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Old 02-02-2011, 02:21 AM
 
Location: Tower of Heaven
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ETS Research: Policy Research Reports

Scandinavians and German are impressive in English !
In France we"re bad in comparison

Japanese confirmed : they're REALLY bad in English.
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Old 02-02-2011, 04:49 AM
 
Location: Oxford, England
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I am always incredibly impressed with Scandinavian people and the Dutch. Often I meet people who are undetectable as non Native English speakers.

I think a lot of it has to do with proper decent language education at school , English and American channels being easily available on TV and a certain natural aptitude, perhapbs because of course English is related linguistically speaking making it easier.
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Old 02-02-2011, 04:51 AM
 
Location: Chicago
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I always figured the best place to learn English would be England. I hear they start speaking English there before they're even 2 years old.
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Old 02-02-2011, 04:56 AM
 
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I think the US midwest. Most people speak no other language so it's total immersion. The accent is universaly understandable. It is probably "standard" English today.
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Old 02-02-2011, 07:30 AM
 
Location: New York
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bideshi View Post
I think the US midwest. Most people speak no other language so it's total immersion. The accent is universaly understandable. It is probably "standard" English today.
surely standard English is still BBC English ??
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Old 02-02-2011, 07:41 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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It depends on whether you want to get a lot of practice at vernacular street-English, or whether you want to have a strong grasp of proper literary English.

England would be a terrible place to learn English, as the accents are still very highly regional, and if you learned English in Glasgow, your conversations would need to be subtitled. Furthermore, only about 5% of the English-speaking world lives in England, so that is hardly representative any more of the way English is spoken in the world.

Canada would probably be the place with the most neutral accent and the most educated speakers using English fairly correctly in everyday use. I would not recommend learning English in Jamaica.

I once met a Japanese boy sitting in the parque in Antigua, Guatemala, where people from all over the world go to learn Spanish. I asked if he was there to study Spanish, he said "No, Engrish". The people studying Spanish, when not in classes, socialize with each other around town in English, and my Japanese friend just sat in the cafes and practiced English with them.
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Old 02-02-2011, 09:10 AM
 
Location: Scotland
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yeah its amazing how many dutch people who can speak good english
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Old 02-02-2011, 09:13 PM
 
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,606 posts, read 55,756,157 times
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It depends if you want to spend more time in North America or the Commonwealth countries. From personal experience a standard (not too strong) Australian accent is fairly easy to understand (according to a Danish girl my Aussie accent was easier for her to understand than the British accents of our fellow travellers ).

I find most English learners only adopt regional dialects to a degree: most still mostly speak in the inflection of their native tongue. So if a French person speaks English you can generally tell they are French. I've yet to meet a non-native who could pass for a native of say the US or the UK unless they had lived in said country for a long time.
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Old 02-02-2011, 09:18 PM
 
Location: Staten Island, NY
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I have always been impressed with the Dutch facility with English.
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Old 02-02-2011, 10:39 PM
 
5,882 posts, read 5,806,090 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by paull805 View Post
yeah its amazing how many dutch people who can speak good english
Yes but then The Netherlands is a rather small nation speaking a language that almost no one outside their country can speak.
Being so small requires the country to be outward focused so folk would not go far without English and indeed a lot also speak excellent German and a smaller number French.
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