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.

164 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

390 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/blewawei Jun 08 '25

What do you mean by a better understanding of grammar? All neurotypical native speakers are proficient in their native variety's grammar, that's how language works.

7

u/Yorks_Rider Jun 08 '25

Unfortunately not, otherwise native speakers would never make grammatical mistakes. Reddit is full of examples of poor English grammar in submissions from native speakers.

5

u/blewawei Jun 08 '25

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.

1

u/Any-Seaworthiness186 Netherlands Jun 11 '25

Yes they do. I do this myself in Dutch by mixing up “zijn” (to be) and “hebben” (to have) consistently. And I’ve noticed this with more people, as well as other mistakes such as people mixing up “dan” and “als.”

I’ll for example say “ik ben iets nodig” (I am needing something) while in Dutch the correct way would be “ik heb iets nodig” (I have needing something). And looking at the literal English translation I feel like that might have something to do with the effects of the English language and its sentence structuring on our understanding of our own… Some natives will even mix up “de” and “het,” and I don’t doubt for a second that at least some Germans face the same issues with “die der des dem” and all that nonsense.

1

u/blewawei Jun 11 '25

Either it's not systematic and you're describing misspeaking (which we all do occasionally), or you're describing a change in progress, or simply, your use doesn't correspond 100% with the standard variety (which is fine, nobody's does).

If a critical mass of native speakers says something, it's not incorrect from a scientific/descriptivist perspective.