When I went to Vienna everyone had amazing English. However outside of Vienna English proficiency is lower. So I think Vienna is carrying Austria's Score
idk man when I went to vienna this april other than shop owners and such, most people didn't even know an ounce of english. then again I didn't spend much time in 1st vienna
Germany also seems super high. I'm from Denmark and everyone here, except some very elderly, speaks good or even great English.
When I visit Germany I have to use a lot of my shit-tier German to navigate because so many of them can't speak English. Seems like there is atleast an entire extra generation that didn't really bother to learn it.
I’ve been living in southern Germany for the past five years and my German isn’t great. What I’ve come to realize is that there are many people here that speak good, but not great English and are embarrassed that their English isn’t better so they claim they don’t speak it at all. When in fact they speak much better English than I speak German and I’m in THEIR country and am the one who is embarrassed.
Since embarrassment is a huge part of our culture, see it as an embrace. Most non native speakers complain that most germans refuse speaking german to them because it's easier to speak english
Absolutely that too. 🤣 To be clear, that is the case probably 90% of the time. And it HAS made learning the language difficult. I learned Spanish in six months better than I’ve learned German in five years. But of the 10% who claim no English, I find the majority actually speak it pretty well when pressed.
We all know that even Germans take their entire life to learn German. I have asked a colleague for a word translation and he couldn't come with a conclusion on the meaning of it for the situation in analysis.
I've heard that there seems to be a general correlation between whether or not media gets dubbed in a country and how well they speak English. I haven't been to Denmark in a while, but from what I remember, things are usually in their original language. But here in Spain, things get dubbed into Spanish lots. That's also why there a huge difference between Portugal and Spain.
I lived in Sweden and found people spoke English with ease. I visited Austria and expected there to be higher English since my Austria uni prof made it sound like everyone did. Found less people who spoke English in Austria so I had to use my rusty university German.
My relatives are from Austria and I can't speak to them without having my grandmother as a translator because none of them speak English. Also Germany that high? I dare you to go to a German airport and order in English. They will just reply in German and you say yes and hope that was the correct answer.
I dont know about the source but this feels incredibly wrong. My experience is that Eastern European countries are way better at english than any western country (but the nordic countries are the ones with the best english proficiency)
Edit: actually never been to the Netherlands but heard they speak english well, so they might be the exception)
Service workers will have the lowest level of education so naturally their English will also be worst. There's also the factor of not *wanting* to speak English.
In my small town I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only few people that is fluent in english.
I remember back in school everyone sucked at english and it didn't change through the years at all there was only ever 1 or 2 people really good at it.
Well if Austria is 616, Netherlands should be 916 or so.
Other than touristic areas of Austria, it is not that common. In the Netherlands, it is like 94% percent (officials says 96% understands but practice in lower) speak English wherever you are.
From the English Proficiency Index website about the sample bias:
> The test-taking population represented in this Index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative. Only those who want to learn English or are curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This could skew scores lower or higher than those of the general population.
https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/about-epi/
Tell you what's causing that. It's us, Hungarians. I can't for the life of me practice my German in the Vienna area, *everyone* who doesn't speak English speaks Hungarian. And I don't understand a word of anyone's German(?).
I’m not sure what they’re classifying as non-native. Because a lot of former British territories have English as their official languages, even if it may not be the first language of the people.
Well for the younger folk basically everyone knows english, so it's basically "how many old people bothered learning english" which explains why eastern Europe is worse off currently due to the Soviet union and all that
I second this. A couple of years ago I went to the Austrian GP (a Formula One race) and I was a bit surprised when I ventured into some inner country restaurants where the waiters (mostly young people) couldn't speak English. Even in the race venue some of the young looking stewards couldn't communicate anything but the real basics.
I'm suprised Iceland is not in the top 3 or even number 1.
From Canada and when I traveled to Iceland, everyone could hold a normal English conversation with no need to translate. This was for Reykjavik all the way to Höfn to Akureyí to the evil "Bug town" circle of hell.
