171–180 of 200 posts
That's cos they are all learning Chinese.
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 :)
It's funny because as American kids are learning to read and ask what a word is we are told "sound it out". It usually works. But it definitely doesn't work the other way around, trying to spell a word by how it sounds. I had a Portuguese friend online once that spelled "awesome", "hawsom" and we had a good laugh because he felt embarrassed but we had to assure him it's still spelled wrong but still sounds right if y…
Even witnessed French tourists interacting with Italian customer service workers... in Spanish ! On two different occasions. It blew.my mind lol not used to see Spanish used as a Lingua Franca outside Spanish speaking countries...
Native English speaker, here. Can speak “emergency” Spanish and German, but that’s about it (asking for directions, ordering food, making limited small talk in a hideous accent I’ve been told, etc). Tried French for a while but stopped because it’s way too hard to learn without immersion. In a way it’s not really surprising to me that Germany is the country retaining English proficiency - English is a Germanic language after all. That the Romance language countries are drifting away from English is not surprising in that regard.
Still, as economies continue to globalize it is curious that there’s a regression at all. English has been the language of business for probably a generation or more at this point. Is this a leading indicator of an economic decoupling we’ll see in the coming decades?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In English also verb end can go. Plurality--they can usually be disregarded, too.
> In English also verb end can go. This sounds wrong to me…
(Though i think the correct pseudo translation would be “In English also verb can end go”. Subtle difference, but more like German - und auf den Punkt.)
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…
I have visited Spain a few times over the last 20 years. I do not speak Spanish and I try to get by speaking English (these are few days at a time visit, and not long term stay). From this one man's experience, it is not that Spain has regressed in its proficiency with English, but I find that other southern European countries (particularly Portugal) has upped the ante - a LOT. To compare Paris (I understand it does…
> it is not that Spain has regressed in its proficiency with English
I'm not sure your multi-day vacations give you enough insight to debunk the study in TFA which says it indeed has regressed.
Being able to speak a few key phrases in French, Spanish, or Catalan still goes a long way.
On the other hand, as an American I was blown away by how good most Icelanders’ English was. The young people for the most part spoke perfect English that was about on par with your average American college student.
I handle emails for the company I've founded for 5 years now. My experience is that nationality of the customer has big predictive value when it comes to how the communication goes. For example:
Germans - decent English with funny spelling/grammar quirks (der computer, der solver, using gender pronouns when referring to things etc.)
Chinese - rarely write any English but are very smart at using Google translate, I rarely have any communication issues with them. General computer literacy very high.
Japanese - exceptionally polite. Often write perfect English. Some of them don't though but they always make an effort (no pasting of Google Translate) and apologize profusely for their English being not so good.
Scandinavians: write better English than many native speakers, absolutely no issues. If I were to point the best speaking Scandi country it would be Finland.
Russians: often appear rude as I think translating Russian word by word results in rude sounding English. Maybe it's about the culture as well. I like communicating with them though. They sometimes use veiled or not so veiled insults towards me and my software. I keep the tone in my emails sometimes suggesting their brain is just malfunctioning and they are wasting my time. It usually goes well and problems are resolved quickly.
French: surprisingly much easier to communicate with than Spaniards. They rarely write correct English but somehow I am usually able to resolve the issue while when I see an email in Spanglish I brace myself for incoming trouble. French email domains (laposte, orange.fr) suck though. They often lose emails without any message. At this point if someone orders using laposte email I am emailing them from my personal account asking to provide functional email address. It sometimes gets to them but not always. We don't have those issues with any other email provider.
I could do a few more but those I feel strongest about. I am one guy who sells software to a specific niche. I am also not a native speaker so take it for what it is.