multilingual Europeans

No, we are the black sheep of Europe in that respect, notoriously poor at languages. There are several reasons

1) English is widely used in Europe, and is usually the 'default' language when native speakers of two different languages need to communicate in business for example, so there is less pressure on us to learn other languages

2) In the UK it is not uncommon for people to only receive 2 or 3 years basic instruction in another language at school and then never use it again. You don't start learning another language until you are 11 and you don't have to continue past the age of 13/14. I had two year's instruction in French and 1 year's instruction in German and never really got beyond a few basic phrases. I've never been to either France or Germany so have not had to use the little I learned.

3) We don't share any land borders with other countries so there is no 'blending' of languages across an area. A language never stops dead at a country's border; people living near to a border will normally be fluent in both languages. Some Europeans live in areas where up to three languages are in daily use.

Kooyeen wrote:

why is it easier to learn English for Europeans than for, say, Asians? Because all of our languages often have several things in common: words, structures, expressions... Look at these Italian words: lingua = language Inglese = English Europa = Europe generalmente, seriamente, immediatamente, continuamente = generally, seriously, immediately, continuously

Koto

Why are European people so fluent in English?
People say it's becasue their languages are all derived from the same root as English but is this the only reason?
Was it easy to master English for you?

Hi Koto

I realise you may never read this but I'll post it just the same. Not all European languages are related. My native language, Finnish, isn't even an Indo-European language. It is related to Estonian and Hungarian but not to such Germanic languages as English, German, Danish, Swedish, Dutch and so on.

One reason many Finns  have at least a working knowledge of English probably results from teachers of foreign languages having a very good education in the languages they teach and the teaching methods. The methods are extremely important. All language teachers are university graduates with 4 to 7 years of university studies behind them. As for English, everybody has studied it at school before entering a university, which is also an advantage. Also, the universities select the very best candidates from English-speaking countries to do the teaching. The professors are Finnish, though, and there are some Finnish lecturers as well.

I am mentioning this because I have noticed on my travels that quite a few people who tell me they are teachers of English have a rather fragmentary command of the language themselves. If a teacher doesn't know the language, he can't teach it. In many cases the student isn't at fault at all. There are amazingly incompetent teachers of languages in many countries. Some of the posters who claim to be teachers of English on these forums wouldn't pass the qualifying exams for would-be teachers at Finnish universities.

I have never mastered English. I have a fairly good knowledge of the grammar but my vocabulary could be much larger. Learning languages has always been easy for me; that is, learning the languages I have attempted to learn. I am not so sure how quickly I would learn Japanese or Thai, for instance. English spelling causes me the most problems. And of course any words and idioms I am not familiar with.

Cheers

CB