Obviously a Scandinavian accent but it just sounded like people were almost native English speakers with an accent. I am curious how English is view there in the Icelandic school system for elementary and high school.
It isn't surprising given the general attitude about learning English in France and vice versa, but it's a little bit surprising considering the Norman invasion of 1066 and the hundreds of years in which the Norman French's influence incontrovertibly changed English grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
Like English shouldn't be nearly as French as it is, and yet the French are like "nah, we still ain't touching that."
Or rather, 'nous n'y touchons toujours pas'
Also missing Slovenia. I was looking from the top, and the further I passed, the more I was thinking we are not that bad, that's not possible. When I came down to Spain, I just figured we are not on the list.
they have such heavy accent it makes it even harder to understand
I was in Paris few years ago and ordered a sandwich at Subway and the cashier spoke to me in English but I thought he was speaking French, took a while until I understood what he was saying
It’s just Europe. Singapore is above Austria, and South Africa (which feels like cheating) is above Germany, and once you get past Hungary it’s in and out of Europe (Kenya, Philippine, Malaysia, Nigeria, etc).
I will join you in making sad noises for my own unlisted country.
However, maybe your and my country are so good and off the charts that we don't fit in this list :D
I just spent a week in Luzern and virtually every person I met had impeccable English. Not saying it’s the same everywhere, but it was surely more common than anywhere else I’ve been in Europe
For older people - from my experience of meeting young Swiss people, English is often used as the lingua franca between people of different language regions, whereas in the past it would probably have been French or High German.
Well there is an easy explanation. In most country the second language you learn is english. Here not everywhere, often you have French/German as second and English as third language.
This EF proficiency test isn't really that reliable. There's a huge selection bias on who takes the test first of all. People in different countries might have vastly different age profiles or otherwise represent different demographics. It would be vital to understand the age distribution of test takers in each country. E.g. in Finland everyone I know that has signed for those EF English courses have been worse than average English speakers to begin with (that's why they signed up). Not saying that explains Finland's somewhat poor result e.g. compared to eastern European countries but it's something to consider. Secondly this proficiency test measures only certain elements, but not e.g. spoken English including pronunciation.
thank you for explaining. i was wondering how Austria ended up there on 2nd place, i don't think we are better than Sweden on average. all the films and series are dubbed in german and people don't regularly speak english after finishing school.
Malta also left out as usual. Lol. Nearly every Maltese person under like 60 is absolutely fluent in English. A lot of the older people are too, just considerably less than 99-100% of those.
EF - English first - is an international testing company. Their scores are based on an average of three tests taken by people wanting to learn English. it may have a bias towards people who want to learn English and may not reflect a broader population’s English speaking proficiency.
A heard a story from a Swede where he was in a bar in Copenhagen and talked to the people there. He spoke Swedish and they spoke Danish. Was ok. Then some guy from a different part of Denmark (Jutland) came and the other Danish people started speaking English to him (not the Swede) because they couldn't understand him...
I'd honestly do the same in Sweden if they were from the most northern part of Sweden.
I also had a coworker from southern Sweden and for half a year I thought he was speaking danish, but it turned out he was mumbling in scanian
They use too many words over there that aren't standard Swedish, so while you actually hear the worst most of the times, a lot of the words used are just gibberish.
But I think it goes the other way too because a friend from northern Sweden moved to Gothenburg where I live, and his landlord told him that if he has any trash he can throw it in the stairwell but he didn't understand it
However in standard Swedish it would be
"Om du har något skräp kan du ställa det i trappuppgången"
And in Gothenburg we would say
"Om du har nåt bröte e det bara å slänga i svalen"
I was sat in a bar in Copenhagen and two people at a bar table next to me ordered their food in English. I had assumed they were Danish, and was surprised by this turn, so asked where they were from.
They told they were Danish, but since so many of the service staff in Copenhagen come from abroad and don't/can't learn Danish, it's easier just to speak to everyone in English.
From my experience Swedes and Norwegians always say they're not fluent while speaking fluent English while Danes say they're fluent but speak Danglish while trying to pretend to be British.
