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Super noob's avatar

I do speak German, Italian, English and some (very little) Spanish, Mandarin and French. In my view a language is a door to another culture. Without it, it is really hard to emerge. English did come relatively easy for me (coming from german) but I only learned it for 2 years. This is why I had to read some books and travel to US/UK/Australia. English is, de facto, the lingua franca. In most of Europe this is accepted like a social law - in the french speaking parts of Europe (southern belgium, Luxemburg and France) people still fight this fact a bit.

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Alex_J's avatar

I know my European friends started learning English from an early age in school - much earlier than I (UK) had to start French & German. Pre-internet, the prevalence of American TV shows and British and American music were strong influences in helping Europeans pick-up English by osmosis outside of the classroom too. The network effect is definitely true, and I wonder if the European Union project which has actively sought to remove physical borders between European countries has encouraged an environment that is broadly more interested/enthused to communicate with each other - and English happens to be the easiest route - because of the influences of business & culture. From my experience some countries/areas of Europe tend to be more open to speaking (and likely fluent in) English than others - Scandinavia and Netherlands for example.

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