Patrick Kim
Why don't Germans speak English well like the Ducth or Scandinavians?

I am learning English. Suddenly I was curious about people who speak English well. I found that English proficiency scores were high in Netherland, Sweden and Denmark.

Some people explained that English and their languages are Germanic language. However, German scored lower than those other countries. Why ????


1. German language is more different with English than other language is?

Or

2.The Dutch and Scandinavians have better English education system?


2017年7月25日 17:10
留言 · 27
10
People who speak small languages, those that are not spoken by too many people worldwide, tend to be better at foreign languages in general. Germany is a big country and in addition to many German native speakers, many non native speakers are learning German. So Germans may be able to manage with German only quite well and may not need to learn other languages. At least that's my theory. Anyway, from my experience, German speakers are not bad at English at all.
2017年7月25日
6

Why are there some haters?

I like German. Other countries too. It is not that matters. I just wondered that the reasons why some contries speak English better than others. Why? We, Koreans, are very enthusiastic to learn English, however, we speak English far worse than Germans even though we have English classes from elementary school and spend lots of money for English education.

2017年7月25日
6
While German, Dutch and English are all West Germanic languages, there is a subdivision between High German from the southern highlands (such as official German, Bavarian, etc) and Low German (from the northern lowlands) such as English, Dutch, Frisian, etc. English is genetically closer to Dutch than to High German. 

As far as Scandinavian, that is North Germanic, so in theory, it’s farther from English. In reality, English has been subject to a lot of North Germanic influence — due to proximity and the Vikings’ penchant for raiding via sea routes. That being said, I think the main reason the Scandinavians are so good at English is that their own languages have fewer speakers (native and non-native) than German does. If they want to talk to people outside of Scandinavia, or access research and such, it’s useful to learn English. 

For that matter, if a Dane wants to speak to a Swede, they usually do so in English, because their own languages aren’t generally felt to provide enough mutual intelligibility. Under different political circumstances / transportation conditions, they might all learn “standard Scandinavian,” but that’s nowhere near a reality in actual fact. High German (Hochdeutsch), on the other hand, is indeed standardized, and Germany’s relatively large population and international economic weight make it a useful language both at home and abroad.
2017年7月25日
5

The Scandinavian languages are only spoken by few people and non of us have been looking at our language as a ”important" language when getting in contact with persons from other countries.  Spanish, French, Germans, English and Americans people are more used to that people from other countries could speak their languages. 

I think one of the many  other reasons could be that here in Denmark we never dubbed the movies. We use subtitles.

Phil: a lot of us scandinavians do talk to other Scandinavians in our languages...but many times we changes some of the words:-) 

2017年7月25日
3

To put things into perspective, I want to point out that while our English is worse than that of the Scandis and the Dutch, it is not horrible at all. I mean under measurable aspects, the accent being a matter of taste.

The EF EPI study currently ranks us #9 of all the nations of non-native English speakers.

2017年7月26日
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Patrick Kim
語言能力
英語, 韓語
學習語言
英語
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