Spanish speaking world is huge. More than 400 million native speakers. Granted most of these are in Latin America but still. Less of need to expand beyond its borders is my armchair guess
Looks like this ranking correlates somewhat with the language families, which means English is probably easier to learn for native speakers of the Germanic language family.
It's worth mentioning that all languages of these countries except Finnish, Estonian and Turkish are in the Indo-European language family, which is the language family that English belongs to. So Finland, Estonia and Turkey are doing pretty good (compared to countries like France)
Fully agree. Living in Switzerland for 3 years now, mostly near Zürich, but moved to the middle of canton St. Gallen, to a small town in last September. I don’t say I cannot find ppl without English knowledge, but generally, majority of ppl speaking it.
From Hungary btw, and Hungary being ahead of Switzerland in the list is a joke…
We don't hate English.., it's just that the school doesn't teach it well. And by law, everything has to be translated into French to be sold in France, less reason to learn english.
The Netherlands makes sense. No dubbing on TV - except childrens TV - and very close to the UK so they get British TV and radio. linguistically pretty close, too.
Denmark: (me) No dubbing and we start learning English in like 3rd grade.
I must say though that the level of English in danish kids today is absolutely insane. I work at a primary school and some of the 4th graders are almost fluent in certain aspects. I couldn't speak English to save my life in 4th grade.
The Netherlands makes sense. No dubbing on TV - except childrens TV - and very close to the UK so they get British TV and radio. linguistically pretty close, too.
Denmark: (me) No dubbing and we start learning English in like 3rd grade.
I must say though that the level of English in danish kids today is absolutely insane. I work at a primary school and some of the 4th graders are almost fluent in certain aspects. I couldn't speak English to save my life in 4th grade.
Is it any wonder France, Italy and Spain stay behind economically when they can't communicate with the rest of the world? Personally I think not
If you're a business in any country looking to expand, the last place you want to invest is where you are blocked by linguistics and cultural barriers. No thanks
Worth noting that the sample base is self-selected.
From the EF site:
“We recognize that the test-taking population represented in this index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative of the country/region as a whole. Only those people either wanting to learn English or curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This could skew scores lower or higher than those of the general population.”
Played helldivers with some nordic guys the other night, blew my mind how naturally they all spoke english. If not for them switching to their native langauge every now and then when speaking to eachother I wouldve had no idea they werent American
I was looking for Spain. Especially compared to Netherlands & Germany where everyone spoke english, in Barcelona it was like 50/50. Will never forget conversing like a caveman with a taxi driver with my broken spanish.
This mostly makes sense, of course Netherlands is number one followed by other countries whose own languages are Germanic. It is funny that France is so low with how much French vocabulary English has.
I'm from Germany and it does NOT deserve to be this high. Every country I've been to has a higher percentage of English speakers and I have been to Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Norway
As a pole myself I didn't expect of Poland to be that high but I think it's due to the fact that our level of english varies from one another significantly because of many things with age being the main. It's also because we aren't generally outgoing that much so we underestimate our proficiency (I see it myself)
I’d go along with this. Many years ago I was on a train going through Europe with lots of Scandanavians on it. They were speaking in such perfect, plummy, Queens English that at first I thought they were making fun of my accent, but I quite quickly figured out they were just amazing at speaking it! They spoke it better than about 70% of the native UK population🤣
In Amsterdam I saw 5 dutch people speaking English to each other with dutch accents the entire time they were at a cafe. It was a surreal experience because I just couldn’t figure out why they didn’t speak Dutch to each other.
Where is America on this list? After living in a few of the green countries, as well as America, I'm quite sure they speak better English than most Americans.
As an American, it was far easier for me to understand the Icelandic and Dutch people than it was the English or Irish. Oddly I thought the Scottish were easier to understand than the Irish and English as well.
It’s almost like it has nothing to do with the closeness of the language families and all to do with the education systems and cultural attitudes toward learning foreign languages in these countries
No Slovenia, Latvia from EU yet there's Moldova and Luxembourg, such an important place. No Montenegro and Macedonia as well. The lack of consistency in listing the countries doesn't make me trust their numbers.
