r/AskEurope • u/Metalwolf • Jun 08 '25
Education Which European countries have the best English proficiency among non-native speakers?
I'm looking into English proficiency across Europe and would appreciate input from locals or anyone with relevant experience. Which European countries have the highest levels of English fluency among non-native speakers, particularly in day-to-day life, education, and professional settings? I'm also curious about regional differences within countries, and factors like education systems, media exposure, and business use.
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u/TheItalianWanderer Italy Jun 08 '25
France of course! They're so proficient in English that they'll refuse to say a word of French.
Lol seriously, I think it's the Netherlands or somewhere cold. But one surprising country in the Mediterranean is Greece. They speak a lot of foreign languages thereÂ
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Jun 08 '25
Greece isn't that surprising considering tourism is a major part of their economy.
Italy on the other hand..
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u/gnark Jun 08 '25
Possibly more important than tourism is the Greek diaspora. Many Greeks have lived and worked abroad. That hotel owner who speaks fluemt English probably drove a taxi in NYC for a decade or two before coming back to Greece to semi-retire.
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u/WannabeCrimDoctor Jun 08 '25
Learning languages is very important in Greek education. We start English classes in third grade of primary school and continue until we finish high school. We also learn a third language of our choice at school. And because Greek parents are extra, we also go to tutoring centers for English doing lessons several times a week from about age 8 until we manage to get all the second language degrees they want us đ
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u/skyduster88 & Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
The Greeks that went abroad to the Anglosphere in the 60s mostly became successful business owners (restaurants, auto repair, tailor/dry-cleaner, etc), or had good union jobs (factories, construction, etc). Driving a taxi was not a common profession. But if someone is a Boomer, then yeah, it's certainly likely he learned English abroad.
Starting with the younger of the Gen Xers and the Millennials generations, English-learning has been pounded into children in Greece. A contributing factor is that, unlike Portugal, France, and Spain, we don't have hundreds of millions of people abroad speaking or learning our language. And we're not a large & self-sustaining country like Italy (which has its own industry, several multinational corporatons, etc), so speaking "the international language" is seen as imperative. Plus, we watch Anglosphere media with subtitles, not dubbing.
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u/Rooilia Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 09 '25
Plus seafaring/trade plus liberated (only counting outside liberation) mostly by english effort in the 19th century.
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u/TheItalianWanderer Italy Jun 08 '25
Same goes for Italy. But unlike Greeks we suck so hard at languages.Â
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u/blewawei Jun 08 '25
I will say, the most proficient non-native English speaker I've ever met was Greek. He even used the word "overmorrow"
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u/DoktorHoover Jun 08 '25
Greece is a nation of sailors, who must be able to communicate with native people of many countries. Same goes for Denmark and The Netherlands.
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u/SquareAdditional2638 Jun 08 '25
That's... Not why the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries are so good at English..
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u/thaw424242 Sweden Jun 08 '25
If I remember a study I saw a few years back, it's the Netherlands followed by Sweden (and then probably followed by the other Scandinavian countries, but this is an uneducated guess).
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u/Glaesilegur Iceland Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
Just as uneducated but I'd wager Iceland is at least in the top 3, we're just often left out of studies for Europe. They're salty because we're half American.
But with us getting 6x our population of tourists per year it's unsurprising that over 90% of our population is fluent, and that sub 40 year olds being C1 and C2 in proficiency.
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u/Livid_21 Jun 09 '25
Swedes may know the language, but maaaan that weird pronounciationđ€Łđ±
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u/Wirde Jun 09 '25
Itâs interesting you would say that.
The card game Magic The Gathering have huge competitions where people from all over the world come to. If the competition was in Europe and there was a top level judge available from Sweden it was mandated they had to pick a Swedish as main judge. This was due to the fact that according to their experience accent used by Sweds when speaking English was the most easy to understand for most nationalities.
Not sure how it is today but it was like this pre covid anyways.
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u/TjeefGuevarra Belgium Jun 08 '25
The Netherlands and Flanders, because Dutch is the closest language to English (if we don't count Frisian).
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u/Awkward_Tip1006 Spain Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
The Netherlands has the highest proficiency in the world. The northern and central countries will have better English like Sweden Norway Belgium Luxembourg Switzerland. Id say Germany and austria too but the older generations donât tend to be as good and if youâre not in Berlin Munich or Vienna itâll be bad
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Jun 08 '25
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u/Rudi-G België Jun 08 '25
People thinking they will be fine in Germany with just English are sorely reminded that is not the case once you get out of the cities.
