It’s hard to believe Germany is so high on the list. I visit regularly and even worked there for a while, where are all the fluent English speakers hiding?
I’m also confused. Maybe they just don’t want to talk, that’s the best explanation I have.
Same with Austria. As a Dane living in Austria, it feels like nobody here has even half-decent English skills. It’s horrible, and I blame generations of dubbed TV and movies.
Was curious how Belgium would score by language region.
Seems the Flemish part scores higher than The Netherlands while Wallonia drags everything down.
French speakers being French speakers. Case in point: France scores lower than fucking Russia
This explains why French people are always speaking French in game chat in Rocket League as if French is the Lingua Franca lmfao so silly.
Every time they utilize the chat it’s also to be unprovokedly toxic which is another mystery. Maybe they’re just that unhappy? Something bad in the water?
Lingua Franca
I wheezed
Fairly unsurprising. English is literally harder if your native language is a romance language than if it is a germanic language. Same is true for germanic native speakers who try to learn a romance language.
Except Flemish people tend to speak good French while people from Wallonia barely speak Dutch. I agree with your statement in general, but in the case of Belgium there’s a lot more to it than that.
Where is Slovenia???
Missed the chance to reverse the color scale and have orange for the Netherlands.
What is the point of depicting data in this manner? The spatial coordinates have no meaning
The countries are ordered on the bend line according to their rank, so the 1-dimensional spatial coordinate system describing this line does have meaning.
This somwhat unusual representation has the advantage that they managed to represent all datapoints with a well readable font on a graphic that fits well even on a phone’s screen, and it’s sort of eye-catching.
It’s pretty unintuitive, though. I had to actually read and analyse it rather than just view it.
Seems made for mobile.
Just for fun I wonder where England and the USA would be on this list…
I am fully expecting England to not be at the top. Especially if written skills are measured.
I find that broken English is easier to understand, compared to the time I talked to a Londoner in the bus, I could understand him but my travel buddy had no idea.
Accents can be rough on tourists.
At work I had to speak my english slow and deliberate with french people when in international meetings, or they would not understand.
The interesting part is that when doing so I picked up the “french accent” in my own English 😅.
It’s known that two non-native English speakers can understand each other more easily than a non-native speaker and a native speaker. The non-native speakers are better at deciphering incorrect use of the language than the native speaker who has stricter expectations.
I wonder what the numbers look like between English first language ‘with no second language experience’ versus ‘some or fluent post-childhood learning second language experience’. Because there are a lot of English only speakers.
I’ve been told im awful to practice English with because i just understand. But i have teen/adult learning experience with two other languages.
I fully expected England to be in the lowest color and am disappointed that they aren’t on the list at all.
England: 1st place
USA: 7th place
The only people who are likely to take such a test in an anglophone country are immigrants …
Would be interesting to see how native speakers score, though.
Thanks. I was seriously wondering about Italy and Turkey, but that explains it.
If they don’t immigrate (i.e. aren’t in anglophone countries), they might still take the test for domestic purposes like proving their ability to deal with tourists or other international customers to their employers. But the test takers are definitely self-selecting, some rural greatgrandmother who barely learnt to read her native language isn’t taking that test.
If you immigrate as an English speaker to Canada you have to take an English proficiency test even if it is your first language.
I’m guessing you could take French as well, regardless of where you’re going, right? Language equality is serious business.
Yes, unnecessary documentation is very our style. And no guarantee you won’t have to do it again for some other entity. Somehow we’re still one of the easiest destinations to immigrate to.
I’m an immigrant in Germany, and they offered me an integration course when I got my spousal visa. I’ve taught those classes for the same city. They did waive my language requirement because of my master’s degree in German though, so that was nice and unexpected.
They did waive my language requirement because of my master’s degree in German
Yes, we believe in degrees.
On behalf of Germans, sorry for that. It’s hard to go against the rightwing propaganda machine, but lots of people are trying.
Come to !ich_iel@feddit.org if you want to learn some new idioms Ü
Yes, I think you just have to show proficiency in one of the official languages.
I can’t comment for the whole Anglosphere and I certainly won’t comment on NI, Wales, and Scotland, but for England:
Pick any point on the map and move in any direction. As you move, if the average wage increases, English proficiency increases and vice versa.
I’d say at the lowest level equivalent is France and the highest level equivalent is Denmark.
I have a hard time believing that there are regions in England where native English speakers are on the English proficiency level of France. Unless you classify any dialect as “bad English”.
You haven’t been to enough regions of England mate. I’m only slightly joking when I say it can get bad. Not “it’s a difficult to understand dialect” but “how the hell did you even make it through the state school system?” bad. Genuinely some of the first generation immigrants speak better English than some of the locals.
Source: grew up in one of these regions.
I mean, the King’s English is technically a dialect too. It’s just the one on top.
Yes, that’s what a dialect is. Well, thanks for clearing up what you meant.
Also, I’d assume even the heaviest dialect speaker will usually be able to write perfectly understandable sentences in a written test.
What’s the source for this, what does these numbers mean and how do they got these numbers, just curious
The EF EPI 2024 edition was calculated using test data from 2.1 million test takers in 2023. The test takers were self-selected.
Self-selected. Meh …
In western coastal Turkey when I visited, there were English speakers everywhere. I’m sure as you head east that peters out
Back in the 2010s, Egypt’s tourist cities became a popular destination for Russians, and in just a few years all the hotel staff and street vendors switched from speaking English to everyone speaking Russian. It was very impressive as to what the promise of money can do.
