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English in Scandinavia and Netherlands | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7166 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes  Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 9 of 22 11 December 2009 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
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Numerodix, you are precisely right, and I'm sorry if I was being too subtle. The point is: If you have a group as self-selecting as a bunch of Swedes who opt to study in an English-speaking country (meaning their English is great) who nonetheless speak in Swedish very often, imagine the average citizen in that country. His school English will best your Swedish for a while, but don't worry, you'll get to speak the language!
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| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5530 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 10 of 22 12 December 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged |
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Young people in Scandinavia often have very good pronunciation and are able to speak fluently, giving the impression that their English is at a pretty high level. The hidden weakness is often in their vocabulary, which can be very limited.
Most courses at Norwegian universities involve reading some English language textbooks. In a survey, the majority of Norwegian students reported struggling to understand these texts - and for the most part this was due to their vocabulary being insufficient. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5839 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 11 of 22 13 December 2009 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
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Yeah, the situation with English text books was definitely there when I went to uni in Sweden in the mid 1990s. In National Economics we had to buy these insanely expensive American books with hundreds upon hundreds of pages of very high level English relating to economical theory. It was miles from the level of English taught in the last year of school...!
Personally I had a lot more previous exposure to English than most people on the course and had just tested above average on the American SAT English section.... but I still struggled! I got totally distracted by trying to learn all the new words - to the point where I failed the exam several times due to not finishing the reading. I simply couldn't accept that I had no choice but to read on without understanding important words in the text. As a footnote, in another course there was material in Danish, Norwegian and English in the same course (just "basic" texts about social policy, not too complex). Almost everybody on the course preferred to read in Danish or Norwegian over English despite it being a real hassle for a Swedish person to read in the other Scandi languages (basically it looks like everything is misspellt and odd / old-fashioned /slang words are used....) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 12 of 22 03 October 2010 at 3:28pm | IP Logged |
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I can attest that most people in the Netherlands don’t speak English as well as we’re famed to. I went to school with the smartest top layer of the population and in my English class there were no more than a handful of people whose English I would have described as good. Most people have a very small vocabulary, a limited grasp of grammar and a very noticeable accent. Sure, pretty much everyone over the age of 14/15 can hold a decent conversation in English but they won’t be as comfortable in English as they are in Dutch and they sure as hell won’t be able to pass for a native speaker. (The Wikipedia article on Dunglish describes some of the mistakes Dutch speakers commonly make.)
The people who speak English well are usually the ones who had an interest in films, TV, English literature or something else that exposed them to a lot of English as teenagers. As for kids speaking English amongst themselves, my best friend and I often spoke English together in high school and we were considered slightly weird for it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5783 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 13 of 22 03 October 2010 at 3:48pm | IP Logged |
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I've been to university in Holland and Sweden. The classes were in English despite most of the class being of that country and...yeah, they had no trouble at all generally.
They obviously prefer to speak their language and are more comfortable in it but they seem to speak English so naturally, they don't even have to think about it, they just speak. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NiceApple Newbie United Kingdom applelanguages.nl/ Joined 5109 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes | Message 14 of 22 30 November 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged |
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In the Netherlands, we are confronted so much with English everyday that it becomes impossible not to learn it up to a certain level. For the majority, in the universities, a lot of people speak English quite well. There is, however, also a vast majority of people who just merge Dutch with English which turns out quite funny but is nowhere near English. Several books have already been published about this, which for English people would also be very funny I guess, one of them is called 'I always get my sin' and lists all the ways Dutch people 'abuse' English words and expressions.
This is the book: http://www.dunglish.nl/2005/11/18/getting-your-sin/ So yes we speak English but up to a certain level! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5372 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 15 of 22 01 December 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged |
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The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries have the highest percentage of English-
speakers outside of Britain,Ireland and Malta...It's estimated that 75% of Scandinavians and 80% of Dutch people speak English...The command of the English language with the Dutch and Scandinavians is at least good to near-fluent. The quality of English with the Dutch and Scandinavians is good to excellent...They would even put many native English-speakers to shame...I will give the Dutch and Scandinavians full credit for their mastery and their passion of the English language. Edited by stout on 01 December 2010 at 8:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 22 02 December 2010 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
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Put native speakers to shame? Maybe some of highly educated Swedes and/or language geeks, but the 75% figure you're talking about does most likely refer to the number of people who has studied English in school. All of them are definitely not fluent. Maybe half of them have passable English.
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