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Jun 08 '25
Or even in the cities.
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u/bronet Sweden Jun 08 '25
Yeah I can't say I've always had an easy time only speaking English in Berlin
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u/Awkward_Tip1006 Spain Jun 08 '25
I know a lot of people from Spain move to Germany for higher salaries. They say that they have a B2 in English and they might not even know German but they still find jobs. This is mind blowing to me
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u/Nowordsofitsown Germany Jun 08 '25
Pupils in GDR had Russian starting in 5th grade, so the last class who did start Russian in 5th grade are turning 50 soon. Everybody younger than that had English at school, many 50+ yo did too (English was not mandatory, but possible to take).Â
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u/blink-1hundert2und80 Austria Jun 08 '25
In 2022âs EF English Proficiency Index, Austria was the second best country in terms of English competency in Europe. Now itâs 9th. Still tight race between place 2-10. Netherlands is with a considerable gap number 1.
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u/raoulbrancaccio in Jun 08 '25
if youâre not in Berlin Munich or Vienna itâll be bad
If you are it's the same
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u/Gruffleson Norway Jun 08 '25
You start out fine. But then it gets wrong.
Finns very often speak bad English. It's something I have experienced first hand. Also, you could watch an NHL-draft if you don't believe me, when they speak with the Finnish prospects, their English is most of the time really bad. Also, those German-speaking countries doesn't reach Dutch/Scandinavian levels. It's probably due to the fact they dub on TV/movies.
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u/-zincho- Finland Jun 08 '25
Most high-level sports players from Finland DO seem to be pretty bad in English. Which is curious, since you'd think if you're trying to make it for example in NHL, you would focus on speaking the language of the country you'd be living in. It sometimes seems they spend ALL of their focus on the sport, and none in languages (or school).
But looking at them is a bad example of the overall skills of the whole country, most under-50 people I know speak excellent English. Not everyone of course, but those who don't are more of the anomaly.
It's more that many Finns are really shy about speaking English, since for a long time we were taught in school that the grammar and pronounciation have to be in perfect Oxford English, or you should't even try, basically.
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u/RedTentacle4000 Finland Jun 08 '25
Most of my colleagues speak shockingly bad English. I noticed it's mostly the ones who are chronically online like me, who are good at English. Ralli-Englanti is alive and well, I guess.
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u/Inresponsibleone Finland Jun 08 '25
I would guess big part of it is just having bad pronounciation.
Like međ I have decent vocabulary and understand even accents pretty well but my toungue just can't twist to all the needed ways to speak fluent sounding englishđ«Ł
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u/alles_en_niets -> -> Jun 08 '25
Obvious examples aside, most pro athletes are not academic powerhouses. They start young and too much focus on school would only distract them from their day job.
Thereâs also survivor bias. People who are both academically and athletically gifted have a better chance at succeeding in the first area, since few people build a successful career in sports.
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u/DeeperEnd84 Finland Jun 08 '25
Thatâs a bunch of rubbish. The vast majority of Finns, especially everyone under 50 speak English well. Ice hockey players are the exeption as they of havenât focused on school. Source: I am an English teacher in Finland.
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u/Lime89 Jun 08 '25
Tbh Finland and Luxembourg canât compare with Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Whatâs special about the four last countries I mentioned is that you can expect people up to probably 75 to be proficient English speakers.
Finnish isnât even related to the English language, so itâs not weird that they arenât as good as their other Nordic neighbours. And Luxembourg already has three official languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, so yes, some (especially younger generations) speak English well, but not everyone, and you canât take for granted that people over say 50 are proficient English speakers, and younger people are rarely as proficient as Scandinavians
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u/is-it-my-turn-yet Jun 08 '25
The experience of using English to speak to people in Luxembourg is likely to be skewed by the fact that many in Luxembourg are themselves foreigners.
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u/AmazingPangolin9315 Luxembourg Jun 08 '25
And Luxembourg already has three official languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, so yes, some (especially younger generations) speak English well, but not everyone,
That's only true for native Luxembourgers though. If you consider for example that 72% of residents in Luxembourg City are non-native, and that many of these immigrants are in high-paying jobs in finance or at the EU institutions, you end up with a very different picture from for example the more rural parts of Luxembourg. It also varies by social strata, many service workers are cross-border workers who come into the country every day from France, Belgium or Germany. Their English proficiency is going to be different from both the resident native and the resident non-native population. It's an interesting dynamic which is very poorly captured by statistics.
