Why are people so bad at English in Germany?

[Hosken Powell]

Originally Posted by Mahhammer

Then what do Anglos get? Cultural appropriation happens ever day to this minute, it's getting more and more intense by the second. Nothing will be left eventually to be called English, when some internet user from Brazil spouts how English is good since their own language is so sophisticated and shouldn't be touched by outsiders, it only reminds me of what is happening because non-native will outnumber native and we will speak like them. I would prefer English stop existing than to see it turn into something so mushy and empty. It's only a few centuries before it turns into something as shorn as standard Indonesian. Esperanto (though it is designed with a eurocentric bias to what a language looks like) would be good but it is european. Everybody remember that Asian and African Black people combined outnumber westerners 2-3 to 1, so that fraction will still be pushing european culture down the throats of the rest of the world using esperanto. There are two asians for every white person, so why has Russian and French come to be some ideal yet Cambodian is not? I've seen Cambodian and Vietnamese formal prose, they try to copy French grammatical constructions in a bizarre ways by compounding words since their own languages have no morphology at all. Cultural genocide by the west!

Don't worry, soon the world will communicate exclusively with "likes," emojis and reaction videos. Already users of social chat software in the 2/3rd world are a decade ahead of western europeans in this regard. The Japanese invented emojis and asian chat software has about 1000x the options for 'sticker' based communication. Anglos will no longer have to bemoan the cultural appropriation of their mother tongue.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Hosken Powell brings up an interesting topic. In the future, how much online communication will based on emojis and other non-alphabetic symbols?

[Threestep2]

Originally Posted by Brooklynnomad

i agree with you. i was just in berlin. people in customer service positions could speak the basics of english. but it was difficult (sometimes painful) to have normal conversations with people in english.

Have you tried to talk to customer service in Brooklyn in German or English?

[Helsingborgaren]

Just came back from Prague, and even in non-touristy areas far from the old town, people could speak English (some moderate, and some very good). Most menus at restaurants were in Czech and English, and their service could speak fluent English and were not reluctant or unhappy to do so, nor was locals when asking for directons etc. So East Germany having been part of the Warsaw Pact is no excuse cause so was Czechoslovakia, and Prague is just south of eastern Germany, not far from Dresden.

[J.Thomas]

Originally Posted by MagnusPetersson

Just came back from Prague, and even in non-touristy areas far from the old town, people could speak English (some moderate, and some very good). Most menus at restaurants were in Czech and English, and their service could speak fluent English and were not reluctant or unhappy to do so, nor was locals when asking for directons etc. So East Germany having been part of the Warsaw Pact is no excuse cause so was Czechoslovakia, and Prague is just south of eastern Germany, not far from Dresden.

And Czech girls are awesome!!

[WestCobb]

Originally Posted by lukas1973

I am German and my English is not so good But overall I think that English language skills in Germany are quite reasonable. Of course not as good as in Scandinavia or the Netherlands. But in my opinion better than in France or Italy.
Your claim, that its very rare to find someone who can speak any English, is in my opinion entirely absurd. Sounds more like a stupid lie. That people in Poland are better in speaking English isn't that surprising. You don't have to be super smart to understand why they are better in speaking English.

When I travel around I normally try to learn at least a few useful phrases in the local language. Especially for someone from Sweden it shouldn't be a problem to learn a little bit German.


I am not a huge fan of rankings, but this ranking about English language skills seems not totally wrong in my experience:

EF EPI - Ranking der Englischkenntnisse nach Ländern

1. Sweden
2. Netherlands
3. Denmark
4. Norway
5. Finland
6. Slovenia
7. Estland
8. Luxemburg
9. Poland
10. Austria
11. Germany
...
17. Belgium
...
19. Switzerland
...
23. Spain
...
28. Italy
...
37. France

I'm a native English speaker, and I would agree with this list. When I travel in Europe, I find that more people in the capitals of course speak English. And in most countries, younger people speak better English than older people.

The Swedish must have very good English skills because the only place I have been there was in the far, far north -- a very remote location. Still, everyone there spoke English. A very old woman spoke to me in Swedish, and I said I was sorry I only speak English. She asked where I was from, and we carried on a decent conversation. After about five minutes, she said, "Well, I'm not one for speaking English to people. Good bye." lol... it was very funny to me. There are few other countries I would expect an old woman living in a country town to speak any English whatsoever.

The only Slovene I met spoke perfect English. It was uncanny how good his English was. And oddly, he had an American accent (I'm American, so that was doubly weird to me... I don't hear American accents much in Europe .. only from US tourists.)

I can also vouch for the Polish. I was surprised by how good the English skills are of people who live far outside of Warsaw. The Belgians go either way. In Flanders, their English is on par with the Dutch. In Walloonia, they are more comparable to the French.. decent, but not great.