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France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

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Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#151

Post by WalterBright »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #21

As a Spanish person, I can confirm that average English proficiency in Spain is poor in absolute terms. It has often been reported to be the country that speaks English worst in the EU, and it may very well be (although the French also deserve a honorable mention). But I find the claim that it has been declining since 2014 very difficult to believe, to say the least. English is studied in primary school, which wasn't…

When I visited a customer in Finland, I noticed that everyone in the office spoke English to each other. I asked if they were just being courteous since I was there. They laughed, and said no, the employees came from all over the world and English was the only language they had in common.

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#152

Post by UptownMusic »

My wife and I (both Americans) got married in Italy, have lived in Spain near her family and visited France to see friends we made when our children were in French school together here in the US. In numerous visits we have rarely met anyone in Italy, Spain or France who speaks English as well as my wife speaks their native language. A classic that never gets old for some reason is the reaction when she tells French people that it would be better for all of us to speak French rather than English.

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#153

Post by epsylon »

nspattak wrote: post #53

I moved to France a few years ago. I did know that French don't know English as much as they do not want to speak English yet I am still amazed by how much. I think that the main reason for that is that they have their own French speaking view of the planet in which they happily live. There are French businesses, French universities and research, French (ex-)colonies, French tourism etc. One could say that the same a…

> I think that the main reason for that is that they have their own French speaking view of the planet in which they happily live.

Americans also live in their own universe. And so do many others...

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#154

Post by kalleboo »

yorwba wrote: post #35
nottorp wrote: post #32

My pet theory is that English proficiency is much better in countries where movies are subtitled, not dubbed. Incidentally it also explains why native english speakers tend to have no idea about other languages. The rise of youtube talking heads should also help... i'm pretty sure my daughter got most of her english from there.

My personal observation of people who watch lots of anime with subtitles but only understand a handful of Japanese words and can't pronounce them correctly indicates that passive exposure to a language isn't enough to learn much. You also need to try and practice using it yourself.

The difference would be that the European countries where people are watching subtitled TV are also teaching English in school. So you have both the proper education, as well as repeated, practical reinforcement and exposure.

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#155

Post by pgcj_poster »

As an American, I always feel stupid when Europeans apologize for their countrymen's language skills. Sure, French people might not be as good at English as Germans, but nevertheless, I've met a significant number of French teenagers who spoke better English than I did French, even though I'd been studying longer (sometimes much longer) than they had.

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#156

Post by pgcj_poster »

acchow wrote: post #47
pyrale wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language standardization is not something that exists. You could hope for merging of communities that create an unified language, but whenever two communities are not completely merged, each will coin new words, the pronunciation will drift, etc. That is because locutors create languages, not ruling bodies. Examples of that include canadian french, and english as spoken in Europe, for which many words are not known t…

> and english as spoken in Europe, for which many words are not known to native english speakers. Have some examples of these english words that native english speakers wouldn't know?

I once had someone ask me what the "preterite" of a certain verb was. I was able to guess what she meant, but I definitely did not know that word from my experience speaking English.

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#157

Post by mettamage »

nottorp wrote: post #32

My pet theory is that English proficiency is much better in countries where movies are subtitled, not dubbed. Incidentally it also explains why native english speakers tend to have no idea about other languages. The rise of youtube talking heads should also help... i'm pretty sure my daughter got most of her english from there.

I'm an example of your pet theory.

It's also the reason why there's a moderate correlation (didn't actually research this) between small EU countries and English ability. Small countries are better, because they don't have the resources to dub their series.

This used to be more true than now. The Netherlands has been regressing a bit in their English speaking ability precisely because children tv shows aren't in English anymore (though there's still plenty of opportunity in NL, there simply used to be more).

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#158

Post by mettamage »

davidw wrote: post #75
perakojotgenije wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, here's my anecdotal evidence about it. I've already sent this comment here, but it's been 4 years ago so here it is again: I live in a small town near the serbian-hungarian border and we can watch both Hungarian and Serbian TV stations. In Serbia movies are subtitled (so you can hear English language all the time) while in Hungary movies are dubbed (so you can't hear anything other than hungarian langua…

That's interesting. I wonder if the fact that Serbian is an Indo-European language and Hungarian is not has any influence? Not a linguist and not familiar with either language, so just a semi-random question.

N = 1 here

I'm Dutch and have a close friend who's Hungarian. His English is as good as mine. The only impression I got is that he needed to actively seek out opportunities to speak English whereas in The Netherlands you're bombarded with opportunities.

I do think it helps a bit though, but it's easily trumped by opportunity itself.

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#159

Post by mettamage »

larnmar wrote: post #124
unclesams-uncle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium is a great test case for your theory. The country is split linguistically between Dutch speakers in the northern Flemish region, and French in the southern Walloon region. The Flemish region's television stations and cinemas run mostly subtitled programs (really, anything outside of children's shows and content made in the region or in the Netherlands). In the French-speaking areas, the media companies and ci…

Maybe, you’ve also got to consider the fact that Flemish is more similar to English than French is, and cultural differences between French and Flemish/Dutch speakers overall (broadly overgeneralising, French people are salty that their language has been overtaken in relevance by English, while Dutch speakers are comfortable with the fact that their language was never all that important).

I know that this is true for Dutch speakers in The Netherlands. I wonder how Flemish people think about Dutch. I never asked :D

Re: France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study

#160

Post by pgcj_poster »

pyrale wrote: post #70
acchow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and english as spoken in Europe, for which many words are not known to native english speakers. Have some examples of these english words that native english speakers wouldn't know?

You can find some at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pseudo-anglicism . Even more of them can be found in business language, which did not become loan words.

Interestingly this also exists in the reverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudo-French_words_ad...
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