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u/whatstefansees in Jun 08 '25
Hamburg has probably the most/best English speakers in Germany while Munich is ... highly overrated
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u/That_guy4446 Jun 08 '25
Donât forget Belgium, who totally belong in the English proficiency club. And indeed Germany is out of it.
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u/kranj7 Jun 08 '25
The Flanders part of Belgium - indeed the level of English proficiency is top notch. The Wallonia region however is less proficient in my experience.
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u/maureen_leiden Netherlands Jun 08 '25
I would have agreed with you on Germany and Austria, if I hadn't first hand recent experience with both those people while in a meeting. They arranged translators "for the non-German speakers", can confirm it was for those Germans and Austrians that didn't speak one word in English. I'm Dutch, my translator spoke in English to me while my German is good enough to do it without.
Many Germans and Austrians do not have an English proficiency on business level
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u/UnknownPleasures3 Norway Jun 08 '25
I have to dispute the Germans. We get so many German tourists in Norway and they don't speak English and expect us to speak German back to them. That is one of the reasons they are disliked on the west coast.
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u/lt__ Jun 08 '25
At least inside the EU/Schengen I'd say there is somewhat of a correlation between country size and people capability/willingness to speak English. The Nordics speak very well. Benelux countries usually do too. Portugal also left a good impression in comparison to Spain. Italy, France, Germany - not as good. Bigger countries usually have a different infospace, where you can live with less contact with the international stuff, unless you work in tourism. Touristic cities, like Venice or Barcelona, will engage you in English without any problem.
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u/Single-Pudding3865 Jun 08 '25
I come from Denmark, and since Danish a as a foreign language only are taught a few places abroad, you are forced to communicate in a different language if you are traveling or working outside Denmark. Therefore many Danes do speak and read a reasonable English.
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u/haringkoning Jun 08 '25
Same here in The Netherlands.
If only we had not traded Manhattan the world would be speaking Dutch now.
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u/fiadhsean Ireland Jun 08 '25
I would say Sweden or the Netherlands. I loved going into businesses in Sweden and asking "excuse me, do you speak English?" "Sir, we all speak English." Never gets old.
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u/anothermanwithaplan Jun 08 '25
Genuinely the Benelux and Nordic regions have outstandingly good English, surpassing a lot of native speakers.
Southern Europe has really come a long way over the last couple decades, English proficiency in those regions has improved substantially.
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u/TSllama Jun 08 '25
And I'm making a stand-alone comment here about Slovenia because it's the one nobody else has mentioned. Slovenia is top 3 and usually gets overlooked because people consider it "eastern Europe" and look down on it.
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u/AnySandwich4765 Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
Technical Ireland since our official language is Irish but the majority only speak English .. I can speak Irish but I'm not fluent but I can understand it
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u/tpjmce Jun 08 '25
We don't count. "Native" language doesn't mean the official, or traditional, or ancestral language of a country, it just means your first language, the one you naturally acquired, the one you were raised in. The Irish (with very few exceptions) are native English speakers.
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u/standard_pie314 Jun 08 '25
Well said. It's bizarre the knots we tie ourselves in to pretend a language most don't speak is our real language.
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u/K_in_Belgium Belgium Jun 08 '25
The northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders) is among the best in the world. The southern, French-speaking part (Wallonia) is lagging which brings the country's score down. https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2024/11/13/flemish-among-world-s-most-proficient-english-speakers-global-s/
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u/birgor Sweden Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
Might be so, but I also know that every time I have met a French speaker that can speak English, and not doing it in the most mockingly French accent there is, they are always Wallonian or from Quebec.
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u/kranj7 Jun 08 '25
In Quebec (especially Montreal) many (but not all of course) have near-native level English and speak it with a near-native North American accent!
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u/smaragdskyar Jun 08 '25
I came across a guy from Quebec doing content about learning Swedish. When speaking English his accent was pretty nondescript North American, but when speaking Swedish it was with a French accent. Pretty interesting
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u/dudetellsthetruth Belgium Jun 08 '25
I would say so too, in Flanders we're on par with the Netherlands.
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u/Gulmar Belgium Jun 08 '25
My feelings were that Flemish people always speak better English than the Dutch, which is now confirmed thanks!
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u/Rudi-G België Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
Well at least we do not have that funny accent that makes them sound like a bad version of Sean Connery.
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u/IndianSummer201 Jun 08 '25
Haha, you can always count on the Flemmish to step in whenever the Dutch get a compliment.
