The Germans are dubbing and they usually speak English quite well. My experience with Italian as well as French don’t like to learn or speak English.
Germany is a bit more complex, because historically speaking, there has been cultural separation.
In my experience:
- middle aged people speak an ok english
- elderly speak a poor or no english
- young people speak a very good one
Finally, it's correct, as mentioned in a sibling post, that German has (some) roots in the English language.
Regarding Italians I've hardly met people who actively refuse (in the sense of "dislike") the language per se, but I can't exclude the option you've mentioned of "cultural laziness".
There's a cliche of the French culture being proud of their language, so I can imagine a sort of active refusal in this case.
Re:Italian Ruby
by dragonwriter on Monday August 31, 2020 @10:16AM
(#24331665)
> that German has (some) roots in the English language.
More accurately, English, like German, is a Germanic language. German doesn't have roots in English.
Also don't forget the east/west split. And while it's been 30 years (oh wow) some Germans who are now as young as 45 had Russian in school and not English.
I think that's also slowly changing as 10-15 years ago everyone was watching dubbed german TV shows on TV while now kids are just on social media with a lot more international content and influencers.
German language is much more similar to English language than Italian language
You make good points, especially this one: “without significant immersion, it's hard to improve or retain a language meaningfully.”
It also does not help that YMMV depending on what region or city you’re living in.
A large part of the english language problem in the southern Europe (it's not just an italian problem) is cultural.
The english language is considerably more embedded in the culture of the northern European countries; for example, there's considerably less dubbing.
If Italy stopped dubbing (which will never happen, because it's a tradition), italians would speak a considerably better English, just because of familiarity.
I'm not sure if there is a realistic improvement that could be applied. I'm not so critical of the italian schools; without significant immersion, it's hard to improve or retain a language meaningfully.
I suspect that a considerable factor of the problem is that Italy is not a significantly cosmopolitan country (intended as amount of "traffic" of international people), so that there is very little exercise (or "immersion", using my previous term).