Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Oh and Goodhombre Europeans tend NOT to be 'secretly envious' of Americans (why would they be?) but neither (despite what 'some' Americans on here think) do Europeans feel superior too or 'dislike' Americans, in fact I've found Europeans tend to 'look down their noses' at the British more than they do Americans, for the record every American I've known and worked with I've found to be incredibly polite and pleasant people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodHombre
They probably don't know Europeans are secretly envious of Americans.
Envious of Americans? ...lol. Where you get your info from?
Read the post above.
BTW:
As many as 65% of European citizens between the ages of 25 and 64 speak at least one foreign language. The highest language proficiency in Sweden (97% of citizens speak at least one foreign language), Latvia, Denmark and Lithuania (96%), Luxembourg (95%), Finland and Malta (92% ) and Estonia (91%).
Overall, a median of 92% of European students are learning a language in school.
Almost 3/5 of pupils in the EU learnt two or more foreign languages in upper secondary education in 2016.
Can you say the same about Americans? https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/26/...ronews-answers https://infogram.com/1prlpr90n99kynu...vzz0efm36mrvrx
Most European students are learning a foreign language in school while Americans lag.
Elina is right. I'd also add that studying a foreign language is not the same as being willing and able to even speak it, everywhere, and most of all in the US.
I would say that things are becoming a lot more multilingual though. Think about the erasmus program and what has changed with it. A generation ago most people had basic english conversational knowledge, and outside of people who would be passionate about a different language / country of actual migrants, it was a lot more of a theory.
Now millions of young europeans have travelled to study in most countries, and have learnt or used a foreign language to do so. Here in Bologna there are students from France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, the UK, and other countries studying. Same thing in most european cities with large universities. This program has been around since the 90s I guess, so I would say that generation younger than 40 is now more multilingual than any other ever before on this continent.
Sure not everyone speaks 5 languages, but I use two on a daily basis and none of them is english. I also have many friends from other european countries with whom I speak Italian or sometimes in English. Most of my friends speak at least one other language and often two.
No matter what people say how immigrants over-flooding some European countries, Turks in Germany, Maghrebi in France and Indians in the UK comes nowhere nowhere near the numbers of Hispanics in the US, especially in the Southwest. Also, you don't have the "press 2 for Turk, Arabic, Urdu" thing in Europe simply because Spanish has a much deeper importance in the US.
Well sure, the numbers are lower because in America there is one continent which speaks english and the other who speaks spanish, so things are artificially helped. Do WASP people actually learn spanish to converse with said migrants or comunities ? That would be surprising. It does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist in Europe on a different scale. I hear many different languages everyday in the street (I'll add Russian or Romanian to the list) and I don't even live in a very large city. 95% of these people still speak Italian, and I bet many can speak English as well.
BTW:
As many as 65% of European citizens between the ages of 25 and 64 speak at least one foreign language. The highest language proficiency in Sweden (97% of citizens speak at least one foreign language), Latvia, Denmark and Lithuania (96%), Luxembourg (95%), Finland and Malta (92% ) and Estonia (91%).
Overall, a median of 92% of European students are learning a language in school.
Almost 3/5 of pupils in the EU learnt two or more foreign languages in upper secondary education in 2016.
Can you say the same about Americans? https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/26/...ronews-answers https://infogram.com/1prlpr90n99kynu...vzz0efm36mrvrx
Most European students are learning a foreign language in school while Americans lag.
Americans are mostly monolingual, it's just too easy to be more multilingual than Americans. Actually, the only industrialized countries that are more monolingual than the US all speak English(the UK, Australia, New Zealand).
Europeans are doing better only because they have to learn English.
If English is excluded, most big European countries are as monolingual as the U.S.
Small European countries tend to be more multilingual, but they only comprise a small percentage of the European population. The population of Spain is 46.57 million. The population of Nordic countries is 27.06 million, Netherlands 17.08 million, Luxembourg 0.6 million. If you do the math, you'll realize that the population of all multilingual European countries combined is even less than that of Spain.
Well sure, the numbers are lower because in America there is one continent which speaks english and the other who speaks spanish, so things are artificially helped. Do WASP people actually learn spanish to converse with said migrants or comunities ? That would be surprising. It does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist in Europe on a different scale. I hear many different languages everyday in the street (I'll add Russian or Romanian to the list) and I don't even live in a very large city. 95% of these people still speak Italian, and I bet many can speak English as well.
Yeah sure, but then London or Paris probably have a good number as well. NYC is not Kansas. I don't know how many we have here, but Urdu, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and a bunch of African languages are quite well represented.
Also, English is indeed very important, but for instance many Italians also speak Spanish or French, and German is pretty important in central / eastern Europe I guess. It's not only about English, although it remains the #1 foreign studied language so far. Many people do better at languages that are not English.
The practical implications of this are real, in the sense that lots of people in NYC are able to converse in different languages. But this is not the same as people going out and actually learning a second or third language.
Multilingualism in places with high immigration is almost "accidental". You immigrate to a new country, so you bring your old country's language with you and you learn your new country's language because you have no choice. So that makes you bilingual right off the bat. You may also teach your kids your ancestral language and they'll learn the new country's language on the streets and in school. So there are more bilingual people right there - "accidentally" again, though.
This is not exactly the same as Bjorn Bjornsson in Stockholm who has no ties to Spain but who takes courses and becomes fluent in Spanish.
Also the lack of enthusiasm for learning and knowing languages in a country is evidenced by how quickly the descendants of immigrants shed the old language, and become monolingual speakers of the old country's language only.
If you go to places in the U.S. which are low-immigration today but have a significant share of their population descended from immigration 100-150 years ago (like Germans, Italians or Scandinavians), most everyone is now monolingual in English. Their ancestral languages are long lost, and very very few people can speak the second language that's taught in the school system there (usually Spanish or sometimes French).
In my experience, those from the smaller countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, etc have very impressive language abilities. As a Dutchman told me on a train once, "We are a small country surrounded by big ones, so we have to learn to talk to them."
I used to think the US should mandate or encourage achieving something close to fluency in another language. Now I am not so sure. I invested many years in learning German and even studied there. At one point my German was quite good. But since then I rarely use it in any meaningful way, so it has faded. Sure, I could join a Stammtisch, watch more German movies and read more in German, but that only goes so far.
For me it is a hobby. For the aforementioned Europeans from smaller nations, it is akin to a necessity.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
