Percents of English speakers in Europe

f stop 25 | 2,507

11 Jun 2014 #1

I was surprised how many Swedes speak English.
And Greeks!

It shows that though Europeans are very widely exposed to English, there's a stark regional divide in how comfortable people are with really using it. In Northern Europe, most people can converse in English whereas in Southern Europe they can't.

vox.com/2014/6/11/5799678/map-where-europeans-speak-english

Monitor 14 | 1,818

11 Jun 2014 #2

That's quite similar to what you can see here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe
There is easy to notice pattern. The knowledge of English is higher in:
- countries not belonging to Romance languages group
- smaller countries
- western european as in eastern Europe Russian was Lingua franca until the end of Soviet Union.

Greece is part of Western Europe, small, not a Roman language, but still knowledge of English is lower than in Austria and equal to small Estonia. And as in Sweden many movies are subtitled in Greece. I think that it's general rule for small countries, because there is smaller audience to put dubbing effort.

OP f stop 25 | 2,507

11 Jun 2014 #3

There could be few more reasons, like the high-english population hopes to get out, at least economically, while most of the southeners are just enjoying the day. ;)