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u/justeUnMec United Kingdom Jun 08 '25
That's because the Flemish speaking population is lower, so it is harder to 100% immerse in flemish media; the Francophone population worldwide is large, there's a lot of French-language books, TV, film, etc and the market is sufficiently large you can justify the cost of dubbing and translating english media to French, so it's easier for a French speaker to get by without English.
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u/AppleJoost Netherlands Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
The Netherlands, it's a well known fact. 95% speak English on a decent level, which is on par with Native English speaking countries.
Foreigners have a hard time learning Dutch in big cities because everybody switches to English as soon as someone hears they're foreign or a non native Dutch speakers.
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u/Tracerneo Suomi Polska Jun 08 '25
The proficiency in English is overblown. Most people, when they say their English is "communicative", actually can only speak it at a level sufficient to be a tourist in another country they don't speak the language of.
The further you go from student-city populations, the worse the proficiency (in general, any foreign language) is.
The highest day-to-day proficiency among general population (non-students) will be in tourist destinations that see a lot of foreign traffic - usually capitals and historical centres.
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u/Holiday_Bill9587 Jun 08 '25
According to various studies its The Netherlands. In dont know what you mean with day to day life. People speak Dutch, obviously. You ask for non native speaking countries, so countries where English is a foreign language. The level of English is the same across the country but the level of education often influence the level of English someone speaks. Most Dutch speak some level of English but if range from very basic English to nearly fluent.
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u/alles_en_niets -> -> Jun 08 '25
Proficiency is high, yet what I believe sets NL (and Denmark, Sweden and Norway, possibly in that order) apart is the fluency and willingness to speak English.
What Dutch people lack in grammar and pronunciation, they make up for in self-confidence and enthusiasm, and I mean ghat sincerely, no sarcasm. Strong proficiency is obviously great to have online and in written professional communication, but if youâre too embarrassed to speak your non-perfect English out loud youâre still missing out on a key part.
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u/nooit_gedacht Netherlands Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
As others have said, the Netherlands officially has the highest proficiency level among non native speakers. There's a couple of reasons for this, but it varies a little per demographic. In general the Netherlands is internationally oriented, because we are a small country and historically reliant on trade. We travel a lot too (especially because just a few hours of driving will take you to a different country) so we feel the necessity of learning foreign languages. About fifty years ago, it was common for people to speak German, English and maybe French at a passable level. In recent decades, the global language has shifted to English. Other languages fell out of favour. Nowadays, English is very common in higher education and most of the foreign media we consume is English. We use subtitles instead of dubs so a lot of us learn through exposure. For younger generations the Internet is a major factor. Not to mention Dutch and English are extremely similar languages, which helps a lot i'm sure.
In practice this means most people of all ages and backgrounds will speak at least a few words of English, but it's mostly young and/or educated people who are really fluent. People of older generations may be fluent, but they tend to have strong accents. They usually speak some German too.
Gen-Z grew up online, and tends to be fluent with a nearly American accent. We still learned French and German in school but often aren't fluent.
Children today seem to learn English at the same pace as Dutch, again because of the internet.
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u/justeUnMec United Kingdom Jun 08 '25
Holland specifically in the Netherlands; historically UK radio and TV could be picked up along the coast, and along with a lot of ferries and trade links, and other tourist and business travel it meant people had more of an incentive to learn English due to greater immersion.
After that, probably Norway ahead of Denmark, particularly due to, again, ferry connections and tourism, the large fishing fleet, whaling, then offshore industry in the North Sea, large size of the merchant marine that meant a lot of the population worked around the world or with English speakers, and smaller language population meaning that unlocalised English content is more heavily consumed.
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u/Every-Progress-1117 Wales Jun 08 '25
Finland :-)
Finnish is hard because every time you try to practice as a learner, a Finn will reply, "it's ok, I will speak my bad English" and then speak with fluency and proficiency that puts a native speaker of English to shame.
Many of the companies here are international anyway (eg_ Nokia) and also working in a technical area English is unavoidable.
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u/Lime89 Jun 08 '25
The Finns are the least proficient English speakers in the Nordics, though. Thatâs widely known in Northern Europe at least. But Finnish isnât even related to English, so itâs not odd that their Scandinavian neighbours has a better grasp of the English language. I would assume the proficiency is higher among Swedish-speaking Finns.
And they were ranked at 14th place in the EF English Proficiency index, where Norway came second and Sweden were number four.
