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Even earlier, according to Wikipedia English was introduced as a compulsory foreign language for all German pupils in 1955.
I was reading a National Geographic article on West Germany from 1959 the other day, and the writer of the article went to great lengths describing how everybody he met seemed to speak English, and wanted to speak to him in English, even though he wanted to speak to them in German to brush up on his German skills. Whenever he would try to talk to somebody in German they could detect his English/American accent and would reply to him in English. He had to go to a small hamlet somewhere just to find people who didn't speak English, and even then there were some people who knew at least some English.
I went to Paris a decade ago and remember that it was one of the most difficult places to be because absolutely no one knew English. I recently just came back and the difference is staggering. The majority of service workers in Paris know English and I found that to be true all over Europe as well. Even in places as far off as Ukraine, all the restaurants had menus in English and at least one staff member spoke it.
Did Europe learn English because of America's culture exports or was it because of England's presence on the continent?
You will even see Chinese characters at tourist sites around Europe... they are trying to appeal to tourist.
Speaking of English, I had to laugh at a thread title that contained "suddenly all of a sudden." Redundancy Department of Redundancy checking in.
Anyway, I agree with those who say it's a big urban/rural split. When I was in Europe for four months, mainly in Gipuzkoa in Basque Country, I had a fairly easy time speaking English in Paris, and English and Spanish both in Lisbon. I am less familiar with the English fluency levels of the larger Spanish cities because I spoke Spanish there, but it seemed my parents could get by in Barcelona fine. In Gipuzkoa, however, almost no one speaks English. You have to know some level of Spanish to do most things. It was similar when I went to rural Calabria as a teenager. My Italian-speaking aunt had to do all the talking for us.
So why did Europe suddenly learn English all of a sudden?
suddenly, all of a sudden?
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