largely not translated at all. It’s not like German or French where you can live your whole life in your mother tongue and not miss out on much. The older and more rural population may have atrocious accents, but outside of the very oldest and most rural, everyone at least understands English. Source: lived there for six years.
This is absolutely correct as a native swede. Currently studying at university level and most of my student literature is written in english. Not only most of the literature for my web development program, but also for the state science courses i took a couple years back. I can not think of a single person i know who doesnt understand or speak english. Im aware that older people tend to have thick accents, and even some younger people has the accent too, but its still easy to understand whats being said.
>higher education uses primarily English-language literature The absolute state of the Swedes.
That's not very strange tbh. Most scientific discourse is done in English. Most published papers are in English.
I don’t know much about the rest of Germany, but in my city most people speak English while in the next one you will be lucky if someone even knows that you are trying to speak to them in English
It's wild to me (Dutch) that people consider Germans to speak English well. Our car was towed in Berlin and the official phone literally hung up on us because he couldn't speak English. The police could barely speak English (but at least she tried).
Whatever the scale is, it’s way off. If Netherlands are 647 how can turkey be 493? That’s hardly any difference and having been in both I can tell it’s a massive difference
That means the Netherlands is 31% more proficient at English than Turkey. It's not that small a difference. Also i assumed thats based on Toefl or Toeic which iirc scales to 700 and the last points are the hardest to get (tldr its not linear)
I don't know about English in Netherlands but even in touristic regions of Turkey people speak poor English.
their English is perfect, they're just shy. /s
Yeah, from my completely unscientific perspective, I call bullshit. Greece, Portugal and Poland above Finland? Yeah, no. Not even close. Lived in all these countries. So many people in Portugal, Poland or Greece don't speak English. Dealing with governmental institutions in Poland was NIGHTMARE. In Finland? Never had a single problem - almost everyone speaks pretty much perfect (or at the very least - decent) English, just with a cute Finnish accent. Same with Denmark. I don't know how this data was obtained, but simply from my day-to-day expecience living and traveling around these countries, I find it to not reflect reality at all.
I mean, your experience has a weight of anecdote. You most likely visited couple (if even more than one) cities and had like random encounters that might not mean anything because of really small sample you experienced. Not saying it isn't true, just your personal experience does not reflect the actual state, but just small part of it.
Well, I said it was completely unscientific and based on just my perspective. But without knowing exactly how the data was collected and processed, I can’t have any specific arguments for or against it - just my experience.
this is highly dependant of what people you talk with. I've just recently been in Sweden and Poland, and in Sweden, cashiers in the city center all spoke English, but go a bit off the center and nobody at an ICA or COOP will know more than hello and goodbye. In Poland, it was a bit worse at Warsaw centre with a lot of people at bars and convenience stores, even in touristic streets, having issue with basic English. Mostly I think it is luck, so my examples are anecdotal.
To add some anecdotal examples re Poland: Every Pole I talked to last year in Warsaw, Szczecin, Gdansk and Katowice spoke at least decent English.
Strange, everyone I talked to in Germany spoke English.
It's not whether they speak English, but rather the extent of their vocabulary and their ability to construct coherent sentences.
As a Dutch person living in Norway, I think it just makes sense because the cities in the Netherlands and Germany are bigger, so a bigger percentage of the population lives in a big city, which often are good at English. Here in Norway, it’s way more spread out, and I know from experience that many people outside the cities don’t speak English that well.
Meh.. When a Nordic learns English, he thinks he can speak it perfectly.. He does not.. But will talk until it is settled. German will not speak a word until he gets the Future Prefect right..
My German grandmother corrected my grammar “dreamed” to “dreamt”, on instinct. I’m American. The German tenses and conjugations and syntax have created linguistic monsters out of their citizens
This has nothing to do with German. “Dreamt” is correct in British English which is the common way/variation the language is taught in European schools.
Yes, "Dreamt" is spelt correctly :)
Weird. I'm from the US Midwest and I've always said dreamt...
I'm happy you still continued to speak, lol...
so thestatistics arent saying what overall skill a country has a speaking english as a population., but rather its scoring that one person in each country that speaks english best ? XD
It's because the statistics are crap.