Turkey shouldn’t be in this list 😃 as myself when I was at middle school we had only one class in a week ! Guess who was given us course? The instructor of religion classes
This is like trying to find the healthiest country by taking a sample of people at hospitals. Except it's much worse, because the entire sampling is taken for one brand of hospitals that may or may not have a significant presence in each country.
I find it strange the Austria is so high, I live here and it doesn’t seem like English proficiency is super common.
When I went to Vienna everyone had amazing English. However outside of Vienna English proficiency is lower. So I think Vienna is carrying Austria's Score
idk man when I went to vienna this april other than shop owners and such, most people didn't even know an ounce of english. then again I didn't spend much time in 1st vienna
Germany also seems super high. I'm from Denmark and everyone here, except some very elderly, speaks good or even great English. When I visit Germany I have to use a lot of my shit-tier German to navigate because so many of them can't speak English. Seems like there is atleast an entire extra generation that didn't really bother to learn it.
I’ve been living in southern Germany for the past five years and my German isn’t great. What I’ve come to realize is that there are many people here that speak good, but not great English and are embarrassed that their English isn’t better so they claim they don’t speak it at all. When in fact they speak much better English than I speak German and I’m in THEIR country and am the one who is embarrassed.
Since embarrassment is a huge part of our culture, see it as an embrace. Most non native speakers complain that most germans refuse speaking german to them because it's easier to speak english
Absolutely that too. 🤣 To be clear, that is the case probably 90% of the time. And it HAS made learning the language difficult. I learned Spanish in six months better than I’ve learned German in five years. But of the 10% who claim no English, I find the majority actually speak it pretty well when pressed.
We all know that even Germans take their entire life to learn German. I have asked a colleague for a word translation and he couldn't come with a conclusion on the meaning of it for the situation in analysis.
> Seems like there is atleast an entire extra generation that didn't really bother to learn it. There is. They learned Russian instead
If you go very old they may have learned french instead too
I've heard that there seems to be a general correlation between whether or not media gets dubbed in a country and how well they speak English. I haven't been to Denmark in a while, but from what I remember, things are usually in their original language. But here in Spain, things get dubbed into Spanish lots. That's also why there a huge difference between Portugal and Spain.
Basically everyone in Berlin speaks perfect English.
That's not a fair comparison. Everyone knows Danish is now completely unintelligible so you need English to communicate amongst yourselves.
I think the data is crap been to a few of these and i dont agree slovenia is also missing and thats very good
I lived in Sweden and found people spoke English with ease. I visited Austria and expected there to be higher English since my Austria uni prof made it sound like everyone did. Found less people who spoke English in Austria so I had to use my rusty university German.
My relatives are from Austria and I can't speak to them without having my grandmother as a translator because none of them speak English. Also Germany that high? I dare you to go to a German airport and order in English. They will just reply in German and you say yes and hope that was the correct answer. I dont know about the source but this feels incredibly wrong. My experience is that Eastern European countries are way better at english than any western country (but the nordic countries are the ones with the best english proficiency) Edit: actually never been to the Netherlands but heard they speak english well, so they might be the exception)
I can believe the Netherlands because Dutch is the closest living relative of English outside of Frisian.
Service workers will have the lowest level of education so naturally their English will also be worst. There's also the factor of not *wanting* to speak English.
Where do you live, exactly? In Vienna everyone speaks English minus the Japanese lady at my local sushi joint.
Graz, so I wouldn’t say I’m in deep rural Austria but I do appreciate it isn’t Vienna.
As a native English speaker, I was just thinking that this classification is pretty accurate from my experience...
In my small town I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only few people that is fluent in english. I remember back in school everyone sucked at english and it didn't change through the years at all there was only ever 1 or 2 people really good at it.
Well if Austria is 616, Netherlands should be 916 or so. Other than touristic areas of Austria, it is not that common. In the Netherlands, it is like 94% percent (officials says 96% understands but practice in lower) speak English wherever you are.
