Top 10 European Countries by English Proficiency

Maltaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

Austria was the only one I missed, I thought another hub of international cooperation like Switzerland, would be the one I was missing.

Norwaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Irelaaaaaand! and the UuuuuKkkkkkkk! (Yeah I missed those 2 but got every thing else.)

Not Iceland? Who else speaks Icelandic??

Sorry, could you repeat that?

If you are surrounded by countries that speak different languages, you tend to have the language taught to you in school. The ad-

vantage (or, in reality, the disadvantage) of being born in the United States is that we are surrounded by "countries" (read states) that

speak English. Even so, some states are advanced enough to require the teaching of foreign languages in their High School and Colleges/Universities.

I think there's also a significant difference between countries whose dominant languages aren't usually dubbed over English-language tv and movies. Dubbing does nothing to teach language; subtitling does lots.

Apocryphal, but "discovery, or national geographic, and when we still received it, animal planet" is "where the us comes into that".

It really isn't the cultural impact of the US that brought English proficiency to its current levels in Northwestern Europe, because that phenomenon predates even the US' existence as a country. Back in the 18th century, Dutch and Danish colonies in the Caribbean already used English as their lingua franca for convenience's sake, and they could count on Dutch and Danish officers and government officials to speak English. Of course the sheer number of people speaking English in the Netherlands, Denmark and other countries has gone up since, but that has more to do with the rise of universal education in the 19th and early 20th centuries than with the rise of the US as a cultural influence. In fact, in most European countries, the variety of English that is taught in schools is very clearly British English, not American English.

to whom everyone else is a recent immigrant...

If there are any Welsh people who can't speak English, the numbers must be in the double figures at most. I was born in Wales and spent the first 21 years of my life there, but have never met anybody who can only speak Welsh.

I met one Welsh person who couldn't speak English, and that was in 1995 and she was very old at that point. She was a rarity even then. I seriously doubt there is more than a handful of monoglot Welsh speakers these days, if any at all.

There are quite a few in North Wales especially who can 'speak' English but really struggle with it.

for some quirky reason of my own I missed united kingdom?

they only like to speak french

Being French myself, I’m not surprised at all.

^ Exactly! I'm sure that English is offered as a second or third language in all European countries (I know that I had a choice of English, German, French and Spanish). Just about all educated Europeans have at least a working knowledge of English.

French might know English but would never admit it.

only 98% in Great Britain ???

NATIVE American? - Do you mean Navajo, Cherokee, Cree, Mohican or some other?

Those pesky Angles and Saxons and Nor(se)mans really cut into the people who are fluent in native languages of Britain too.

Same here. Doh...must read the question!

I am now a US citizen but originally from Belgium. We studied 4 languages in school and I studied Italian later on. Love it.

Would really love to see the figures for the microstates: Monaco, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and the Vatican (all 600 priests that live there or whatever). Kinda surprised none of them made the list.

Depends on where you go in the countries you visit. In the major cities the inhabitants speak English (even in France where they pretend not to, perhaps because they take such pleasure in making fun of Americans' attempt to speak French, that they fear the same treatment from Americans when they attempt English) but in rural areas most of the inhabitants speak some form of their native language.

Just because it is many in the nordic countries who sprak english do not sprak goot english. Meant speeak good. The quality is bad, but good enouff to communicaite with oters

In rea life, speaking from experience as a central european residence, I can confirm that in Switzerland you are way more likely to find English speakers than in both Germany and Austria.

Not sure where this data is coming from.

I forgot Denmark out of all countries!!!

Love this quiz, nonetheless. I know where to go now when I visit Europe xD

I visit Germany often and have never found one single person who could not speak decent English. However in France and Spain you can find yourself struggling sometimes.