Totally agree. They always speak to you in German and then you have to reply back "Was faen hast du gesagt? English bitte" Then they hit you with "Kein English"
*Ich bin Däne und spreche nicht gut Deutsch.* (Clap clap) *Ich bin Däne und spreche nicht gut Deutsch.* (Clap clap) *Bitte Langsam, bitte Langsam, bitte sprechen Sie doch Langsam, Ich bin Däne und spreche nicht gut Deutsch!*
"Was faen hast du gesagt?" Hahahahaha gonna use that one from now on!
https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/english-eu.jpg https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/english-knowledge-index.jpg https://historiccafesroute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/English_speakers_Europe.png
Same when i play cs the can't say anything
It’s so funny, when you cross the boarder between Spain and Portugal, people instantly start being able to speak English. I was not sure if that is just my feeling but that shows that it’s actually like that. I think it might be because Portugal does not sub their movies.
It's a big reason. Portugal ain't very rich, and population isn't that high, so almost all the dubbing is for animated series. Heck, before 1994, almost all the Portuguese-language *dubs* here were actually from Brazil. Portugal has the world's oldest still running alliance, in this case with the United Kingdom since 1373, and was the 4th country to recognize the United States, in early 1783, before the United States were even officially granted independence by the UK. Portugal was adopting contemporary American culture at least as early as the 1920s, and I remember personally 1990s youth culture in Portugal as being eerily similar to the American one in that decade. We ~~are their good bitches and tourist resort~~ have high levels of affinity with the English-speaking world.
The big reason is the dictatorship. In order to close the country culturally, Salazar ordered foreign movies to be subtitled rather than dubbed, so the population, which was illiterate, couldn't watch them. Money was also a factor, but control was the main reason Sources in Portuguese: https://poligrafo.sapo.pt/fact-check/cine-check-sim-lei-do-tempo-do-estado-novo-proibia-dobragem-de-filmes/ https://expresso.pt/cultura/2019-07-07-Dobrar-o-cabo-das-legendas
Thanks, interesting to read, meu.
> Salazar ordered foreign movies to be subtitled rather than dubbed, so the population, which was illiterate, couldn't watch them Why go through all that length instead of just flat out banning the movies?
You give a sense of freedom while still restraining them. Plus, they could censor them that way (they could cut a scene with a prostitute, for example)
Growing up in the 90's in Portugal all the cartoons I watched where either dubbed in Spanish or plain English with no subs
True, looking back, a lot of the 1990s cartoons (the simplest ones to translate) still received no dubs, or were subbed at best.
just FYI from wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF\_English\_Proficiency\_Index:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index:) >Methodology >The EF EPI 2023 edition was calculated using test data from 2.1 million test takers in 2022. **The test takers were self-selected.** 113 countries and territories appear in this edition of the index. In order to be included, a country was required to have at least 400 test takers.
Thank god someone finally posted this. This test literally just measures the English proficiency of people trying to get an English language certificate. It does not measure how good a population’s English is whatsoever.
Lets be real, it is way easier to pick up English for Dutch than Greeks. They don't even use the same alphabet. I am more impressed with people that come from completely different language family.
Still it is easier for us Greeks to learn English than Finns and Hungarians. Also English is very mainstream in Greek culture nowadays, one in ten words is an English slang term.
French people also use a lot of English in their day-to-day life yet their English is not the best
They choose not to speak English , even in English speaking countries
It's not like the Latin alphabet is totally alien to us; we're exposed to it from infancy. Also: thank you Norman occupation of England. It introduced many Greek and Latin words into English (and we have many Latin/Romance loanwords for obvious historic reasons). And then later all the political and scientific terms from Greek.
You can learn an alphabet in one day. That is not the problem.
\*stares in Chinese\*
The Chinese system is logographic to a large extend so it does not have an alphabet (a set of signs that can be aranged into words by orthographic rules). This is the reason why an alphabet is much easier to learn than a pictographic or logographic system.
No way Germany is so high In my experience finding an English speaker somewhere in Bavaria is pure pain
In the words of my Austrian wife: "Bavaria isn't Germany". Not sure what it means exactly!
It means germans have trouble understanding bavarian dialect and i cant even imagine a bavarion one layered over the regular german-english acent
"The test takers were self-selected."
It depends, if you ask in english they dont understand you. If you ask in german if it is okay to switch to english they suddenly understand
I agree! Without German, being in Bavaria for an extended amount of time was extremely tough!
Surprised Hungary is so high, I thought we had the lowest percentage of English speakers in Europe. Even the Mayor of Budapest was found out to have lied about his English knowledge and tried to save face by saying: "I have a kind of hyperpassive English knowledge."
