Do alot of people from Europe know how to speak English well?
November 18th, 2009 | 
Author: I’ve noticed that alot of people from different countries in Europe know how to speak English very very good. Is it something they learn alot of in school?
I’ve noticed that alot of people from different countries in Europe know how to speak English very very good. Is it something they learn alot of in school?
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Yes, most of them have learned it at school.
In Scandinavia and a few other countries, English is taught in school from a very young age. English-speaking media (music, movies, tv, games) are common here so there is a lot of exposure to it everyday. Thus, most Scandinavians (under 60 or so) speak excellent English.
I’ve had a few friends that didn’t learn it in school but picked it up other ways. One friend from Poland learned English just by watching American/British television with subtitles and listening to the radio. Surprisingly, his English was really good.
In other countries, it varies depending on how important English is for things like business, or how interested the people are in learning it. It’s a common option for foreign language studies all over Europe. Here’s a list of English-speaking population by country (the percentage of English speakers is the part to read):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
The main reason, I think is that not too many speak Dutch, Swedish or Finnish outside of
their home countries, combined with the desire of many Dutch, Swedish and Finnish people
to travel, work and study abroad. Even though who don’t actually go abroad may work for
multinational companies which use English as a lingua franca.
My Italian friend said that when he was in school everyone had to take either English
or French as a second language, and those who were assigned French got ridiculed.
I wonder at what age most Europeans begin studying English. This is far more important,
IMHO, than similarities or differences in pronunciation (consonant clusters), grammar or
vocabulary.
Finally, I noticed a lot of local teachers are experts at English grammar, but can’t
speak the language at all. (Taiwanese teachers in Taiwan, for example). Perhaps German
teachers in Germany speak with better accents, helping young Germans to speak English
more clearly and easily.
Most of the world speaks English. *
I think its just that we (people that have English as a first language) are maybe a little ignorant when it comes to things like this and expect people to speak our language.
But to answer your question, yeah.
Many of my Czech students of English would know that they speak English very, very well, not very very good.