Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe - Edit 1
Before modification by jh at 24/09/2010 04:06:28 PM
Might as well add a mini-survey for European members (though Americans and others are welcome to answer as well if they like):
1) Which languages did you learn in school, and for how long?
Swedish, English, French, and a small touch of Norwegian and Danish. (At uni, I did some japanese too)
2) Which languages would you say you speak with some degree of fluency?
Swedish, English, French. French is a language which I need to immerse myself in for a couple of days before reacquiring my fluency, but it is there.
3) Do you think languages get too much attention in the school system you went to, too little, or just about enough?
It has a larger role today than it had back then. So for today's students it is about right.
4) What do you think of the remarkable dominance of English that appears in the data?
Not really all that odd. Before WW2, german was the first foreign language taught here, but hey, it was deemed more appropriate to change to English. And then with most foreign movies and tv series coming from england or the us, it is fairly natural that it has kept it's dominance.
What is more interesting is that we here experience a marginalisation of languages such as german and french as they lose their relevance in the world today. there has been a shift towards eastern languages since they are perceived as cooler, and more useful. Also, spanish has taken a larger role, mainly because it is deemed a more simple language to learn.