Speaking English in Europe

I'm not disputing their ability to speak English at all, but pop songs are how a lot of my German friends learnt English to begin with - memorising the lyrics word perfect (this was in the 1970s).

Language is an odd thing. Norwegians have to learn English (and German) as Norwegian is spoken by comparatively few people, when thinking on a global scale. French or Spanish so much less so. As for English, well I think it's partly a laziness thing, combined with an inherited assumption that others nationalities need to learn our language!

What about Portuguese? I know the Algarve has been a popular holiday destination for decades, so might this be a reason for the locals being so multi-lingual?

 

Now, my dear Aaron, I have moved your post and created a new thread which could be interesting ... and it looks like you started it ..... :wink: Forgive me ... :luv:

Your German friends were doing this before you were even thought of ... or just after you popped out of the oven ...:hehe:

English is now 'the' language in Europe. I completely disagree that the British are lazy with language .... it is difficult to 'choose' which language they would like to speak .... French, German, Spanish, Italian or heaven forbid even Portuguese ... :ntwrth: None of these are understood in the other countries.

The Europeans have one choice ... English ... because it is spoken and understood in just about all the EU countries. English is now mandatory in most European countries as I understand ... it is now in Portugal.

As for why the locals are such clever clogs here languagewise ... I can't answer that but I suspect you are correct in your thoughts as Algarve wouldn't exist without tourism (that's a thought, it could go back to being what it was, hmmmm).

I just wish I could be half as good as the locals in one other language let alone two, three or four. I can't stand the situation in England where there are communities where English is not spoken. I don't care that certain people may speak English here ... we go to great extremes to communicate in Portuguese .... it's the country we have chosen to live in so .... do in Rome, etc, etc, etc ... except in our case Portugal ....

English IS the language of Europe and the World as I now understand ... but I'm often wrong ... :flag:

Does anyone else have any views on this?

 

I believe the main reason for 'English' being the common language is because of America and very little to do with England at all.

 

I wondered what had happened - thought I was imagining things (not the first time!)

Funny, at the turn of the century (the last one!) French was the language of diplomacy...but by the eve of WW1 English was taking over in world politics. I suspect the Empire helped though:wink: The French were most displeased:hehe:

I disagree with you though about laziness, but it's reverse snobbery. We Brits don't need to learn another language - everyone speaks ours, so why bother (not my opinion BTW!)? I bet you've seen the British tourist doing the usual thing, speaking LOUDLY AND SLOWLY in English to get understood. No luv, they're not deaf or stupid, they just don't understand you!

 

Not sure I agree with you there Hec ... I'm married to an American for 41 years now and have lived in America for a total of 20 years ... they don't rule the world ... they are only now discovering it exists outside of the US boundaries.

Okay, Aaron, perhaps I have to agree with you that NOW the Brits are lazy, but years ago that was not the case, believe me. In school we had a choice of learning French or .... strangely French .... :dh: ..... I already spoke French having been brought up in French Canada and then continuing in the convent I went to when I returned to the UK.

However, in the late 50s/early 60s (sorry, you wouldn't know about this :hehe we were TOLD what subjects we had to take and I couldn't continue in languages and had to do more English literary subjects. I went along with the system and left school at two months past aged 15 with 8 O levels ... unfortunately one was not in languages and by then I had completely forgotten my French.

So, although I disagree on the one hand, which language does a Brit learn now ... think I've just answered my own question ... whatever language they want to .... :dh:

 

Hi, Hec. Yeah. I agree with you about it being America. I think it's something to do with the computer era and that they were developed there:wink:. Whatever country I visit, I learn "yes, no, please, thankyou, I'm sorry" seems to work. :wink: However most of the locals have a little chuckle at my accent and then tell me how I should pronounce it.:( Hakuna Matata (thats from Kenya), it opens up a conversation with the person you're talking to and everyone thinks your a great person although a bit daft.

Lady, nice to see you're still with us:luv:

 

At my grammar school, French was compulsory for the first three years, with German and Spanish offered in the third year for the linguistically gifted. I wasn't, so I stuck with French until I was sixteen.

Strangely, I loved Latin, but as I also loved history, it tied in nicely...and I did a bit of Ancient Greek, just to try it out (I wouldn't recommend it though!).

 

I've never far away, Caj, speak soon .... :luv:

T'other half took German and Latin in America ... neither have been of any use to him. Although my sister lives in Germany, she obviously and her husband are fluent in English ....

... and where does that leave us with Latin ?????? I can sing Christmas Songs in Latin and I sang in the Messiah ... very useful .....

