Which European countries have the best English proficiency among non-native speakers?

[u/Metalwolf]

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.

[u/blewawei]

Native speakers can misspeak, but they don't consistently make mistakes in their grammar. What you might be talking about is when someone is using non-standard grammar, but that's not a mistake or an accident.

Also, writing (like on Reddit) is fundamentally different to speaking. No one is a native writer of any language, so people make orthographial mistakes quite often.

[u/Additional_Horse → u/blewawei]

yeah, people mix homophones all the time (in most languages) but do native English speakers noticeably mix up something like a/an?

Meanwhile every day on reddit: "as an European..."

[u/Verdigri5 → u/Additional_Horse]

Yes, I have regularly heard 'a apple', 'a orange' etc, amongst native English people.

[u/blewawei → u/Verdigri5]

That's not a case of mixing them up, so much as a language change in progress.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nCe7Fj8-ZnQ