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Which country is the worst at languages? | ||
Tags: Monolingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5831 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 72 11 April 2012 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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In my experience, it would seem Americans and British are probably the worst. Also, the Japanese aren't known for being very good at second languages, and I think many Japanese people have a similar attitude to Americans and Brits when it comes to foreign language study.
However, overall which country would you say is the worst at learning foreign languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4636 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 2 of 72 11 April 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
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Based solely on speculation,
America, England, France, Japan, China, Russia 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6659 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 72 11 April 2012 at 11:41pm | IP Logged |
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Swedes rarely learn anything else than English... That is kind of sad.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 4 of 72 12 April 2012 at 12:00am | IP Logged |
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Hungary has a lot of monoglots for a small country.
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| JKerouac Diglot Newbie France Joined 4612 days ago 6 posts - 10 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 72 12 April 2012 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
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I believe French aren't very good when it come to speak foreign languages. Most of us study one foreign language for at least 7 years (up to university level) but very few are comfortable using it, let alone being fluent.
And when we do speak it, especially English, I find French peoples to have a very heavy accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4778 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 6 of 72 12 April 2012 at 1:35am | IP Logged |
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Americans are good at many things, but languages ain't one of them. The US is in a class by itself in terms of its lack of language ability, even among the educated classes. It's not fair to compare it with China or Russia.
Not only are most Americans unable or unwilling to learn foreign languages, they are often hostile to those of their fellow citizens who are bilingual. Two prominent Americans were publicly ridiculed recently on late night TV for their ability to speak Mandarin and French. I have a friend who is fluent in Mandarin. Once a group of Americans overheard him speaking Mandarin with a Chinese friend. With pain in his voice, my friend described how his fellow Americans told him to "go back to China". They actually mistook my brown-haired blue-eyed friend for a Chinese person! This incident took place in a big city, not some bygone backwater. I believe Jefferson was the only US President who was bilingual or multilingual. Apparently he was fluent in English, French, Greek, Latin and Welsh. (He even wrote the first draft of the US Constitution in Welsh!) In defense of the US, Americans don't really need to learn any foreign language if they don't want to. Being proficient in English, they are already "set for life". Americans can be lousy at languages and it won't be a detriment to their career. Some of you on this forum must study English because it's on a basis of whether you want to eat or not. However I would like to give a shout out to Finland, the best country at foreign languages. Everyone there is trilingual. Finland rules! 13 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 72 12 April 2012 at 1:48am | IP Logged |
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Finland rules indeed but that's not quite true. First of all, at this forum trilingual normally means having three native languages, definitely extremely rare in Finland. But anyway, most people don't speak Swedish too well.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 8 of 72 12 April 2012 at 1:50am | IP Logged |
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Generally speaking, people will avoid learning languages unless there is a pressing need to do so. This is a human condition, not some sort of native English speaker's disease.
Every year I go on shopping trips in Poland, just over the German border. The German people just assume that all Poles in this region ought to know German and show no inclination to speak Polish. This situation will occur around the world wherever you have a large powerful economic territory sharing a border with a state that depend on the trade. Edited by beano on 12 April 2012 at 1:51am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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