>In say Poland if you speak good English it means you learned it on private lessons or on your own.

Or, in the case of a Polish programmer friend of mine, from Leisure Suit Larry games.

> In say Poland if you speak good English it means you learned it on private lessons or on your own.

Really? I looked them up, and it says Polish students typically learn one or two foreign languages, and 67.9% do English. Unsurprisingly, German came next at 33.3%, and the rest on the list summed to another 33%, which also implies how many do two.

Of course, "good" is subjective; I did French at school (in the UK) from 11-16, got a GCSE grade D, and had to be corrected IRL by a native speaker after saying "Je ne parle français"…

>Really? I looked them up, and it says Polish students typically learn one or two foreign languages, and 67.9% do English. Unsurprisingly, German came next at 33.3%, and the rest on the list summed to another 33%, which also implies how many do two.

"Learn"

If actually this many people manage to learn deutsch language, then why only tiny tiny tiny % of people take it on final exams after high school?

5000 people taking it vs 180 000 taking english on "advanced" exams (which are optional, just for scores)

Speculating on what OP meant, but it might be generational, in Germany often older people won't speak English that well. Younger people will generally have done a lot more English in school, however, and tend to be better. This is generalizing a fair bit, though.

Mmm.

From what I've been told, the older generation around these parts (east Berlin) would've been forced to learn Russian at school as their second language, and then been completely unable to practice it with anyone as all of the native speakers were soldiers from the USSR who would've been banned from fraternising with the locals.