Sat outside a hotel in Krak' smoking a fag I overheard two groups of teenagers talking to each other, a group of local Poles and a group of Scandinavians,guess what,they were communicating in English,so,yeah, I can see the argument for English speakers just not bothering.
It is NOT a case of just not bothering, it is;
WHICH ONE?You Poles say you hav 7 neighbours, for us it is like having to learn the language of every single one of them, I doubt very much you Poles speak even one of your neighbour's languages, but if you learn English you can speak to EVERYONE single one of your neighbours, there is a big insentiv to learning English, it is worth the effort.
How much of an asset learning English is and how wide spread it has become, I will giv you an example; today I was in an Chinese restaurant, when I group of Oriental people came in, I assumed that they wer Chinese, but when the waitress took their orders, she had to speak to them and they to her in English, I found out later they wer Vietnamese people not Chinese. So you hav two countries on the other side of the World, right next to each other, and they hav to communicate to each other in English!!!! I think it shows how International English has become the World's
lingu franca.
Also it is easier for you to learn English than for us to learn another language.
1. You are all taught English at school, in England we do learn foreign languages, but one school will teach French, another school will teach German, that school teaches Spanish, and another school, trying to be all trendy and right-on, will teach Mandarin or some other language, like my niece's school, and since she has changed schools, she's stop learning Mandarin, and is now learning another language. You don't hav that "stop-start" non sense we hav, you can always add what English you learn to the English you hav already learned.
2. It is worth making the effort as we hav discussed before, no matter how much it is ******* you off it is still worth persevering learning English for all the rewards you are going to get., no English speaker has that incentiv.
3. You watch England language programs and films all the time, pick up a bit of English all the time - I think i hav watch two Polish language (with sub-titles) films in my life.
4. Even today, decades after it started, Pop Music, Rock Music what ever you want to call it, is still over-overwhelmingly in English. I don't think we hav ever had a Polish language Pop song in our charts, I can only think of about 4 foreign language songs that hav got into our Pop charts in the last 50 years, one of them being Gangnam Style which is in the charts at the moment, the others a Hebrew song in the 70's, a Spanish holidaySong in the 70's, una polona Blanca or something like that, there are probably others, but your charts are full of English language songs, and we all know how teenagers love Pop Music and culture, that is another source and insentiv to learn English, which they are already learning at school and watching on Telly at the same time.
