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Languages being studied in Eastern Europe. View full size. (source)
About a year ago, The Economist ran a story called After Babel, a new common language, which charted the rise of English as Europe’s common language. While not exactly groundbreaking, it’s still a pretty interesting story. They also ran a nice little chart (see above) of what the Easterlings are studying. It turns out that Slovenes, or at least Slovenian secondary schools, are the most English-friendly in the region. According to data taken from the European Commission, eighty-eight percent of Slovenes were learning English at the secondary-school level in 2000. That’s well above countries like the Czech Republic (64%) and Hungary (58%). But English still dominates in the east. (The only exception being Romania, where the most-studied language is French.)
Anyone who’s been here knows that Slovenes are shockingly excellent at languages, especially English. They’re also strangely modest about it, so if they tell you they "speak a little" then they definitely speak a lot. And if they say they’re "okay" then they’re probably fluent. However, if they just look at with a strange expression, then they probably don’t speak a word of English. That’s fairly rare though. Especially among the young’uns.
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Hence making it that little bit more difficult to learn Slovenian here. "Lahko dobim eno vre?ko, prosim?""Ah, yes, do you want the big one, or the small one?""Zakaj me govoriš po Slovensko????""Because I am sure that my English is better than your Slovenian and therefore I am making life easier for you.""Your English better than my SLovenian? Fuck, your English is better than my ENGLISH! I’ll take the small bag please."
You met a supermarket employee interested in "making life easier for you?" Oh, no, you must have ended up in Slovakia or some other country by mistake!(The above, BTW, is just a lame attempt at humor. I know that many supermarket employees in Slovenia do a great job and believe in service with a smile, it’s just that those who don’t care often make everyone look bad, as Michael will attest.)
I never stated that it was a dialogue from a supermarket. could have been any other type of retail outlet.
I was just making a joke, mesni. But, then again, what I said can apply to all kinds of retail outlets.
AZ2S1, I wasn’t exactly being serious myself in my reply!!!
The limited enthusiasm for German in central Europe has been much more surprising. Even in the communist era, it was taught at least as widely as English, being the language of a “fraternal” country, East Germany. In the post-communist era, Germany has been central Europe’s biggest export market, and a huge investor in the region. Yet only in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia does the proportion of secondary-school pupils studying German come anywhere close to the proportion studying English; and nowhere in the region is German the top choice.
Vindy, you must be a very young person! There have been difficulties
between assorted Slavic countries and Germany that go back to the
Middle Ages. As well of course there’s been trade, and exchange of
ideas, there have been German minorities in Slavic countries and of
course Slavic minorities in German speaking countries, and for the most
part these groups got along alright, but there have also been wars,
some of them fairly terrible. German is still a useful language to
learn, I would never discourage anyone from learning it, but English is
a much more dominant language at this point, and probably it’s
percieved as being more useful.
In Styria the German was held in the primary school during my time.
Later on gymnasium English & German was a matter of choice. I
always had a feeling that the German levels were much upon the English
in the population. Nowdays that has shifted.
Which is better choice? It depends where you want to go & what
(kind of job) do you want to do. When you work with people, then you’ll
have to perfectly match their primary language skills. When you’re a
specialist, English will probably be the universal choice.
German is useful in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxemburg. English is useful nearly everywhere, even in Germany.
Unfortunately German is as useful in Luxembourg as Afrikaans is in Chile. At least from my own experience - hardly anyone speaks it (or wants to speak it?). French is a much better option for Luxusburg
Or you could always learn Letzebürgisch (a rather lucid mix of French and German)…
I’ve had german for 4 years in grammar school and I still have difficulties asking people in Graz for directions. IMO one of the reasons why German isn’t as wide-spread as English, is because it’s a much more difficult language to learn properly - especially if you’re not exposed to it on a daily basis.
It’s surprising that in Romania more people learn French than English! The majority of young Romanians speak very good English, due to a widespread effort to teach it in the education system, but I don’t know about French… 88% of people learn it supposedly, even though it’s quite rarely spoken here.
"Unfortunately German is as useful in Luxembourg as Afrikaans is in
Or
Chile. At least from my own experience - hardly anyone speaks it (or
wants to speak it?). French is a much better option for Luxusburg
you could always learn Letzebürgisch (a rather lucid mix of French and
German)…" IMO
that’s simply not true. Letzebuergesch is a German dialect, hence most,
if not all, Luxembourgers speak German. Standard High-German is also
the only language that’s used in elementary school while French is used
in high school. So unless you didn’t attend elementary school, a
Luxembourger should speak German.
Ha. In 20 years or so, English may itself be struggling to maintain
interest as a foreign tongue as everyone’s scrambling to learn Chinese,
the language of the newly dominant world economic superpower,
especially if the US keeps insisting on wasting its precious blood and
treasure on stupid and unwinnable wars. Maybe not the old-fashioned
character-memorization Chinese (which is indeed scary), but probably
some Romanized variant of it used as a lingua franca outside of Chinese
communities, which actually isn’t all that heard to learn.BTW
for what it’s worth, I was in Eastern Europe last month and I had
better luck using my (albeit somewhat limited) German than English
even, to my surprise, in some of the hangouts frequented by young
people. I didn’t find a single case of someone citing "bad blood" or
"painful history" as a reason not to study German, in any case– most
of the young generation don’t really seem to care too much about that
history in their modern perceptions of neighboring countries (other big
countries in Europe don’t exactly have clean hands themselves over the
past couple centuries, especially those in the colonialism business),
and language is basically neutral in any case– learning German doesn’t
mean one’s infatuated with Germany, just that one’s found it useful for
whatever reason as a mode of communication. I’ve actually been finding
a renewed interest in German in Eastern Europe, precisely for that
reason– with the EU expansion Germany has a big role, even with their
economic doldrums of late, and in any case with all the outsourcing
from Germany going on, Eastern Europeans are cashing in big with their
German knowledge. Plus, there’s a big and growing Eastern European
immigrant community in Germany, much more so than in the USA.The
Economist really isn’t accurate in calling English "Europe’s lingua
franca"– it may be the most studied language, but in terms of actual
use, especially on the Continent, German and French really do have more
importance overall. (Typical Economist hyperbole– a good magazine
overall maybe, but prone to overstating their case.) And as far as
English being useful globally– yes and no. In quite a few fields it’s
invaluable, and it may be the single most common "common language" of
different places, but I find in places throughout Asia, even former
British colonies like Singapore or countries like Thailand (where
English really has enjoyed the status of a business language), Chinese
is beginning to assume some predominance. If the US has a big recession
for whatever reason, it’s going to be right back to a big multilingual
stew worldwide. Americans– with our unfortunate reputation for
monolingualism– should definitely take note.
Nice to hear that Slovenians are so good at foreign languages but what happened in the shop is not very encouraging if you would learn THEIR language. Every experiences from people who try to learn Slovenian?