Why do Dutch and Scandinavians speak English so well?

<<Scandinavians don't speak that good, last night on the Eurosong contest, Danish singer pronounced EASY as [i:si], this is not acceptable pronunciation. Do they have a speech defect that prevents them from pronouncing voiced consonants? They'd better get a sound therapist. >>

Well, you do know that Scandinavian languages do not have the voiced "z" sound /z/, right? So this is a phoneme that is fremmit to them.

It's no different when English speakers pronounce /y/ as /i/ or /u/ (French "lune" like "loon")

It's finding the closest approximation in your language and substituting it while you're working on developing the new sound. Go easy :)

I read an interview recently with a Swedish language professor. He was asked if he thought the Swedish language was being threatened in any way by the presence of English in the region. He dismissed this notion, pointing out that Sweden is a small trading nation that has always had to learn foreign languages in order to survive.

The Scandanavians seem to happily accept that learning English (and to a lesser extent, German and French) is very useful for communication on an international scale while they have their own language for use among themselves. The two tongues seem to peacefully co-exist whereas other countries have insecurities about being infiltrated by English.

The two tongues seem to peacefully co-exist whereas other countries have insecurities about being infiltrated by English.


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It's not insecuritie, it's because english native speaker are often arrogant and expect everyone speak their language whereas they don't try to speak or to learn one word of the local language.
There is some bitterness, I think.

>>It's not insecuritie, it's because english native speaker are often arrogant and expect everyone speak their language whereas they don't try to speak or to learn one word of the local language.
There is some bitterness, I think.<<

Remember, though, that there are plenty of languages out there, and even if we learned one or more other than English, there is no guarantee that said language(s) are ones you speak. Furthermore, it is really hard to get practice in the US speaking any language other than English other than Spanish, and likewise it is really hard to get practice in Canada speaking any language other than English other than French. Even if people do speak things other than those two, they are likely to still speak English anyways and to assume that you do not speak what they speak (or that if you do, they still speak English better).

<<it's because english native speaker are often arrogant and expect everyone speak their language whereas they don't try to speak or to learn one word of the local language. >>

Yes, it's true that many English speakers make no effort whatsoever to learn another language. Some do, but have to resort to English in other countries and then probably get tarred with the monolingual brush. Yet nobody would castigate a Finn for speaking English in Switzerland.

I find that the Dutch and Scandanavian people aren't too willing to help people learn their language and any attempts are normally met with a stony reply in English. So there's an arrogance there too.

I find that the Dutch and Scandanavian people aren't too willing to help people learn their language and any attempts are normally met with a stony reply in English. So there's an arrogance there too.

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No, it's just that this is so unusual that foreigners can speak their language and they presume their languages are difficult to learn or useless.
But I understand what you say, I share the same experience. When I was in Amsterdam, I try to speak Dutch but they respond me in English, I was so disappointed.

>> it is really hard to get practice in Canada speaking anything other than French <<

I disagree. If you go to Vancouver, it is unlikely that you will find anyone who speaks French very well. On the other hand, you could get by quite well just knowing Chinese, as there is a huge number of Chinese immigrants. I don't remember the exact number but I think that there are something like 30 native Sinophones to every 1 native Francophone.

Yes, but will they speak a given Chinese language (that is, in practice, Mandarin or Cantonese) to you if you do not already speak such well, especially since they probably already speak English much better than you speak such?

Yeah. They even seemed quite willing to help me learn new words and stuff. Are there any other North American cities like Vancouver that have a large enough immigrant population that it would be feasible to not speak any English at all?

That's interesting - most of the people here that I know of who speak things other than English or Spanish only speak them to other people who already speak such (which is typically just their family)...

Yeah that's how most places are.

<<I share the same experience. When I was in Amsterdam, I try to speak Dutch but they respond me in English, I was so disappointed. >>

I once had a go at learning Dutch. I'm already proficient in German so it wasn't a huge leap to make. But, like you, when I tried to speak Dutch in Amsterdam I was answered in English. I found that very annoying, particulary as I knew for a fact that while my pronunciation may not have been spot-on, what I was saying was perfectly understandable.

***I find that the Dutch and Scandanavian people aren't too willing to help people learn their language and any attempts are normally met with a stony reply in English. So there's an arrogance there too***

That may well have something to do with the fact that the Dutch and the Scandinavians - but more especially the Dutch and in the case of the Scandinavians the Danes particularly - are aware of the harshness and gutturality of their respective Languages and they don't really relish the sound of all this coming across at them from an English speaker attempting to speak in either Dutch or Danish, and they really do appreciate the generally softer, far less harshly guttural tones of English. Glaswegians and Scousers excepted of course! ;-)

The further north you go on the Continent of Europe the higher the fluency and the quality of spoken English becomes among the local people.

The average Scandinavian or Dutch person speaks a much better standard of English than does your average Italian or Greek or Portuguese person - or anyone from the so called Mediterranean countries - but with regard to the French there is hard evidence that their increasing willingness to speak English is resulting in a much higher standard than in the past. Many French people, especially those of the present up-coming generation, have realised that there is no point in contuining any further the dogged dismissal of the global domination of the English Language. I only hope they don't change their exceedingly appealing accent as they improve their spoken English - I love to hear it from either gender.

Of course I've been to the Netherlands - try keeping me away from Amsterdam for starters! - it's less than an hour's flight from Heathrow and about 80 minutes from Edinburgh - and I've been to Copenhagen once, which included a six hours' stay just across the very narrow Kattegat over in Helsingborg, Sweden. At no time did I experience anything but a readiness to speak excellent English by the local people in either Denmark or Sweden, and in the Netherlands in particular even young kids of about 8 to 10 years of age are almost word perfect in English. At times I thought the Dutch speak better English than do many Brits but that may be down to the fact that they don't use colloquialisms and slang terms in the same way as we do.

<<
That may well have something to do with the fact that the Dutch and the Scandinavians - but more especially the Dutch and in the case of the Scandinavians the Danes particularly - are aware of the harshness and gutturality of their respective Languages and they don't really relish the sound of all this coming across at them from an English speaker attempting to speak in either Dutch or Danish, and they really do appreciate the generally softer, far less harshly guttural tones of English. Glaswegians and Scousers excepted of course! ;-)>>



You are so full of shit it's unbelievable. I guarantee you 99.9% of native speakers of any language couldn't give a flying fuck about how guttural or soft their language is, especially during normal conversations. I mean, it's possible if they were writing poetry then that might come down to 99.1%, but seriously, you are deluded if you really think this.

The reason they speak English is because they speak it well, in most cases better than any English speaker speaks Dutch. Yes it may be annoying for the 1 in 100 English speakers who actually do know Dutch better than they know English, but the vast majority don't know a word of it, so it's not surprising they would switch to English straight away. And even if it's not that then, if anything, they are showing off, everyone likes to seem smart, even if they aren't. Although, if all Anglos are of your intellect maybe they really are smarter.

I mean, geez, English is not God's gift to the Speakers of Harsh Languages! It's a language like ANY other, it just happens to be more useful. If it were Arabic, Russian or Mandarin instead, then people would learn them instead, regardless of how guttural they are, and they wouldn't give a shit about English, regardless of how melodic it is.

You do hear people claim that the Dutch and Scandanavians speak better English than the Brits. This is simply not true, they may speak in crystal clear tones but their underlying vocabulary and phrase bank will never approach those of a native speaker.