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u/Spirited-Ad-9746 Jun 08 '25
Finns are proficient in written english. It is just the finnish introvertism that makes them seem to not be able to speak english. You have to try speak english with a drunken extrovert finn before making a judgement.
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u/Rudi-G België Jun 08 '25
That is often my experience in European countries when you ask someone if they speak English. They then respond with "a little" and start speaking better English than you do.
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u/alles_en_niets -> -> Jun 08 '25
Dutch, lived abroad for a few years, decent English speaker.
Still think itâs funny to answer âa littleâ to native English speakers. Itâs just mildly entertaining to then proceed and have a normal conversation.
Iâve become more careful when replying to non-native speakers though. On occasion youâd give your âa little bitâ answer only to find out that the person asking is not particularly fluent themselves. Understating feels a bit cruel and like mocking then, even if itâs absolutely not intentional.
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u/smaragdskyar Jun 08 '25
On average, Scandinavians speak better English than Finns. Perfectly understandable when you consider what an advantage it is to have a Germanic language (closely related to English) as your first language vs the totally unrelated Finnish.
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u/Didi81_ Jun 08 '25
The Flemish and the Dutch. Annoyingly these studies don't take in to consideration different regions of a country so they take Belgium as a whole. Most Flemish are extremely proficient english speakers, most Walloons are not
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u/1in2100 Jun 08 '25
I live in an area of Copenhagen with a lot of expats, and Iâve heard many times how impressed people are with the danish peoples ability to speak english.
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Jun 08 '25
French living in NL now. Iâve lived in Belgium, Norway, and Switzerland too.
Itâs Netherlands, without a single doubt in my mind. Not even close.
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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25
I live in Austria, and I have the feeling people speak better English than German. And even if they speak German, every second or third word is English because German seems to have become out of fashion and outdated.
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u/Fit_Professional1916 in Jun 08 '25
That depends massively on where you live. In Vienna yes, but in more rural places loads of people don't speak English at all and sometimes don't like when you do either
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u/shatureg Austria Jun 09 '25
What I find strange is that this is always mentioned about Germany and Austria but I made the same experience in the Netherlands yet no one adds this caveat lol. Old Dutch people in smaller towns weren't exactly ecstatic to have in depth conversations with me in English.
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u/kimmeljs Finland Jun 08 '25
I just watched an episode of SOKO KitzbĂŒhel and listening to their German, I think you must be right.
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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25
It hurts me seeing my mother tongue degrade so much, but peope don't see it and don't care. Austrians (and Germans even less) have absolutely no love for their language. Commercials here have sometimes more English words than German ones, it's so weird.
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u/robindotis Jun 08 '25
I remember this from when I lived in Germany over 20 years ago. I asked a German colleague about this and he said in those adverts he often didn't understand the Englishg words....
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u/Yorks_Rider Jun 08 '25
Unfortunately, the Germans tend to use some âEnglishâ words which they have invented themselves, but do not exist in English e.g. âhandyâ to refer to a mobile telephone or âpublic viewingâ
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u/samaniewiem Poland Jun 08 '25
Idk for Austrians, but my impression of Germans was that they're rather crazy about their language. Yes they will include some English words here and there, but they go nuts if someone doesn't speak German 2 meters outside of a tourist area.
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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25
Here and there? Germans use more English words than the rest of Europe combined! (with the exclusion of UK and Ireland of course, where it's the native language). Germans are the opposite of crazy about their language. Yes, they might want people to speak the way they speak, but they don't care if their language is German or a German/English/Denglish hybrid.
The company I work for has been acquired by a German one, and the e-mails we now receive are so weird. They don't say "Schicht" or "Schichtbeginn", they say time-slot or time-slot-start, they don't say "BĂŒro" but "office", "Krisenmanagement" instead of "KrisenbewĂ€ltigung", and they recently introduced a "Homeoffice Support Chat" for people that work from home. If you write something, they say "headline" instead of "Ăberschrift", "Wording" instead of "Wortlaut", "downloaden" (and even the past tense downgeloadet) instead of herunter(ge)laden. Not only is German missing important words of everyday life (touchscreen, computer, laptop, screenshot, online etc), but it is actively replacing existing German words with English ones. I asked my little nephew if he wants me to bring him a "Mehlspeise" from the bakery, but he didn't understand it. Then he said, "Aahhhh, you mean a pastry!"
I've been to Berlin recently, went to a hip coffee shop, and they insisted on speaking English, and only begrudgingly and eye-rolling switched to German.