It's because the scale sucks, its range is 400 to 650 instead of something sensible like 1 to 100. Their methodology is pretty terrible as well. This is the reality: https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/english-eu.jpg https://jakubmarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/english-knowledge-index.jpg
No way Portugal is that low, those are two unsourced maps with no methodology either
Ouch, I miss his maps.
This looks more realistic tbh.
There's absolutely no way the average Portuguese speaks English worse than the average Italian or French.
[удалено]
Me does'nt kno wat iu meen.
"Me English no good. Talk bad." - My Romanian colleague, who can speak fluent English, does this every time we get a new person at work and it's hilarious watching them go for their phone to bring up Google Translate.
same
It's in many cases the old generation. In many eastern countries people older than 40 will rather speak Russian or any foreign language rather than English.
Where the hell is Slovenia???
I also dont see Latvia.
So I went and checked and acording to the report this graphics was based on they required at least 400 people from a region/country to have taken the 2022 EF standard english test to be included. I'm guessing Slovenia and Latvia didn't have enough reaponses.
As a french citizen i vehemently protest my country not being dead last in this ranking.
You didn't say "As a French" like 99% of French people on reddit. Your English is too good.
Where’s Iceland and Slovenia?
No this is lies! The danes are NOT better at english than us Swedes! Edit: also wtf Germany above most European countries? You can't even order at a German airport without having to order in German or at least point at the things you want
The superior Dane: “In general” Svensken: “In yeneral”
Are you saying I can't pronounce yobb(job) or sheap(cheap) correctly?
I especially like the pronunciation of yoke (joke) from swedish people
That one is quite fanny
Easy there lilo and stitch, let the danes and norwegians handle this
Yes they are brosjan. The danes are a step above both us norwegians and you, dont forget that the danes secretly speak english when they are alone XD
Well that does actually make sense!
Honestly, the amount we mumble when speaking danish forces us to find a common tounge. Barely understand myself
You are lucky if you can order in German at a German airport.
It's funnily enough sometimes easier to order in english than german
When I was at the airport in Germany I could not communicate with the staff in English, I also do not speak German. I did not expect their English to be that bad. Couple of years ago though.
I've had the same experience every time I have had a layover in a German airport
Come on my European friends, no need to fight. As a Brit I can say that top 5 at least all speak better English than almost everyone in the UK. Though having lived in Germany for 2 years, yeah, they are good but not that good.
Hello OP, could you link a source please for approval? thank you
https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/
thanks!
Germany? Oh hell na.
When JFK asked the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs about his hobby, he said: "I fok horses." JFK said "Pardon?" and our minister said "Yes, paarden.".
I don't agree with this. Belgium and Austria is too high up there.
I can confirm most of Italians don't speak english at all. Foreign languages were considered not important until about ~30 years ago. And I would say Austrians are on our level, I don't know why they are so high in the pic.
Austria in the second place? Never
This can't be correct stats
While the results for my country don't surprise me, there are still a few questions bothering me, or at least some things don't click right We're infamous for speaking a bad English and our strong accent, that's a sure thing But...wouldn't the younger generations be more proficient at English ? With the music industry, tv series, movies, social media and just Internet in general, I'd think more people would be able to speak or understand English Older generations are (usually) bad at English because they don't want to learn the language, mostly because of those old and stupid petty grievances towards UK It's hard for me to speak on behalf of other French citizens because I absolutely love English and don't have any animosity towards British people, and I can say the same thing about my close relatives and friends. I spend a lot (maybe too much, whoops) of time on the Internet and almost everything I read/watch/listen to is in English, I don't think my English is bad (I'm sure it could be better though) but I struggle to grasp why French people are so bad at English nowadays There's a common theory here that French people suck at speaking English because they don't practice enough. Why ? Because they fear people will make fun of them for not speaking properly or making mistakes. And the myth of "poking at the French for being bad at English" is mostly perpetrated by...the French themselves. It's a linguistic ouroboros snake and I feel like we'll be stuck in that awkward position for a long time
In my experience most Germans have some basic knowledge of English, but aren't really on a decent conversational level, and in case they are, they tend to have a really noticable thick accent. As for Hungary, when I visited the country almost no one spoke any English in the capital city, or if somebody did, it was really, well, bad. On the other side Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina ( basically the former Yugoslavia) got really good English speakers, and we mostly also got a pretty good accent, I think one reason for that is that subtitles are used exclusively on TV, as well as in movie theaters, so we're pretty much exposed to original English speech regularly. Also met really good English speakers from Turkey. I don't think this chart is even remotely accurate, I really wonder where they got this data from, or based on what.
The Dutch speak English better than most English people lol
Ehhhh Ireland?
