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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

#131

Post by xianwen »

perakojotgenije wrote: post #37
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.

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…

Very interesting! May I ask what the town called?

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

#132

Post by learner124 »

jventura wrote: post #44
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 pet theory is that English proficiency is much better in countries where movies are subtitled, not dubbed. That is how I learned the basics of the english language when I was a kid. Here in Portugal movies are subtitled. Incidentally, I went to Milan once to participate in this thing, and neither Italians, Spanish, French, Polish and Russian people could understand each other. I speak a little bit of everything…

But you still had to have conversations with people to fully learn right? As someone learning Spanish I think I've hit a hard limit in terms of of my progress from just consuming media in Spanish and decided I need to start taking one on one tutoring lessons to really continue my progress.

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

#133

Post by danioli »

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).

Wow.

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

#134

Post by learner124 »

asdasdasdasdwd wrote: post #101
narag wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is studied in primary school, which wasn't the case 20 years ago... That's tricky. Years ago primary extended from 1st to 8th grades (6 to 14 y.o. aprox.) so English, that started in 6th was primary. Now 6th to 8th have been moved to ESO. Anyway I just checked with my son and he started in Infantil , so it's really soon. The real issue is qualification. To really understand and speak English you need to learn…

This is true. While I learned English in the written form in my teens and was able to somewhat understand movies in English, I only became proficient in it in spoken form after I joined a guild in an online MMO game and everybody talked through TeamSpeak. Good times :)

The written form of English and the way words are pronounced are so different it must be a nightmare to learn in some ways. I can recall when I was progressing through school even often seeing written words that I had never heard before and having no idea to pronounce them and would ask someone and the answer would be like, oh that's a French word and the 'g' is silent ( for example a word like benign). It's actually pretty bizarre to think about it now but realizing this has given me even more respect for people who learn English as a second language. Honestly I kind of feel like the language could be simplified and made more efficient for future generations and non native speakers to learn.

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

#135

Post by johnzim »

flurdy wrote: post #98
pjmlp wrote: post #19

It is not that they are failing in English, rather that they are less dependent on foreign content, having localized versions from whatever might be relevant. As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages. English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.

English is dominant now, and as you say history shows the dominant lingua francas changes over time - all the time. But I don't think another existing nation's language will take over. Not Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. Instead, I think an evolved version of English will dominate in 100-200 years time. We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, bu…

I agree. Globish is already iterating on itself so fast I don't think it'll be beat.

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

#136

Post by ruiseal »

flurdy wrote: post #98
pjmlp wrote: post #19

It is not that they are failing in English, rather that they are less dependent on foreign content, having localized versions from whatever might be relevant. As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages. English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.

English is dominant now, and as you say history shows the dominant lingua francas changes over time - all the time. But I don't think another existing nation's language will take over. Not Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. Instead, I think an evolved version of English will dominate in 100-200 years time. We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, bu…

Lang Belta is a fun one.

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

#137

Post by learner124 »

flurdy wrote: post #98
pjmlp wrote: post #19

It is not that they are failing in English, rather that they are less dependent on foreign content, having localized versions from whatever might be relevant. As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages. English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.

English is dominant now, and as you say history shows the dominant lingua francas changes over time - all the time. But I don't think another existing nation's language will take over. Not Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. Instead, I think an evolved version of English will dominate in 100-200 years time. We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, bu…

I think spanish and English could end up merging in some ways honestly. There's already so many words of similar origin, geographical proximity in the Americas and already the phenomenon of Spanglish has existed a long time. I think it would take at least a few hundred years though.

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

#138

Post by lottin »

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.

Not only that, there are certain things that need to be taught because you will never figure them out on your own. For instance, in English the voiced/voiceless distinction in consonants involves differences in vowel length and aspiration in addition to voicing. If your mother tongue relies entirely on voicing, as all Romance languages do, then you will interpret the other features as an affectation when in fact they have an important phonemic role.

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

#139

Post by learner124 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #128
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 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 hate it when I hear the stereotype "French people do speak English but they're not going to because they are so proud" (maybe not exactly what you're saying...). It's simply untrue. People who speak good English will very happy to practice whenever the opportunity shows up. It's not easy to le…

Patience is definitely key and most people who only speak one language have no patience for someone who partially knows their language to talk to them. I've been learning Spanish and traveling in Latin America and the only people I can successfully have actual conversations with in Spanish are ones who also know English because they seem to understand what it's like to have trouble expressing themselves. I'll speak in Spanish and they listen even though I'm slower than a normal person and I'll do the same if they talk back to me in English.

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

#140

Post by ldng »

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…

You mean like English-native speaker have their own English speaking view of the planet in which they happily live. There are English businesses, English universities and research, English (ex-)colonies, English tourism etc. ?
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