Irish can't be a foreign language in Ireland as it's an official language of the country. This is also why it doesn't get EU help for minority languages (even though it has few fluent speakers). It's also incorrect to call Welsh and Gaelic foreign languages in the UK as they have been spoken here longer than English has. But the study surely ought to be interested in people studying these languages at school.
I did find that fairly absurd about Ireland. In the UK I'm not sure there are enough people taking Welsh or Gaelic in their A-levels to make much of a difference in the data...
Does it include, for example, Francophone Belgians studying Dutch, or doesn't that count as a "foreign" language there either?
If you look at the data for learning languages in school, you'll see Belgium doesn't have any data at all. Possibly because Eurostat only has separate data for Flanders and Francophone Belgium, but not for the two together, or because they find it pointless to add them up. But when it comes to how many people know a foreign language, there Belgium does have data, and I'm really not sure if they consider the other national language(s) as a "foreign" language there or not. In any case, Walloons are notoriously bad at foreign languages whether it's Dutch or English or something else, as bad or even worse than the French themselves. Though there is a distinct improvement these past years - the last fifteen years or so their politicians have actually realized they need a working knowledge of their country's majority language if they don't want to look ridiculous, and that's quite new. While many of the richer Francophone families in Brussels are now sending their children to Dutch-language schools, creating an extreme overpopulation there, firstly because those schools are quite simply a ton better and secondly so their children will end up more or less bilingual.
/Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
24/09/2010 01:37:42 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 02:10:57 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 03:32:09 PM
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That is rather sad to say the least.
24/09/2010 04:15:32 PM
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Indeed
24/09/2010 06:23:52 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 04:00:04 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
24/09/2010 05:47:09 PM
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Interesting.
24/09/2010 06:04:30 PM
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Re: Interesting.
24/09/2010 06:42:02 PM
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Re: Interesting.
24/09/2010 07:05:44 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
24/09/2010 09:38:05 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
25/09/2010 05:49:05 AM
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Self-study can be worth as much as formal classroom study, I suppose
25/09/2010 03:43:14 PM
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Certainly it can.
26/09/2010 12:35:56 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
25/09/2010 04:54:40 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
25/09/2010 07:38:29 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
26/09/2010 12:07:19 AM
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They should have asked about second languages rather than foreign languages.
26/09/2010 11:34:27 AM
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Aye, they should have.
26/09/2010 12:26:51 PM
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Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
27/09/2010 03:18:30 PM
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