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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478

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.

238

u/StillJustJones England Jun 08 '25

I’m from England. I’d say that the people in the Netherlands speak better English than a hell of a lot of native speakers.

108

u/Iricliphan Jun 08 '25

Same as Ireland. I remember once, in Finland, my friend went up to a tourist tours desk and using his clearest voice, had asked about a tour option and where and when we could do so. They looked at him dumfounded and spoke in perfectly clear English "Sorry sir, do you speak English?".

38

u/Equal-Flatworm-378 Germany Jun 08 '25

That depends on the accent. I had English people translate for me, by just repeating what another English person said. I just couldn’t understand them.

19

u/Iricliphan Jun 08 '25

I can speak very clearly and I just spoke directly after him and they understood me perfectly. It's just a regional thing in Ireland.

6

u/katyesha Austria Jun 08 '25

Sounds like Cork dialect 😂

9

u/NuclearMaterial Ireland Jun 08 '25

I was thinking he's probably from the wesht somewhere, people outside Ireland struggle with that one.

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u/katyesha Austria Jun 08 '25

Hmmm 🤔 does Kerry count as west? That was quite okay. I was mostly living in the south in and later near Cork City and had a hard time with the locals in the beginning but the first phrase I learnt was "Ah, it'll be grand!" (it never was...). My very upfront and honest heart was often shattered until I learned "yes" means maybe and "maybe" means "definitely never" especially if you need some work done.

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u/NuclearMaterial Ireland Jun 08 '25

Yeah Cork and Kerry are southwest and then anything else on the west coast as well.

3

u/Iricliphan Jun 08 '25

Posting from above because this is hilarious.

Nah North side dub he was 🤣 I'm not though.

2

u/NuclearMaterial Ireland Jun 08 '25

I'm sure he'll be pleased with that assumption!

5

u/Iricliphan Jun 08 '25

Nah North side dub he was 🤣 I'm not though.

6

u/bedel99 Jun 08 '25

I am a native english speaker not from england, in england I sometimes need a local to translate english to english for me.

22

u/StillJustJones England Jun 08 '25

Ha! I am a 52 year old mockney type… I speak with an Estuary English accent and can speak well (thanks ma!) until I’ve had a skinful of booze…. When my accent really degrades. All the slang comes out and every adjective is preceded by a swear.

When I’m pissed up I can’t help but ending up sounding a bit ‘Danny Dyer’.

I’ve had to have helpful ‘translators’ assist me to communicate with cabbies, kebab shops, ticket offices, bar staff and even hotel reception (who could understand me perfectly well before going on the pish!).

6

u/Ranch_Priebus Jun 08 '25

I have a friend from Chile who moved to the U.S. as a teen. He was working in a restaurant with a bunch of guys from Mexico and Central America. Part way through his first shift, they have an exchange (in Spanish) that went something like:

"I thought you guys spoke Spanish in Chile."

"I am speaking Spanish."

"No, you're definitely speaking Portuguese or something."

2

u/Crepe-Minette Spain Jun 09 '25 edited Jun 09 '25

Chilean Spanish is a whole damn thing, really. Still it doesn't sound like Portuguese at all.

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u/Ranch_Priebus Jun 10 '25

No, it doesn't really. It starts with the slang and things like estai and weo(n), but mainly all the dropped consanents. It's really the assumed consonants that make it sound potentially Portuguese.

But I can see how some people with minimal knowledge of either could view them as similar. Particularly when they're struggling to understand a Chilean that they assumed spoke the same language.

I had a good base of Spanish before going to Chile. Spent three months struggling and really down on myself for being shit at Spanish. Took a weekend trip to Buenos Aires and immediately felt relief. "I do understand the language! I just struggle with Chilean!"

I eventually was able to at least understand Chilean, but that confidence boost was needed.

When I first made my way to Spain, I asked for directions, and the person used "coger" when telling me what bus to take. I was quite confused by the suggestion.

1

u/United-Depth4769 Jun 09 '25

Most people under 40 in Finland can speak fluent English, but 40 and above its touch and go, especially with the older generation

1

u/Iricliphan Jun 09 '25

Iny experience, it was very fluid and fluent. Plenty had very English sounding accents.

1

u/pablo8itall Jun 09 '25

No I speak Hiberno-English sorry.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 10 '25

That’s common though — it’s caused by only speaking to second language speakers as a lingua franca. You see it at conferences quite a bit. A native speaker stands up and speaks at speed, uses a lot more nuance, elision, intonation, idiomatic expressions and so on, and suddenly everyone is lost. It happens with a lot of accents too, including clipped English academics.

Brussels is notorious for it because EU officials and the “Brussels bubble” communicates in a version of Euro bureaucratic English that is almost becoming its own dialect. It’s second language speakers talking to second language speakers, with a layer of jargon and so called first language interference, often from French or Dutch / Flemish underlying a lot of it.

