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How do the Swedish learn English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Presidio Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4582 days ago 39 posts - 150 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian, German Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Gulf) | Message 49 of 61 25 March 2013 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
-- I think this statement is a bit overgeneralized. While German is "the most widespread language in Europe," English does rival that. And when it comes to the language used between two nations with different languages, English is generally preferred or German. From what I have observed, A person from Spain and a person from Denmark will more likely converse in English than in German. A person from France and a person from Sweden will more likely converse in English than in German. A person from Belgium and a person from Italy will more likely converse in English than in German. A person from Portugal and a person from the Czech Republic will more more likely converse in English than in German. And France was upset because a number of press releases and press conferences from the EU were being given in English primarily. If German (or even French) was the primary language on the Continent, then why is English used to such a degree? Could it be because many of the countries in Europe have larger numbers of English speakers than French or German speakers? Maybe not. Perhaps it is because if the EU feels that in order to ensure that information about what the EU is doing is more easily assimilated by the rest of the world if it is shared in English instead of French or German? Maybe. Maybe not. As far as your statement about Spanish speakers compared to English speakers, and thus the US should teach in Spanish you leave out a couple of points. If you want to compare native Spanish and English speakers, that is one thing. But if you concider the number of non-native speakers the world over who study and speak English compared to Spanish, English wins hands down. Currently in China alone there are over 300 MILLION people actively studying English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4302 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 50 of 61 25 March 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure about Germany but I know in France there is a law that everything must be in French. So if there's a French and English version of the same thing, the French one would be used. I think they even have quotas on how much English is used on the radio. Maybe it's also a pride thing ( I'm in no way suggesting that Scandinavians aren't proud of their language) but the French and German seem to be extremely prideful of theirs. In addition, those two countries have a big influence in the EU. Germany is the only stable country so far. Also, I think that the EU presidency or something like that is located in Brussels (a heavy proportion of French speakers). 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 51 of 61 26 March 2013 at 12:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's one thing to be proud of one's language (who isn't?), and another thing to see all foreign languages as potential enemies, not allow them in radio or on television, dub foreign language movies - and then complain about their own language education (or at least praise certain countries for producing such good results).
Not that anyone said that... 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 52 of 61 26 March 2013 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
While I am sure there are some that are worried about the introduction of foreign words, on the whole Germans seem much more relaxed about foreign words entering their language than the French. The other day I saw an advertisement that used the German verb "tweeten" (to tweet - i.e., for Twitter - ich tweete, du tweetest etc) as well as I think "frienden" and "liken" for Facebook (not sure if I correctly remember the last two). There are a few pseudo-English words in the language as well, that Germans seem to generally think are real English words. The most obvious for me is Handy (for Cellphone, or Mobile). If you listen to people talking German, you'll also often hear them throw in a whole English phrase, as part of a German sentence, even when there is almost certainly a German equivalent. Edited by patrickwilken on 26 March 2013 at 4:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 53 of 61 26 March 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
German might only be considered the most widespread language in Europe if you bought the UKIP party line that the UK wasn't part of Europe. But that's not correct. It is part of Europe, and will always remain so, and for the time at least is also part of the EU. Putting that aside, English is used predominately as a method of communication between non-English speakers throughout Europe (as I am sure French, Spanish, German, and Russian are used to a lesser extent). A lot of the big newspapers in Europe now produce English language sections. Interesting, most of the traffic to these sites, is not from UK/USA, but from other European nations. Edited by patrickwilken on 26 March 2013 at 4:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 54 of 61 26 March 2013 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, I find it funny when Germans use terms like "der Manager" and "das Meeting" when there have been German equivalents around for a long time. Mind you, there has been a bit of a backlash against excessive use of English terminology. The national rail operator Deutsche Bahn decided to remove English phrases from its literature. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 55 of 61 26 March 2013 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Russian is the most widespread language of Europe. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 56 of 61 27 March 2013 at 11:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Define "Europe".
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