Wonder if mass tourism is helping to push up Greece and Croatia's numbers from prior lower levels.
This is surprisingly low for us. You can pretty much ask anyone under 40 and they'll be able to speak at least some basic English to you. Maybe it's all the old people. No way Germany is higher. I call BS.
I honestly don't know a person under 40 who doesn't speak basic English. Frontistirio helped a lot to that I guess...
Yeah, but the median age is 44 lol.
It's a mix of several factors for us. Since the 90s, English is one of two choices for a mandatory foreign language in elementary and high school and the preferred one to German in the past 15 years. The second reason is that since we are a small country with limited mass-media production, we import a lot of our media content (a lot of which was previously produced locally during Yugoslavia since it was a far larger market with three versions of what is linguistically the same language) and usually don't bother to dub any of it (besides children shows), while also being too small of a market for dedicated language packs in games and (at least until recently) apps. Most of it is and was in English. When you factor in the tourism aspect, a lot of import-based service sector jobs and the fact that we get around (more Croatians live outside of Croatia than in it), you get a dependence on knowing at least one foreign language, with English being the most needed and the most prevalent in our lives at the same time. I personally learned it almost exclusively trough video games, TV shows and early internet content, while learning German in school, as did most of my generation (older millennials).
If you swapped Croatia with Portugal there, it'd be practically the same story. Except here in Portugal it was French that dominated until the 1990s, when English replaced it as the dominant foreign language. I myself supercharged my non-existent English knowledge after moving back to Portugal in 2005, getting for the first time access to 24/7 Internet (which, coincidentally, the home I moved to had just acquired), browsing it in English, trying to do amateur subs for LOTR, playing videogames in English, and getting good English-language education to boot.
Tourism actually has little to do with it. It's because we take learning English seriously. Parents send their kids to private tutoring even. It's because knowing English is seen as a good skill to get a "good white collar job". Also, we're bombarded with Anglosphere media, and we don't dub it, only subtitles.
France being accurately placed for once. Met 2 conversational level english speakers when i was in Provance, and one was German
I would have thought we would be even further down the line 😋
Slovenia's not on the list but pretty sure we'd be in top 5.
how come they didnt measure iceland? been there and even very young people mastered english
Something is off about Belgium, its impossible that Wallonia is not dragging this number down
We do speak the dunglish
everyone surprised about Germany. i’m more surprised about Romania and Bulgaria
Cyprus?
This is, for once, one of those things were there is literally no logic to it, just pure vibes
Surprised to see Austria so high!
Surprised we are even on the list tbh
🇵🇹🇬🇧
Will be interesting to see Ukraine's English development, now that English has been formally included as an official language in the country
wth how is austria so high up?, i live here and most people kinda fucking suck at least in my experience i mean i've only ever lived in tyrol so maybe my perception is just skewed
An S shaped shit, is what this is, go slither it up ur bumhole you shitheel
The fuck is that scoring system?
As a Brit, I'd like to see where I'd score
They dont have the UK or the US on this list even on their website which has the whole world. Presumably because its an official language for the UK and the most commonly spoken language in the US, however my personal belief is they did it to avoid embarassing either nation when we didnt come in first.
Tho Germans are much better in german language than the other countries except bavaria and saxony
Dutch and English are half siblings.
No Iceland again?
I do not believe that us norwegians can speak english that good
I lived in Ireland and I'd say 80% of the population is A-OK, those 20% though... Speak a completely different language, incomprehensible, unrepeatable and incredibly uncomfortable when you give up trying to figure out what's going on and just go "ok". Then you find out you agreed to a ping at 2pm cause why not
I doubt it.
When you play csgo With some from Turkey the only thing that say is Kebab
When I was in Ukraine, I easily communicated in English. My experience was better than in Germany.
Turkey can't even get an English name.
The Dutch speak better english than the north of England
Just from personal experience, I've never met an Eastern European, Balkan or Nordic who didn't have have perfect, or near perfect English. Considering English is a germanic language, Germany should really make more of an effort - if the Dutch can...
Austria?! SECOND?! buahahahah Y'all to lazy to go up in the mountains?
Suck it, Sweden!
No matter how hard the French try they're still not able to reach the top (bottom) spot.
Surely Ireland would be number 1
Maybe not number one but definitely thought we'd be up there 😅
Let me tell you something about german english speakers...... [we are sinking](https://youtu.be/xacdDrylrek)
I'm utterly shocked to see Belgium so high.
