I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    16·
    1 year ago

    Also Germany.
    I learned english in school but only enough to be able to read it.
    Once I started reading user submitted short stories (lile fan fics but different) my grammar really improved.
    Nowadays the content I consume is basically 90% english based.

    Just my capitalization and grammar structure sucks. Also my vocal skills as I have no one to talk to.

    But: I really have to thank my last Grundschul and Realschul english teachers. Without those two I may have never got into english that well.

    • miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      For me it was mainly watching films and tv shows in english. I’ve always preferred the original audio on anything, really. So it motivated me a good bit to become more fluent.
      The only german dub I didn’t hate was Breaking Bads’, and even then I wasn’t overly fond of it.

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        1 year ago

        Can’t get over english cartoons dubs.
        Ben10, Avatar ATLA and spongebob sound so much worse in english compared to german to my ears. Could not enjoy it.
        Live action movies are usually equal or only slightly worse regarding original vs dubbed german.

    • SoGrumpy@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Without those two I may have never gotten into english that well.

      FTFY. Not a dig, just correcting your already very good English.