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

#181

Post by jacobush » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:12 AM UTC

ricw wrote: post #93

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! The reason Germany has a high level of proficiency for a country that doesn’t translate media (movies, tv shows etc don’t act as language learning agent), it has a deep and well trained set of teachers. How? Famously the last German emperor insisted that every kid learn English in school. Over 100 years later and this has lead to well trained teachers, who can teach kids properly. I guess the take away is that…

Sweden started after WW2 and it is way ahead of Germany. So I’d say it is possible to accelerate. I think English really started to take hold in the 60s and 70s. Relatively low educated people born in the 1950s can make themselves understood in a pinch

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

#182

Post by pmontra » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:13 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #67

aspaviento wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more than visual. For example, Japanese plurals aren't evident and need to be understood from context. Another example is the word order, in Japanese, the verb goes at the end of the sentence. Add to it Hiragana and Katakana characters and it becomes quite difficult to learn.

You're listing differences between Japanese and English, but my sample of anime fans who don't understand Japanese also includes Chinese and Korean speakers, for whom writing system or verb-final word order, respectively, are shared features. Different grammar from English isn't unique to languages with non-Latin writing system either. Latin itself has much freer word order, enabled by a more complex case system than…

I like to watch anime in Japanese because of the sound, but I don't know any Japanese so I look at subtitles, usually in English. I don't expect to learn any language in this way.

Knowing grammar helps. I'm Italian and Spanish and French have such similar grammars that learning to read them was mostly a matter of building a vocabulary. Listening to French is more complicate as its hard to find spaces between words. Talking is both simple (similar sounds except a few ones) and complex (subtle differences in how to build sentences.) Writing is the most difficult skill. Everything has to be almost perfect.

English wasn't only a matter of vocabulary. The differences in grammar are large enough that building and understanding a sentence requires to think in a really different way. I got a shot at German a couple of times. The differences are an order of magnitude larger and I never had the time to go beyond the basics.

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

#183

Post by jacobush » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:17 AM UTC

narag wrote: post #170

learner124 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

After a while reading the subtitles becomes something done in an instant. Then you can listen

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

#184

Post by pmontra » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

babayega2 wrote: post #168

laurentb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countri…

Italian here. I don't think pride is the reason. We may be proud of our food but we use any language we need, even without knowing it. I guess many people had experiences with Italians delusional about their English skills.

The point probably is that those people don't need English in their life so they never invest in learning it.

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

#185

Post by narag » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #183

narag wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

After a while reading the subtitles becomes something done in an instant. Then you can listen

A while? I've done it for years and still don't like it. I'm not saying I can't do it, just that it's super annoying for me. I don't enjoy visuals if I need to read. It's totally anti-usabilty.

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

#186

Post by gerdesj » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #161

gerdesj wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I can see how that did not work out well! To be honest me and my SO can diverge like that without invoking another language. Usually it is me expressing bewilderment.

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

#187

Post by virtualritz » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 11:17 AM UTC

This makes no sense to me.

I travel frequetly around Europe, particularly to these countries.

Felt English proficiency has steadily improved over the last thirty years.

When I visited these countries as a backpacking teenager, in my summer holidays, almost no one spoke English.

Since about a decade everyone who is under thirty seems to speak English quite well. Aka: I do not need to use my crappy Spanish or Italian or more or less non-existing French skills to get along. :)

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

#188

Post by ukoki » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 11:31 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #172

bobloblaw45 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a native English speaker I could understand dropping the "e", but where does the "h" come from?

H at the beginning of a word is silent in Portuguese (as in Spanish and Italian)

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

#189

Post by kiney » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

akie wrote: post #18

toxik wrote: post #5

English is on course to eat up smaller languages. Mass communication has brought the world closer together, and with that, diversity is lost. It’s too early to say whether it’s for better or for worse, but here we are.

That's really not true. Many people I know also speak English, but that doesn't mean that they somehow forget how to speak their own language. If anything, small communities with an own language tend to be fiercely proud of that language, and do everything in their power to protect it [see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German ]. And if these languages do disappear, it tends to be because the national languag…

As someone who grew up in a low german area I can tell you it basically already died. My mothers understand the local low german. When visiting the village where she's from you can still hear some old people using it but I have a hard time understanding.

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

#190

Post by vidarh » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

somberi wrote: post #144

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…

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…

> In most places in Paris today I can get by with English and get complex transactions done.

First times I went to France (90's), there were people I met who genuinely did not understand English at all - even simple words -, and I had shopkeepers who, when my stumbling French was also insufficient, pulled strangers off the street to translate, and at least in smaller towns it sometimes took multiple tries to find someone.

By my last few trips it'd become hard to practice my French because people switch to English the moment I stumble in French...