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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

#71

Post by pyrale »

yorwba wrote: post #49
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…

Of course language standardization is something that exists. You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate that it be taught to children in school and prevent anyone who speaks differently from appearing in mass media. After a generation, you have children who grew up speaking non-standard with their parents but standard with their peers in school. Many of them will sp…

Mind you, did your country/language try this?

Because, being french, we actively do it, and it is an utter failure. People do not know the ruleset they were supposedly taught, new words largely come from the society as opposed to the institution, and thus the institution mostly acknowledges things after the fact.

From that pov, the thing you describe looks like a pipe dream.

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

#72

Post by squiggleblaz »

pyrale wrote: post #71
yorwba wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course language standardization is something that exists. You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate that it be taught to children in school and prevent anyone who speaks differently from appearing in mass media. After a generation, you have children who grew up speaking non-standard with their parents but standard with their peers in school. Many of them will sp…

Mind you, did your country/language try this? Because, being french, we actively do it, and it is an utter failure. People do not know the ruleset they were supposedly taught, new words largely come from the society as opposed to the institution, and thus the institution mostly acknowledges things after the fact. From that pov, the thing you describe looks like a pipe dream.

What's interesting about France is the people who think they don't speak much less understand the local dialect - who think it's dead or dying - but then you actually record them talking to their children, and lo and behold, they're passing dialect on to their children.

Still, the descendants of emigrants who learnt the dialect of their parents can only understand the older generation, not their peers.

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

#73

Post by squiggleblaz »

yorwba wrote: post #49
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…

Of course language standardization is something that exists. You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate that it be taught to children in school and prevent anyone who speaks differently from appearing in mass media. After a generation, you have children who grew up speaking non-standard with their parents but standard with their peers in school. Many of them will sp…

> You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate that it be taught to children in school and prevent anyone who speaks differently from appearing in mass media.

In a liberal democracy?

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

#75

Post by davidw »

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…

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.

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

#76

Post by wahern »

aspaviento wrote: post #66
AstralStorm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

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.

In English also verb end can go. Plurality--they can usually be disregarded, too.

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

#77

Post by tsukurimashou »

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're right French have everything dubbed in french, also English teachers are very bad, which doesn't help, I would say that most French kind of understand basic written English, but when spoken, it is so different than anything they heard that they are not able to translate sounds to the written words they might know.

French has a lot of words which are close or exactly the same as English, but doesn't sound the same or mean completely different things, which doesn't help. (example: 'argument' in English as in 'having an argument' and 'argument' in French as in 'ton argument ne mène nulle part' don't mean the same at all, other words can mean the same such as 'agile' but sounds like two different words when pronounced in French vs English)

And then you have pride (the wrong kind) coupled with the fear of sounding ridiculous, which is why 99% of French you hear speaking English has a very strong accent, they're not trying.

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

#78

Post by Camillo »

Isn't this potentially beneficial for those countries?

- The language barrier creates a distinct market for products and services -> good for local companies.

- The language barrier creates a distinct market for media and entertainment -> good for local culture.

- Can't read US media directly -> slightly more political independence.

- People can't speak English -> slightly less brain drain (alas, most educated people learn English anyway, but not all).

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

#79

Post by herogreen »

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…

My two explanations (as a French): all English contents on the TV is dubbed and English classes often have 24+ students which makes it hard for the teacher to have everyone speaking (even a bit).

Whereas in Finland, subtitles on foreign TV programs are common and classes have less students (I think).

Thus I believe it entirely comes down to the government not being smart enough.

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

#80

Post by gpderetta »

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

Our English is so bad that we make fun of our own ineptitude ourselves.
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