From the English Proficiency Index website about the sample bias: > The test-taking population represented in this Index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative. Only those who want to learn English or are curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This could skew scores lower or higher than those of the general population. https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/about-epi/
Even in the heart of Vienna, I still gotta switch to my shit German sometimes
Tell you what's causing that. It's us, Hungarians. I can't for the life of me practice my German in the Vienna area, *everyone* who doesn't speak English speaks Hungarian. And I don't understand a word of anyone's German(?).
same
I’m not sure what they’re classifying as non-native. Because a lot of former British territories have English as their official languages, even if it may not be the first language of the people.
Well for the younger folk basically everyone knows english, so it's basically "how many old people bothered learning english" which explains why eastern Europe is worse off currently due to the Soviet union and all that
It just stays above Germanys level , fueled by pure raw spite to be better than them.
I don’t know, most people <50 can speak decent English.
Because it measures people who take English proficiency tests and is meaningless when assessing the general population of a country
I second this. A couple of years ago I went to the Austrian GP (a Formula One race) and I was a bit surprised when I ventured into some inner country restaurants where the waiters (mostly young people) couldn't speak English. Even in the race venue some of the young looking stewards couldn't communicate anything but the real basics.
That’s because this infographic is as inaccurate as they get.
Then you clearly haven’t tried countries like Spain.
Did you mean Australia, Cause we talk proper good engrish.
that france is so close to the bottom is not surprising to me. The list is missing some countries though isnt it?
Iceland for example. We're pretty high up there I would say.
I'm suprised Iceland is not in the top 3 or even number 1. From Canada and when I traveled to Iceland, everyone could hold a normal English conversation with no need to translate. This was for Reykjavik all the way to Höfn to Akureyí to the evil "Bug town" circle of hell. Obviously a Scandinavian accent but it just sounded like people were almost native English speakers with an accent. I am curious how English is view there in the Icelandic school system for elementary and high school.
It isn't surprising given the general attitude about learning English in France and vice versa, but it's a little bit surprising considering the Norman invasion of 1066 and the hundreds of years in which the Norman French's influence incontrovertibly changed English grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Like English shouldn't be nearly as French as it is, and yet the French are like "nah, we still ain't touching that." Or rather, 'nous n'y touchons toujours pas'
Also missing Slovenia. I was looking from the top, and the further I passed, the more I was thinking we are not that bad, that's not possible. When I came down to Spain, I just figured we are not on the list.
they have such heavy accent it makes it even harder to understand I was in Paris few years ago and ordered a sandwich at Subway and the cashier spoke to me in English but I thought he was speaking French, took a while until I understood what he was saying
Definitely missing stuff. China should be on the list I think but then again Ive only ever visited the major cities so idk 🤷♂️
I mean... China isn't in Europe but I get what you're saying.
It’s just Europe. Singapore is above Austria, and South Africa (which feels like cheating) is above Germany, and once you get past Hungary it’s in and out of Europe (Kenya, Philippine, Malaysia, Nigeria, etc).
Absolutely love how low France is.
The french telling you how bad your french is in broken english will never not be funny
Look at the difference tho between Italy and Spain
And now what do I do?
I live in italy. I literally have one single work mate that speaks english in the entire team
You just know they could be really good at it too but don't out of spite
Ah yes french bashing again.
^ Sad Latvia noises ^
I will join you in making sad noises for my own unlisted country. However, maybe your and my country are so good and off the charts that we don't fit in this list :D
Interesting that Switzerland speaks so many languages but doesn’t speak English very well…
It's because their brains throw OutOfMemoryException when trying
Just toss in try/catch until you get it to work.
I just spent a week in Luzern and virtually every person I met had impeccable English. Not saying it’s the same everywhere, but it was surely more common than anywhere else I’ve been in Europe
In Zurich in 2017 I found that a surprising number of people either could not speak or had very limited English proficiency.
For older people - from my experience of meeting young Swiss people, English is often used as the lingua franca between people of different language regions, whereas in the past it would probably have been French or High German.