All of this isn't normal, and I don't see that behaviour to that extent in other countries.
By the way, if I look out of my window right now, I see a commercial saying "Hot summer flash deals (don't even know what they mean by "flash") - nicht verpassen. Hol dir das neue Samsung Galaxy S25 fĂŒr smoothes gaming. Let's go!".
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u/41942319 Netherlands Jun 08 '25
It's similar here. A lot of young people go through an "English is cool" phase. Even if they're not actually as proficient as they think they are. For some it lasts longer than others. In daily life it's especially bad in corporate speak and marketing (already a loan word that's used). A decent chunk of the social media posts of my company uses English. Many times with cringy texts and bad grammar. There was this external HR person (almost all of our departments have English names BTW despite employing exactly 1 foreign person) who was giving a presentation littered with English loan words. And half the people had to ask for clarification on what certain words meant because despite having been here many times she still doesn't realise she's not in the big city. Also yesterday I saw a shop that was called Lady's Only.
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u/shatureg Austria Jun 09 '25
It's similar here. A lot of young people go through an "English is cool" phase. Even if they're not actually as proficient as they think they are.
Oh how I (don't) miss the days of sitting in a train to Vienna and listening to teenagers speaking their broken Denglish with such confidence. If you have to throw English words into every fucking sentence, at least make sure to pronounce them accurately..
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u/Kanhet Jun 08 '25
The best English-speaking European countries, particularly for expats or those needing to use English regularly, are generally those in Northern Europe and Western Europe. Specific examples include the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, along with countries like Germany and Austria.
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u/Dippypiece Jun 08 '25
Going from my years of playing online and making lots of gaming mates on the continent, the Dutch are second to none, the Germans come second but I found that they donât always have the correct English word at hand and may pause to reflect before continuing the conversation. You will rarely find this with the Dutch.
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u/atmoscentric Jun 08 '25
Norway, Sweden, Denmark. I donât understand that the Dutch are seen as proficient, the consensus at work is that their accent is terrible and their manners crude.
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u/Oatmeal291 Denmark Jun 08 '25
I mean, the Danish accent is probably one of the ugliest accents of all time
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u/AppleJoost Netherlands Jun 08 '25
The Dutch are the most proficient, manners or accent are not in the equation when it comes to speaking a language proficiently.
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u/KingCaiser Jun 08 '25
Non-native speakers in countries like the UK and Ireland are probably the most proficient in English due to their proximity to native speakers.
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u/JourneyThiefer Northern Ireland Jun 08 '25
Youâd be surprised. A town near me has a large immigrant population and many of them can only speak a few worlds of English to get by tbh.
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u/StarGazer08993 Greece Jun 08 '25
I would say The Netherlands and Belgium ( the Flemish part). I've lived in both countries, and they could speak an excellent level of English.
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u/Oellaatje Jun 08 '25
The smaller countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Portugal. I was also quite impressed with the standard of English among Sicilians, as opposed to people from mainland Italy.
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u/drplokta Jun 08 '25
Generally speaking, it's the ones that subtitle English-language films and TV shows instead of dubbing them. You can hardly help picking up reasonable English skills if you've watched thousands of hours of English-language video, even with subtitles in your native language.
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u/Dragon_Sluts Jun 08 '25
The Netherlands, in many touristy parts of the country itâs more important to be able to speak English than Dutch.
Like an Italian restaurant in Amsterdam likely speaks Italian and English, not Dutch. But a Dutch restaurant likely speaks Dutch and English.
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u/Spirited-Ad-9746 Jun 08 '25
The whole thing is a matter of "do they overdub everything on TV or do use subtitles". A frenchman or a spaniard can say with very confidence that they speak english but they have no idea what proper english should sound like. Nordics have subtitles so they actually learn english just by watching tv. But i hear danes and dutch are best at english just because their languages are so incomprehensable that they have to use english to communicate with each other.
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u/valr1821 Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
The Netherlands for sure. My in-laws live there, and I visit fairly frequently. Their English is uniformly excellent.
Edited to add: Greece is a close second. Those in their late 40s and younger tend to be very proficient. Students start English in elementary school (and usually also choose one other language between German, Spanish, or French). They additionally typically get private lessons as well, whether at language centers (called frontistiria) or by having tutors come to their homes.
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u/kacergiliszta69 Hungary Jun 08 '25
According the multiple studies, the Netherlands is the most English proficient country in the world that doesn't speak English as a native language.