I look at this and I think you know, not everything needs to be a bar chartβ¦ this is different, itβs creative, but then again, it would be better as a bar chart.
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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Where does the UK and Eire come on this?
I always think my English is pretty good, untill I hear some Glaswegian....
Fake news. Everyone in France speaks English when English speakers aren't around. They only speak French out of spite.
Everyone in France speaks English the moment an English speaker tries to speak French.
My French sucks. I would intentionally butcher French just so theyβd roll their eyes and start speaking English.
We need a BadDataViz community...
I am still amazed by the English thing in EU. Only 2 EU nations, and even quite small ones, speaks English natively, and not even as their only one language. In the same time, who speaks English natively? One country that left our club, one country that wages economic war against us, couple of great partner countries outside of Europe, and couple of others.
When we wanted to unite more, we promised to abandon our national currencies and adopt euro. But we still play small when it comes to language...
Malta and Ireland?
Yes.
Itβs hard to believe Germany is so high on the list. I visit regularly and even worked there for a while, where are all the fluent English speakers hiding?
Currently in university or so, and there is a large countryside vs. city gap.
In my experience there has been a relatively recent massive improvement in English skills by the younger generation. Anyone 35+ is still very much behind though. As an elder Millenial myself, it actually caught me on a wrong foot carreerwise as being able to speak English well is no longer considered to be a selection criteria for many jobs, because so many can do it and it is assume a given.
I guess this (and the data being from a very selected part of population ie. test takers) would explain my experiences with Ruhrpott folks of around 30 to 70 years of age. I've met many people in their late thirties, some who even work in universities, unable or very uncomfortable in speaking English.
The EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) attempts to rank countries by the equity of English language skills amongst those adults who took the EF test. It is the product of EF Education First, an international education company, and draws its conclusions from data collected via English tests available for free over the internet. The index is an online survey first published in 2011based on test data from 1.7 million test takers. The most recent edition was released in November 2023.
So the data is not representative for the entire population of a country.
I don't know what study these numbers are based on, but many of them only assess certain (typically younger) age groups. In my experience, the people coming out of school today in Germany are often quite good in English.
Edit: Looked it up. The data are not based on any study but the results of test takers that aim to earn a certain language certificate. So no specific age group but still likely younger people. The sample is completely self-selected, though, so it's hard to say anything definitive. From the Wikipedia page:
The EF EPI 2024 edition was calculated using test data from 2.1 million test takers in 2023. The test takers were self-selected. 116 countries and territories appear in this edition of the index. In order to be included, a country was required to have at least 400 test takers.
And more:
The EF English Proficiency Index has been the subject of criticism in literature. From the point of view of methodology, it suffers from self-selection bias. Instead of testing the level of English proficiency in the population, it tests the level of English of those who self-select.
This seems like a very poor basis for a country ranking.
Really? Nearly everyone I met there spoke excellent English..
Same with Austria. As a Dane living in Austria, it feels like nobody here has even half-decent English skills. It's horrible, and I blame generations of dubbed TV and movies.
Maybe English proficiency across the world isnβt as high as the internet would have you believe.
I'm also confused. Maybe they just don't want to talk, that's the best explanation I have.
Where is Slovenia???
Exactly
Was curious how Belgium would score by language region.
Seems the Flemish part scores higher than The Netherlands while Wallonia drags everything down.
French speakers being French speakers. Case in point: France scores lower than fucking Russia
This explains why French people are always speaking French in game chat in Rocket League as if French is the Lingua Franca lmfao so silly.
Every time they utilize the chat it's also to be unprovokedly toxic which is another mystery. Maybe they're just that unhappy? Something bad in the water?
Lingua Franca
I wheezed
French used to be the lingua franca of diplomacy for hundreds of years, actually. It was replaced by English only fairly recently.
That's the joke! ^^
Toutes mes Γ©xcuses
Fairly unsurprising. English is literally harder if your native language is a romance language than if it is a germanic language. Same is true for germanic native speakers who try to learn a romance language.
Except Flemish people tend to speak good French while people from Wallonia barely speak Dutch. I agree with your statement in general, but in the case of Belgium there's a lot more to it than that.
Missed the chance to reverse the color scale and have orange for the Netherlands.
What is the point of depicting data in this manner? The spatial coordinates have no meaning
The countries are ordered on the bend line according to their rank, so the 1-dimensional spatial coordinate system describing this line does have meaning.
This somwhat unusual representation has the advantage that they managed to represent all datapoints with a well readable font on a graphic that fits well even on a phone's screen, and it's sort of eye-catching.
It's pretty unintuitive, though. I had to actually read and analyse it rather than just view it.
Seems made for mobile.
Just for fun I wonder where England and the USA would be on this list...
I find that broken English is easier to understand, compared to the time I talked to a Londoner in the bus, I could understand him but my travel buddy had no idea.
Accents can be rough on tourists.
It's known that two non-native English speakers can understand each other more easily than a non-native speaker and a native speaker. The non-native speakers are better at deciphering incorrect use of the language than the native speaker who has stricter expectations.
I wonder what the numbers look like between English first language 'with no second language experience' versus 'some or fluent post-childhood learning second language experience'. Because there are a lot of English only speakers.
I've been told im awful to practice English with because i just understand. But i have teen/adult learning experience with two other languages.
I think it has a significant impact, yes. When you understand how different grammatical structures in other languages behave, and if you are even familiar with some of the words from other languages, understanding the speaker's incorrect English (or other language they are trying to speak with you) becomes much easier. π
At work I had to speak my english slow and deliberate with french people when in international meetings, or they would not understand.
The interesting part is that when doing so I picked up the "french accent" in my own English π .
I am fully expecting England to not be at the top. Especially if written skills are measured.
England: 1st place
USA: 7th place
- England
- Ireland
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Bahamas
- Nigeria
- USA
Checks out.
There's a related joke, about the general language skills of populations: the Luxembourgish speak four languages, the Swiss speak three languages, the Swedish speak two languages, the English speak one language and the US-americans speak half a language.
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