This makes sense. I've never studied Dutch but whenever I see it I somehow know what it says.
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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The huge gap between Portugal and Spain is surprising to me. I would have thought they'd be near identical in terms of English proficiency.
Portugal runs a lot of technology/near-shore outsourcing for across Europe where English is still a common collaboration language, where Spain supports a lot of Tourists across the Eurozone, and generally supports those tourists in multiple languages.
I'd expect this contributes at least partially to the difference.
Mid proficiency - the countries wanting to learn anything but Russian. Top proficiency - the countries with excellent education systems.
As someone from one of these top proficiency countries, Sweden, it's not just the educational system. Learning english in school will only get you so far. You need to be exposed to english much more than that to become proficient. I was lucky enough to be incredibly exposed to english due to having an aunt that lived there, however.
I remember being on vacation in Germany as a kid. On the boat to Germany, there was a TV and no one around, I was bored, Terminator was on, cool. Except... They spoke german. I flip the channels, find the Simpsons, and they speak, german. After we had gotten through Germany and made it to France, I once again saw something on a TV somewhere, and they spoke French, though I could see the lips didn't quite match what was said. I realised it was dubbed to French.
And that's when I understood how I, as a 12 year old kid, could speak english better than most german and french adults.
These days are different I'm sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are some traces remaining.
France?
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.
Where does the UK and Eire come on this?
It was skewed off the bottom of the scale by scouse.
Yeah the obvious joke is "United Kingdom: DNF"
Fake news. Everyone in France speaks English when English speakers aren't around. They only speak French out of spite.
That checks out for Quebec as well.
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 always think my English is pretty good, untill I hear some Glaswegian....
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...
It is actually a feature as far as bureocracy and diplomacy is concerned. If a language is the non-native language for more or less everyone, no country has an advantage in negotiations due to rethorical skills and so on.
And besides, the only other real options would be French or German, and really no one wants that.
While it is definitely true that in such case English would be quite fair inside of EU, it also puts EU in worse position in outside world where USA have those advantages...
Beside that there is a viable alternative. Remember that Izrael has revived its ancient language, and Indonesia created a new one based on language of one of their small islands. That language united nation of hundreds of millions!
We can use Esperanto. It is artificial in origin, so no one nation speaks it natively (native individuals do, but not nations). It is designed to be easy to learn and use (I personally confirm it - 2 years of autodidacticly learning Esperanto was equivalent of 15 years of school learning of English). So even people who never heard about it can very quickly get to very usable level.
And possibly the best part is that it can serve as a language that units humankind as a whole. We all can preserve our national language for national communication and use Esperanto for international communication. This will not happen tomorrow, but with political support it can happen quickly. Until then, many people, as me, use it daily and support it's spread.
Iβd love German becoming the lingua franca and official language. I much prefer it over English.
But, oh well. Itβs not like a lingua franca can be decided upon. It just ends up becoming one (due to necessity and the power of its speakers). Thereβs really no reason any other language would take over from English at the moment.
The fact that power of speakers matter is very valid while those speakers are centered on the ethnocentric level of care, or lower (see eg Integral theory by Ken Wilber: Loevinger; Spiral Dynamics etc). But when society as a whole develops, they care more about other groups and humankind as a whole. Then it is much easier to do adopt a lingua franca than serves them all rather than just forcing smaller nations to use language of the hegemon of the time.
Malta and Ireland?
Yes.
Where is Slovenia???
Exactly
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?
Where in Germany? This coulf be a latent East/West divide.
Ruhrpott and DΓΌsseldorf.
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.
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.
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..
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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
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