Growing up in post-communist Romania – thoughts on learning English

Re:Growing up in post-communist Romania – thoughts on learni... by klingonopera on Friday August 30, 2019 @01:55PM (#20840887)

Speaking for Germany, mostly from school. Germans are terrible at English compared to many other European countries (especially the smaller ones) as they're big enough to sustain their entertainment, Internet and business in their local language.

Despite them being forced to learn English in school, very few will try to consume American media in English, and still prefer consuming the locally dubbed versions. In my opinion, it's the easiest (and most fun) way to get better in English, without doing much at all, except for the initial year or two one would need to invest to be proficient enough to consume said media.

Source: Am a German citizen, who fortunately/unfortunately has English as a native language, spent my first 16 years in Asia, and presently another 13 years in Germany.

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Re:Growing up in post-communist Romania – thoughts on learni... by amaccuish on Friday August 30, 2019 @07:30PM (#20843657)

Hmm. I'm gonna disagree here and say that the majority of Germans I've met speak great English. I however will caveat this with the fact that I'm 22 and it may be a generational thing. I am aware that if I go out into the sticks in Germany, I will be 100% speaking German since it seems to me the more rural I go the less English is spoken.

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Re:Growing up in post-communist Romania – thoughts on learni... by klingonopera on Saturday August 31, 2019 @12:16PM (#20847203)

People in rural areas, no matter which country, will almost always be worse off in speaking a foreign language than their urban counterparts.

I agree it is a generational thing, and I believe this does have a lot to do with the Internet and the "international culture" it promotes.

Have you compared some European countries in your age category? It's true that 22-year-old Germans speak English well, but a similarly aged person from Romania, Poland, Denmark or Albania will almost certainly still be better at English than the German.

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