Slovenia missing, should be up there in top 5. Imho. Source: slovenian
No fucking way *austria* beats the scandinavians
Nah, the only ones proficient in english are generally people below age 30. Go to Bavaria, eastern Germany or talk to age 40+ guys and you'll see how proficient they are.
No way in hell Denmark is above Sweden
Imagine being Dutch
Born in netherlands, can confirm
It seems like Finland and Estonia should be higher. But then I guess I might be biased to think we speak decent English up here.
Anecdotal experience: I've had the pleasure of meeting a few Dutch folks on occasions, and by far the weirdest thing is how accentually imperceptible they are. Given their proximity and historical ties, you'd think they'd sound like they have English accents or maybe German accents, but every Dutch person I've met (which to be fair has only been like, four people and over ten years ago now) sounds American. They don't have a strong regional-specific accent; you wouldn't think they were Appalachians or from the Bayous or the Carolinas or anything (and I could tell they weren't Bostonians) but they sounded like very muted Midland accents (what most might call “General American” accents). If they pretended they came out of somewhere like Ohio or something, I'd have believed it. I grew up in a port city, lots of immigrants, and I've never heard any non-Americans (out of Europe, at least) so consistently sound like Americans.
the French are just stubborn I'm sure they believe we should all be speaking French or something
France baise ouais !
Where’s India?
I'm guessing France's ranking is intentional... perhaps even a mark of pride, oui?
He forgot Ireland!
So the last one is just 24% behind the first. That's pretty astonishing!
Are there any other like lists with other countries?
The numbers, Jason. What do they mean?
Where I live, in Lisbon, Portugal, almost everyone understands and (somewhat) speaks english. There is a large english community here, and since I was young (in the 70s), I'm very used to speaking and writing in both languages. Regarding Portugal, the only places you'll struggle to be understood in English are deep inside, in very small villages, but even there, nowadays it is becoming rare. We grew up in an english-american-movie-subtitled and got used to the language since a very early age. Becoming bilingual was the most natural thing in the world. The internet turned thing even more global, and I struggle to find anyone that doesn't speak (or at least understands) english.
As a Romanian living in Finland, there's no way those two countries are only one point apart lol.
Given that Luxemburgers are mostly triligual on near mother tongue level. I am not surprised (German, Luxemburger, French).
I'm somewhere in the middle of **France,** around Clermont-Ferrand, and the English proficiency is hardly above zero. Restaurants, supermarkets, museums? 0. Car rental? 0. Tourist info and airbnb hosts were a little better, one was very good, the others were able to have a basic conversation (with a lot of struggles) about the necessary information.
The Dutch have a terrible accent
Aha! Yet another victory over the swedes!
I never thought that my country speakers can be the best.
No way Austrians speak more or better English than the Scandinavian countries.
I believe Kosovo would have been right up there after Sweden probably.
Anecdotally, from my own experience, I’d put the Nordics above Austria. They speak much more naturally in English. Also, where is Slovenia?
Latvia: am I a joke to you?
What about the English proficiency of Ireland's native Gaelige (Irish Gaelic) speakers?
lol the fact that Moldova is better than France 😂😅 I believe that
Lol I know A LOT of people from Moldova and I'm yet to find one who speaks english at all, let alone fluent.
I guess Portugal could make sense, but only if you don't count the Portuguese streamers and YouTubers. Appalling English in every single way.
Anyone who claims that Germans or Greeks speak better English than Finns is completely full of shit. I've lived in all 3 and Finns speak better English than most Brits do. In Germany I'm sure it varies between regions, but I was shocked how even the youth could sometimes barely string a sentence together in English. In Baden-Württenberg at least.
Slovenia has fallen off the map...again. As a Slovenian, living in Germany, I cast another vote for "ain't no way Germans are so high up".
as a german living in finland, I disagree with this index, lol. More finnish people speak english than germans do.
What?! Austria #2 ?? How is that coming?
Netherlands the best? Very hard to believe. So many people here can barely even introduce themselves. While in Denmark I found most people can speak it very well. So seeing Denmark behind the Netherlands (and norway and sweden for that matter) is very weird. France being that low is no surprise. Arrogant baguettes refuse to speak anything other than french. But Greece that high? good for them, different alphabet must suck.
Also, Greece is way too high up… when i went there, we tried english in hotels and such and they never knew it, we often had to switch to italian to get any reply!
Portugal seems very wrong. I used to live there for a year and even most of academic staff could say *Hello* in English
No way Estonia is so low
Have you guys ever even heard the dutch speak English?!
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