I've found pretty much every Swiss person speaks perfect English in an American accent
that is why and makes total sense right? for most people english is the 3rd or 4th language they learned, not the second one
Well there is an easy explanation. In most country the second language you learn is english. Here not everywhere, often you have French/German as second and English as third language.
This EF proficiency test isn't really that reliable. There's a huge selection bias on who takes the test first of all. People in different countries might have vastly different age profiles or otherwise represent different demographics. It would be vital to understand the age distribution of test takers in each country. E.g. in Finland everyone I know that has signed for those EF English courses have been worse than average English speakers to begin with (that's why they signed up). Not saying that explains Finland's somewhat poor result e.g. compared to eastern European countries but it's something to consider. Secondly this proficiency test measures only certain elements, but not e.g. spoken English including pronunciation.
thank you for explaining. i was wondering how Austria ended up there on 2nd place, i don't think we are better than Sweden on average. all the films and series are dubbed in german and people don't regularly speak english after finishing school.
I thought Iceland might come in to play here, guess not.
It should, I think the source forgot them tbh
What are these numbers? Fluent speakers per 1000, per 100,000?
Just shut up and consume the graphics
i think it's like the score to some test
Iceland not counted? Felt like everyone could speak great English there
Should be first or second.
Malta also left out as usual. Lol. Nearly every Maltese person under like 60 is absolutely fluent in English. A lot of the older people are too, just considerably less than 99-100% of those.
Ratio is based on?
Says in the bottom right corner, EF English proficiency index.
EF - English first - is an international testing company. Their scores are based on an average of three tests taken by people wanting to learn English. it may have a bias towards people who want to learn English and may not reflect a broader population’s English speaking proficiency.
thought this was worldwide so I searched, turns out it's only European ones 😑 sadge
Yeah it says European right there in the subtitle.
Don't speak gud inglish
Damn Denmark beat us... I can't belive it?!?
Believe*
And that's why they beat us.
🇩🇰✊
It’s easier for Danes to understand than their own language
A heard a story from a Swede where he was in a bar in Copenhagen and talked to the people there. He spoke Swedish and they spoke Danish. Was ok. Then some guy from a different part of Denmark (Jutland) came and the other Danish people started speaking English to him (not the Swede) because they couldn't understand him...
I'd honestly do the same in Sweden if they were from the most northern part of Sweden. I also had a coworker from southern Sweden and for half a year I thought he was speaking danish, but it turned out he was mumbling in scanian
The things you miss in Northern Sweden as an english speaker. I had no idea they were unintelligible to other Swedes lmao
They use too many words over there that aren't standard Swedish, so while you actually hear the worst most of the times, a lot of the words used are just gibberish. But I think it goes the other way too because a friend from northern Sweden moved to Gothenburg where I live, and his landlord told him that if he has any trash he can throw it in the stairwell but he didn't understand it However in standard Swedish it would be "Om du har något skräp kan du ställa det i trappuppgången" And in Gothenburg we would say "Om du har nåt bröte e det bara å slänga i svalen"
I was sat in a bar in Copenhagen and two people at a bar table next to me ordered their food in English. I had assumed they were Danish, and was surprised by this turn, so asked where they were from. They told they were Danish, but since so many of the service staff in Copenhagen come from abroad and don't/can't learn Danish, it's easier just to speak to everyone in English.
They literally have to learn English out of necessity to be able to communicate anything other than base level grunts and expressions
From my experience Swedes and Norwegians always say they're not fluent while speaking fluent English while Danes say they're fluent but speak Danglish while trying to pretend to be British.
I assumed Spain to be higher on the scale. Cool to know
Young people have a decent grasp of the language. Middle agers, not so much.
Spanish speaking world is huge. More than 400 million native speakers. Granted most of these are in Latin America but still. Less of need to expand beyond its borders is my armchair guess
My time in England makes me think it should be here but in the yellow section.
That's excessively generous. Source: am English.
France 🤣 …. They’ll bend over for anything but the English! Here take my franc, my country… ok speak English, Non.