 

Lady. look forward to it:luv:
In my school ( in my era) we only learnt French, Why, we hate each other.:lollol:
I always thought it was useless but my g/daughter is being tought French and thinks that her g/dad is the bees knees 'cause he can help her. I get extra cuddles. "Vive le (La) France":gnthb: However, for practical reasons, I think she should be learning Cantonese

 

As someone interested in Philology, Latin is extremely important. And of course it means I can read Virgil and Ovid in the original

English is the most hotch potch of languages I think, but also the most interesting, from a point of view of how it evolved. Perhaps that's why everyone wants to learn it?:hehe:

 

In my days (60s) French was compulsory up to 'O' level standard. I was ungraded in the exam, I could never get my head around inanimate objects being Male or Female without any sort of logical reason. Methinks if I'd done Latin it would all have been made clear (at least that's what the Pub Lawyers tell me now).

My Daughter has just married a Croation so we're being 'introduced' to that language, I'm rather hoping that if / when they have kids, they will bring them up to be multi-lingual. Son-in-Law's Mother doesn't speak a word of English, never had to.

One 'advantage' of their language is that, once you've learnt to pronounce the letters properly, it's spoken exactly as it's written. (a bit like "text-speak"" these days)

 

I went to school in the sixties, and was never taught any languages other than English.

I've not really travelled enough to foreign speaking countries to make learning any worth my while.

I think the fact English is the language of the world really goes back to the days of the British Empire, this has been carried on, in that America is fairly dominant in the world and controls many things.

But lets face it, why do they speak English (of sorts), only due to their heritage.

I seem to remember that America contains more Spanish speaking people than English speaking these days.

Also Chinese is the language spoken buy the largest amount of people in the world.

I'm probably wrong on both counts:D

 

Possibly:hehe:

I seem to recall reading/learning that English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Apart from USA and the UK, think of all the Commonwealth countries (some of them with the fastest growing populations) that speak English either as a first, or recognised official language - India, Canada, Australia, plus a whole host of African countries.

 

Doogle, I left school in the Spring of 1963 and French was certainly not mandatory in Bedfordshire at that time.

Pete, wrong and right ... :D

Wrong Aaron, Chinese is first, English second. :hehe: Then we go into the Asian languages.

Portuguese goes between 5th and 8th depending on where you look ... :yho:

French is about 10th so that's good for all of us who learnt it ... :dh:

 

Here's my understanding of how languages propagated around the world, and where English fits into it all.

The British empire was, for a while, the biggest empire in the world. Brits used to be (possibly still are) a bit arrogant, in that when our people were colonising everything, they saw the locals as inferior in many respects (certainly intellectually but maybe not physically). We enslaved lots of people, and also as Britain was doing well financially, employed many for what to the Brits was a pittance, but to the natives was a good wage. These factors, plus the fact that the Brits were not always too popular when taking over someone else's patch so it did well to understand what was being said, led to English being picked up by the natives, even if they still kept their own language as their main one.

Global commerce was another factor. Britain was quite significant in terms of commerce, and with America also doing well (another bunch of Brits let us not forget - they might have fought for and won their independence, but it was British people rebelling against the British government and monarchy that won that war), English became a very important language for commerce.

Portugese is another important language. I have seen conflicting statistics of language ranking by number of native speakers, but every league table I've encountered shows Portugese somewhere in the top four. Historically the Portugese were pioneers just as the British were. They built an empire with colonies all over the world, and were very prominent in world trade. We all know that the Portugese settled in parts of South America, but they also had Thailand for a while, the Azores, parts of India and various other places. I believe the Portugese were prominent in the spice trade, but they traded all sorts.

There was mention that Chinese is the most spoken language, but there is no 'Chinese' language. There are two main languages in China - Mandarin and Cantonese. If I'm not mistaken each of these two have more native speakers than any other language. I can only guess that that's because China and its annexes have such a huge population.

French at school was mentioned. At my school it was French and German. I have a theory about this, but I could be way off the mark, but here goes. I reckon that just after WW2, when Germany when we had good reason not to trust Germany, and France was a bit of a grey area, I reckon someone decided that being able to speak French and/or German would be a useful skill for a Brit to have. That said, there is a massive flaw in that theory. If it was national paranoia that put French and German on the curriculum, then surely Russian or other soviet languages would have been considered handy during the cold war that followed just after WW2 until not so long back (I must be getting old, I can't remember when the USSR collapsed). Another possibility is perhaps that French and German were on the curriculum because France and Germany are our close neighbours and commercially successful.

That's what I reckon anyway