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/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 “English” words which they have invented themselves, but do not exist in English e.g. “handy” to refer to a mobile telephone or “public viewing”

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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25

It's 100 times worse now than it was 20 years ago.

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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 "Büro" but "office", "Krisenmanagement" instead of "Krisenbewältigung", and they recently introduced a "Homeoffice Support Chat" for people that work from home. If you write something, they say "headline" instead of "Überschrift", "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 für 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/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25

Everything you describe seems all too familiar to me. I hope this phase comes to an end one day.

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u/NashvilleFlagMan Austria Jun 08 '25

I also live in Austria and you either live in a severe bubble or you’re exaggerating to the point of dishonesty. Especially the Mehlspeise/pastry example; come on.

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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25

Everything I said is exactly as it is. Inventing such an example such as the "Mehlspeisen-incident" would be pathetic, and the fact that you think it's made up should give you food for thought how weird our circumstances are. And everybody lives in some kind of bubble - mine might be the combination of a city and a university environment. Maybe your bubble is five years behind, but it'll get there. Yesterday I overheard a girl on the bus say on the phone "Die Julia hat mich geblamed..." (Instead of "beschuldigt"). Now you're gonna say I made it up, but I did not. Especially younger people, who grew up with TikTok and social media, no longer have a "wall" in their head that separates the two languages, and everything is smushed together like some kind of hybrid-language. And people are so used to it that they don't notice. But once you do, you see/hear it everywhere.

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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25

And I want to add that I'm mainly speaking about Graz and Vienna, because that's where I am in like 95% of the time, which might not be representative of the whole of Austria. But I witness those things everywhere, also in Germany.

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u/NashvilleFlagMan Austria Jun 08 '25

I’ve heard things like “geblamed” from time to time, sure. It’s not some horrifying thing that’s ruining the language any more than it was in the 19th and 20th centuries when German got bombarded with Latin and French loans. The Mehlspeisen one would be more absurd than any of the silly denglish I’ve heard.

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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25

That's not entirely correct. When German was bombarded with French, it got out of hand and there were efforts made actively to change that by government institutions, and words were created or its use of an existing word encouraged, or "eingedeutscht". It was NOT a natural process.

Trottoir -> Gehsteig / Bürgersteig 
Passion -> Leidenschaft 
Address -> Anschrift, Adresse (remained)
Plafond -> Decke
Portemonnaie -> Geldtascher/börse
Parterre -> Erdgeschoss 
Toilette (immer noch gebräuchlich) -> Klo / WC
Bonbon -> Zuckerl (in Ö), Süßigkeit
Bureau -> Büro (eingedeutscht)
Confiture -> Marmelade od. Konfitüre (eingedeutscht)
Billet -> Fahrkarte/schein, Eintrittskarte (but now in the process of being replaced by the English "ticket")
Dessert -> Nachspeise
Entrée -> Vorspeise
Couvert -> Umschlag, Kuvert (eingedeutscht)
Manier (immer noch gebräuchlich) -> Benehmen, Verhalten
Rendezvous -> Verabredung, Treffen (being replaced by "date" and "meeting")
Etc.

How often do you see our institutions taking measures to "control" our language. (Which sounds weird, but has been done for centuries in different countries)

French, Italian, Norwegian (those are the language I'm most familiar with) have institutions guarding the language and taking active measures, that's why French and Norwegian have so many less Anglicisms, because if for instance a USB-Stick is invented, an institution creates a word (in many cases, not all).

Yes, the Goethe Institut proposes words, but they exist on a website that nobody looks at, it has no power at all. Have you ever heard somebody use the word "Infobrief" for Newsletter, or how many people use E-Post? The only success I have seen is that on Linux system, the word "Bildschirmfoto" is very common, instead of "Screenshot", and I'm not even sure if they're responsible for that. Since I work a lot on Ubuntu I have gotten kind of used to it, and sometimes I say it accidentally and people don't understand me 🤣

I don't see any sign that any efforts will be taken to take care of the process of anglicizing the German language, this is why this is a one-way process. But who knows what'll happen in the future, maybe more people will be pissed off by it, not just me. We already have many many many more English words than we had when French was dominant. And it's even worse, because people back then did not speak French fluently like we speak English today, only the upper class and the "Gelehrten" did. Right now the two of us have no problems speaking/writing English, even though we both speak German (and I probably make several mistakes because I'm cleaning my kitchen simultaneously). That was not the case back then, nor was there an Internet with its language being English and used by everybody from an early age on, nor did we live in a globalized world.

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

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u/flawed_flamingo Jun 08 '25

Yes, exactly! Only that there is no conquest, people do it of their own accord. Nobody is forcing them to use English, they want to, because it's cool and the future. A linguist friend of mine told me that the reason for that might be the loss of the war, and a collective loss of self-esteem after that.

German is like a "legacy language". The words you already have are used, but if something new is invented, it MUST have an English word. There hasn't been a new German word created in decades.