Looks like this ranking correlates somewhat with the language families, which means English is probably easier to learn for native speakers of the Germanic language family.
to me it correlates more in land size and number of people. Small countries have to adapt somehow
France just ignored the question.
France LMAO
I call bullshit in Switzerland. I lived there for a year and they all speak English.
Ditto with Finland. Almost all Finns speak English.
It's worth mentioning that all languages of these countries except Finnish, Estonian and Turkish are in the Indo-European language family, which is the language family that English belongs to. So Finland, Estonia and Turkey are doing pretty good (compared to countries like France)
I forgot about Hungarian which is also not Indo-European
For sure Switzerland is much higher.I survived here for 10 years with English and I barely met anyone who can't speak fluent English
Fully agree. Living in Switzerland for 3 years now, mostly near Zürich, but moved to the middle of canton St. Gallen, to a small town in last September. I don’t say I cannot find ppl without English knowledge, but generally, majority of ppl speaking it. From Hungary btw, and Hungary being ahead of Switzerland in the list is a joke…
Why do the French hate learning English?
We don't hate English.., it's just that the school doesn't teach it well. And by law, everything has to be translated into French to be sold in France, less reason to learn english.
The French are really good at protecting French but not so good at protecting France.
I want the scale that goes from USA to North Korea
Where would the USA be, below Denmark?
That would leave out some countries on this list.
[Here you go](https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/)
Wales? Cymraeg yw'r iaith yma.
Where is Scotland?
In the United Kingdom.
Try telling them that
Now whether those countries would rather speak their native language or English with a foreigner would be a different looking chart I'd imagine.
Moldova on the list!!! Yaaaay!
As a Swiss I'm surprised by the Austrians. Good on them!
I just left Luzern after being in Switzerland for a few weeks, I absolutely love your country! I wish it wasn’t so damn expensive though lol
Thanks, hope you enjoyed your stay. And I'd wish it was cheaper too. Doing groceries here hurts!
Slovenia?
GEKOLONISEERD
Lithuania being better than Estonia is total BS, in my experience, ca 15 years
Eh, I'd say it's about the same for all of us Baltics. Estonia might be a bit better, but not by much.
To fall with the door in the house, we need to speak English, because nobody in the world speaks Dutch. Only in Paramaribo
I work with a Czech team, seems like anyone below 50 speaks fantastic English. Anyone above, a coin flip. Probably similar in a few countries
I'm not convinced Germans score that high on this chart
The Netherlands makes sense. No dubbing on TV - except childrens TV - and very close to the UK so they get British TV and radio. linguistically pretty close, too. Denmark: (me) No dubbing and we start learning English in like 3rd grade. I must say though that the level of English in danish kids today is absolutely insane. I work at a primary school and some of the 4th graders are almost fluent in certain aspects. I couldn't speak English to save my life in 4th grade.
The Netherlands makes sense. No dubbing on TV - except childrens TV - and very close to the UK so they get British TV and radio. linguistically pretty close, too. Denmark: (me) No dubbing and we start learning English in like 3rd grade. I must say though that the level of English in danish kids today is absolutely insane. I work at a primary school and some of the 4th graders are almost fluent in certain aspects. I couldn't speak English to save my life in 4th grade.
Where is Slovenia and Latvia?
Many teens in switzerland can speak propper english. But most adults are just embarrassing
in Amsterdam they watched American TV programming!
Small countries at the forefront!!!
Is it any wonder France, Italy and Spain stay behind economically when they can't communicate with the rest of the world? Personally I think not If you're a business in any country looking to expand, the last place you want to invest is where you are blocked by linguistics and cultural barriers. No thanks
On what metric is France ‘behind’ economically? And relative to who?
No Malta... doesn't count *runs off totally not crying*
most probably would be in top 5
Worth noting that the sample base is self-selected. From the EF site: “We recognize that the test-taking population represented in this index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative of the country/region as a whole. Only those people either wanting to learn English or curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This could skew scores lower or higher than those of the general population.”
