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English in Scandinavia and Netherlands | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 17 of 22 02 December 2010 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
I agree. The average Dutchmen's English might put a three-year-old native speaker to shame but definitely nothing beyond that. Edited by ReneeMona on 02 December 2010 at 12:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 22 02 December 2010 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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A very interesting thread indeed. One basic unresolved and very thorny issue here is how do we define the kind of English-language proficiency that we are talking about here. Although there is no doubt that compared to nearly all other countries, knowledge of English is very high, one would not say that Holland is a 75% English-speaking country. English is certainly not replacing any of the national languages. My guess is that English is a vehicular language that is mastered more or less according to exposure and need.
What I find more interesting is how to explain this high penetration of English. I've never seriously studied the question, but here are some random thoughts. These are small countries with languages that are not widely studied outside the countries. International communication requires a foreign language, which in today's world is English. The countries have seen considerable emigration to English-speaking countries such as the United States and Canada. Inevitably there is considerable "family" contact with English. There is a common pattern of massive consumption of undubbed television and films in English. Many schools, especially at the highest levels, use English-language materials. When all these factors are considered, one surely observes not surprisingly that proficiency is English is generally a function of exposure to the language. Lesser educated speakers in rural areas are probably most likely to not speak English. All these observations apply to other areas in the world. I'm sure that the same thing can be observed in Lebanon. Where I live in Quebec, Canada, a very high proportion of the French-speaking majority speak some English. How much or how well depends of course on the length and nature of the exposure to the language. Just a last word for those of us interested in self-study. All these observations highlight the role of massive exposure to meaningful input especially at young ages. Is this surprising? Could someone learn English just by watching undubbed American soap operas? Probably quite a bit. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nature Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5238 days ago 63 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 19 of 22 07 December 2010 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I think people overestimate how well Swedes or Dutch people speak English. Yes they're good, much higher than any other country in the world definitely, but whenever I watch a young Swedish person give an interview in English, they have trouble. I mean OBVIOUSLY better than any other country but you can tell they have trouble speaking it.
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 20 of 22 07 December 2010 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
Another huge factor, in my opinion, is the similarity between English and the other Germanic languages. English is certainly much, much easier for a Dutch or Swedish speaker than, say, a Korean or Greek speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 21 of 22 07 December 2010 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think s allard and Levi pretty much summed up the answer to the question; the languages are similar and film and television aren't dubbed so people are exposed to the language every day from a young age. In my opinion, these are the two most important reasons why many people in the Netherlands (and probably Scandinavia as well) generally speak English quite well.
As for your question about learning English from watching TV, s allard, I wrote a post about this subject a while back in this thread that you might find interesting. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5586 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 22 of 22 09 December 2010 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I communicate with my one Norwegian friend exclusively in English, with Norwegian slang
words inserted where/when needed. However most Norwegians are on the intermediate level of English speaking I would say. You can still hear that they are English and they don't know advanced vocabulary. This is way above all other countries though, I guess that's the point of the thread starter. This isn't good enough for me, to say that all Norwegians speak perfect English is a great overstatement. Some of the people in my English class a decade ago couldn't even for a simple sentence. According to the Norwegian media kids in Oslo tend to have a higher level of English than that of rural areas. Perhaps because they have a lot of tourists, business men and officials there, I don't really know why. Yet, again, this would be the higher intermediate level, and not true fluency. I believe that takes quite a bit of isolation with media such as movies, books or videogames. Even though it's good for my language learning, the thing that annoys me is when I arrive in a country where no one speaks English or another world/foreign language. It would be silly for me to get annoyed were I in fact British or American, but I'm not. I would never expect them to speak MY native language. But English, Spanish, Arabic or some form of a world language would be nice. Maybe some languages are more stubborn than others, maybe Norway has given up on it's heritage hehe, let's hope so... Edited by justberta on 09 December 2010 at 10:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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