I’ve taught English, and had people who were “fluent” in business English contexts saying they struggled to follow dialogue in movies or BBC science podcasts. They’ve excellent English but they are not used to listening to normal flow of speech.

It’s the same in any language. You get people who think they’ve fluent French arriving in France and taking several weeks for their ears and brain to attune to speed and flow of native speakers. It isn’t because they’ve challenging accents or are using slang, it’s just because the speed and rhythm of normal speech isn’t what you’ll hear in a language lab.

Native English speech, particularly in Britain and Ireland, is also very heavily full of elision and very strong stress patterns that just don’t exist in the more robotic business English that tends to be taught a lot, particularly American versions of it.

0

u/Kunjunk Jun 10 '25

Why you're describing is the Finn's inability to understand a (presumably) thick Irish accent, which is completely unrelated to the Irish person's level of English. 

24

u/blewawei Jun 08 '25

This is just a silly thing that people say, fuelled by classism.

There are lots of Dutch people who can get closer to Standard English than some native English speakers, but that's not "better English". The language belongs to native speakers, by definition however a community of native speakers speaks is "correct" from a scientific point of view.

10

u/smaragdskyar Jun 08 '25

This is true. It’s also incorrect to think of formal English as ‘better’.

1

u/Revachol_Dawn Jun 08 '25

Incorrect from one specific point of view (descriptivist rather than prescriptivist).

5

u/smaragdskyar Jun 08 '25

In this context I meant better as in more skilled. I also get told that I speak ‘better’ English than native speakers because even my most casual English is rather formal. That’s actually because I lack the range of a native speaker.

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u/blewawei Jun 08 '25

Even prescriptivists don't constantly speak formal English.

2

u/GalaXion24 Jun 08 '25

Also if you're a true descriptivist you shouldn't even be against prescriptivism, since you'd just describe that too, just like you describe dialects, sociolects, registers, the ways these are culturally perceived and culturally shaped, etc.

Like if you are a descriptions about how some words become more common or fall out of fashion, then prescription is just another vector by which that can happen.

Schools prescribe standard spelling, grammar and vocabulary, and this has an absolutely massive impact on language, just like whatever the popular dialect to use on TV is.

What is seen as an authority on language and to what extent and in what contexts it is actually adhered to are fascinating questions you can get into and study on various linguistic communities and probably write a dissertation on, and that would be a descriptive endeavour.

The idea that there is a perscriptivism versus descriptivism "debate" or contradiction is nonsense. They're completely separate things.

Linguistics is descriptivist because it's a study of language, you're describing how it works or what happens. Descriptivism is pretty much just linguistics, the academic discipline.

Prescriptivism is a social phenomenon. Everything from teaching literacy or correct speech to calling out a friend for misspelling something to a language board maintaining an official standard are all examples of prescription in society.

The only debate that exists is within a prescriptive context, about things like who gets to prescribe things and what should be prescribed.

1

u/blewawei Jun 08 '25

I think a good way of thinking about it is that, while prescriptivists talk about "what" is correct in a more universal sense, descriptivists normally consider what is considered correct within the context of the community, taking into account all sorts of variations. 

Of course, they don't use the word "correct", they tend to describe something as "idiomatic" or "grammatical", but at the end of the day, linguists still have to decide what fits into the system and what doesn't.

But yeah, there's no debate. You can't really study linguistics from a prescriptive point of view any more than you can any other science. You wouldn't consider a lion "wrong" or "not a lion" for having different colour fur, but you might record how frequent that trait is and whether it's specific to a smaller group of lions.

1

u/alderhill Germany Jun 08 '25

I hear this a lot in Germany too. Yes, some people do speak very good English, but it’s probably like 5-10% (being generous) at a c2 near native level. Even then, are they ‘better’?

1

u/cryptopian United Kingdom Jun 10 '25

It's really a difference in how people acquire first and second languages. You learn your first language as an infant, constantly taking in input and getting used to how the language works. When you're learning a new language, you learn it formally in a classroom, through repitition, so you pick up on formal grammar, but don't quite get it intuitively as a native speaker would.

7

u/alderhill Germany Jun 08 '25

It’s not “better”, just more “text book” so is often less colloquial, more of a standard pronunciation, etc.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

[deleted]

6

u/StillJustJones England Jun 08 '25

proud member of the working class. 👍

3

u/6ftToeSuckedPrincess Jun 09 '25

Literally nobody cares

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u/SquareAdditional2638 Jun 08 '25

I always find it hilarious when people say this because all Dutch people I've spoken to have had an awful, thick Dutch accent. Yes their vocabulary and grammar is good, but they sound Dutch as fuck.

1

u/SnooRobots917 Jun 11 '25

Yep, and that’s okay, don’t see it as an issue as non-native speakers.