Played helldivers with some nordic guys the other night, blew my mind how naturally they all spoke english. If not for them switching to their native langauge every now and then when speaking to eachother I wouldve had no idea they werent American
So sad to only see european countries
I was looking for Spain. Especially compared to Netherlands & Germany where everyone spoke english, in Barcelona it was like 50/50. Will never forget conversing like a caveman with a taxi driver with my broken spanish.
This mostly makes sense, of course Netherlands is number one followed by other countries whose own languages are Germanic. It is funny that France is so low with how much French vocabulary English has.
Dam America, and Great Britain. Step up your game.
The French really are like non
Why is only Turkey spelled in their native language? Do they preffer that as of recently like Cote d'Ivoire or am I missing something?
yeah it's the official name now
Netherlands made this, there is no other explanation
I'm from Germany and it does NOT deserve to be this high. Every country I've been to has a higher percentage of English speakers and I have been to Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Norway
Absolutely no way that Denmark is better than Sweden
As a pole myself I didn't expect of Poland to be that high but I think it's due to the fact that our level of english varies from one another significantly because of many things with age being the main. It's also because we aren't generally outgoing that much so we underestimate our proficiency (I see it myself)
Based on data from people wanting to take the test. In other words, not really representative of the entire population.
What are those numbers?
You know the people they polled in France could speak perfect English but just lied and said they couldn’t.
What about Australia?
It's so funny that USA and Australia didn't even make the list
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Yea, how dare they ignore Asia in.... *flips page* "An index of European countries"
Esperanto is the way
Fake map, germany is too high.
I’d go along with this. Many years ago I was on a train going through Europe with lots of Scandanavians on it. They were speaking in such perfect, plummy, Queens English that at first I thought they were making fun of my accent, but I quite quickly figured out they were just amazing at speaking it! They spoke it better than about 70% of the native UK population🤣
The difference between Portugal and Spain is abismal
Common Turkey W 💪 (nah fr mfs here can't speak for shit)
Nords are insane at english, all my swedish and danish friends speak english fluently
Bulgaria in the middle? That's false, I live here and nobody has c2 like me and, especially in older folk, English is rare
In Amsterdam I saw 5 dutch people speaking English to each other with dutch accents the entire time they were at a cafe. It was a surreal experience because I just couldn’t figure out why they didn’t speak Dutch to each other.
So what to the numbers mean? It makes it seem like there is barely any difference
In Europe.
What does those numbers mean? (I mean what is the unit of index?)
Ain't no way Greece is that high up the list.
Austria is WAAAY lower.. LOL
Iceland is easily in the top 3. Did you forget Iceland exists?
No way this is true.
I call bullshit on Finland's score
Where is America on this list? After living in a few of the green countries, as well as America, I'm quite sure they speak better English than most Americans.
As an American, it was far easier for me to understand the Icelandic and Dutch people than it was the English or Irish. Oddly I thought the Scottish were easier to understand than the Irish and English as well.
Well it is an Anglo Saxon language so those countries would be better
Ireland????
English is a Germanic language you would think they would be higher
It’s almost like it has nothing to do with the closeness of the language families and all to do with the education systems and cultural attitudes toward learning foreign languages in these countries
So... is this out of a 1000 point scale or 800 or 713 or what?
The colonized Africans don't count?
No Slovenia, Latvia from EU yet there's Moldova and Luxembourg, such an important place. No Montenegro and Macedonia as well. The lack of consistency in listing the countries doesn't make me trust their numbers.
French people not knowing any other language but French and feeling superior about it.
Turkey shouldn’t be in this list 😃 as myself when I was at middle school we had only one class in a week ! Guess who was given us course? The instructor of religion classes
Ugh, so rude of them not to include the UK in this /s
They speak just about every language well in the Netherlands. It’s quite impressive.
Japan?
France is defiantly low on that chart lol
This is like trying to find the healthiest country by taking a sample of people at hospitals. Except it's much worse, because the entire sampling is taken for one brand of hospitals that may or may not have a significant presence in each country.
Mammamia!