France, Spain, and Italy’s English skills are on the decline: study • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by mettamage » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 2:47 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #97

raxxorrax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was horrible in English while at school and internet access wasn't widely spread. Regular use is pretty important in my opinion. Instantly switching languages is hard though. You end up with sentences that make absolutely no cheesecake and fail you grammar basic if you switch to your native tongue again. Often happens to me after work when I was consuming content in English for a longer period of time. Nearly every…

Native English speaker (English) here and I've just had to wipe my screen after reading your second paragraph. Pretty much the only reason I can tell you are not a native writer is by the content and the points you are raising.

Non-native speakers are more easily recognizable in their language use when they need to use proper vocabulary during emotional conversations.

My favorite mistake (made by yours truly):

"I feel upset."

"Oh, I also feel angry."

"I said that I feel upset..."

"Yea, angry, me too"

"It's not the same."

"Wait, what? How isn't it?"

Emotional conversations with a native English speaker are harder because of this. I learned to get a bit better at it as my SO speaks Dutch as well.

Having the same conversation in Dutch with the same words and sentences yielded very different discussions. IMO, the research that people talk and think more rationally in a non-native language rings true.

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

#162

Post by xiaodai » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

That's cos they are all learning Chinese.

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

#163

Post by asveikau » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 2:56 AM UTC

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…

Important to note that this has probably happened before with other popular languages. The way you describe the hypothetical future of English sounds a lot like you could be talking about Latin. The phrase lingua franca itself came about to describe a very similar story.

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

#164

Post by Scoundreller » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:27 AM UTC

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…

Things like this happen at the UN:

A Swede will tell a joke. The swedish congregation and maybe some other Scandinavians will laugh. Then a moment later the English-speakers will laugh when it's translated into Englisg, then everyone else gradually, depending on how long each other language's translation takes.

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

#165

Post by kenneth » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #64

aspaviento wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to a certain extent but keep in mind that Japanese grammar is completely different from any latin based language. That makes really difficult to asimilate full sentences, locate where the action or the subject are, etc.

It's only visually different. Much like Russian. That is a relatively big barrier though. Grammar and concepts are comparable. It's no Chinese for sure. Much less alien than Korean too. (And let's not try comparing it with Hebrew, Indic languages or Arabic vs Latin group.)

Chinese grammar is refreshingly simple. I'm currently learning Chinese and it was shocking to me how easy it is to sensibly express ideas with very basic grammar (and some really funny idiosyncratic phrasings like… dong bu dong).

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

#166

Post by adventured » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

pgcj_poster wrote: post #155

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.

There is a strong imbalance there. There are three dozen common languages in Europe. As an American, you stand no chance against that language diversity when it comes to matching up with a given person in Europe who only needs to learn English to match up with you.

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

#167

Post by pgcj_poster » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:36 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #166

pgcj_poster wrote: post #155

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.

There is a strong imbalance there. There are three dozen common languages in Europe. As an American, you stand no chance against that language diversity when it comes to matching up with a given person in Europe who only needs to learn English to match up with you.

Sure, but I don't know even one foreign language as well as similarly-positioned Europeans tend to know English, and neither do most Americans.

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

#168

Post by babayega2 » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

laurentb wrote: post #61

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…

having done business with all Spanish/Italian/French businesses, I can guarantee you that nothing comes close to Italians as far as poor english

Joined this summer an international organization in Rome, Italy. I was quite surprised by the quality of the English skills in here. Like,... In our African countries, not knowing English/French is a question of whether you want to live a miserable life or no. Like, we have kids who failed their studies for just 45 hours of English practice each year starting grade 6.

I think that's the key difference between countries: some are compelled to be proficient in English because it is a necessity in order to get a descent life. Some sees it as just a need to compete.

I really understand. It might be also difficult for a great civilization like the Italian one to admit that they need to adapt to other civilization, speak English, adopt this language in order to express their ideas ...

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

#169

Post by adventured » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

ldng wrote: post #140

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. ?

That's exactly what the parent is saying conceptually.

The mega cultures with their larger populations are able to live within their own bubbles more easily than smaller countries. They typically produce a lot more media content to fulfill their own demand, as one example. It's true whether we're talking the US, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, China, Japan and so on.

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

#170

Post by narag » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 3:40 AM UTC

learner124 wrote: post #134

asdasdasdasdwd wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The hard part is that you have many vowels. In Spanish there are only five. Understanding is often done by elimination. If I can't discard a word because I can't tell if it's bar or bore or beard or bird or bear or beer, unless context helps, I'll simply stall.

That's why I consider native teachers to be the most powerful advantage. At school they insist too much in grammar, that's important, but the foundation is how the language sounds.

I hate movies with original language and subtitles. I've used them with subtitles also in English with great results to learn.

But nothing can replace a teacher that corrects your pronuntiation as you speak and repeats the right sounds as many times as you need.

Also when I'm watching a movie for pleasure, I like to watch and listen, not to read.