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Comment by nofilter | Hacker News Reader

Well, I'm Estonian living in Barcelona. A lot of things never bother to add Estonian support because we're such a tiny nation (like iOS, for example) which means our English is rather good. Good English is not something I've encountered much in Catalonia, so while yes I agree that having your country's technology work in your language is a must, it's also in my opinion a double-edged sword making more and more local people not speak English.

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I understand what you're saying but keep in mind that when Catalan is not available, the language that tends to be used isn't English, but Spanish.

Knowledge of Spanish in Catalonia is not by any metric bad.

And spanish is one of the top used languages in the world.

A quick Google suggest it has a) more native speakers than English, b) more total speakers than English, with only Chinese ahead of it.

That must dampen enthusiasm for learning other languages.

Yes, fallback is Spanish indeed. But I'm a young guy, I got to clubs a lot and most people I meet there are between 20 and 30 and having very hard time speaking in English. Which makes me amazed, especially in Barcelona, which is a very international city. The same problem is in France. It might be due the fact that most of the media never displays any English. Movies are over-voiced in Spanish and so forth. I have no sources to back this claim, it's just my theory.

yes, almost all the movies and TV shows are dubbed in Spanish, it makes English proficiency in Spain very bad

Yeah, it's interesting how just having subtitled media can help. When traveling, I came across an older guy in Viljandi who had learned his basic English from watching Melrose Place reruns.

For political and historical reasons that don't need to be discussed all over again, many people are bilingual but make a point of writing, speaking and demanding Catalan. They might be resigned to Spanish-speaking tourists, but much less tolerant in more official contexts (like software localization choices).

Why is that a problem though? Should people in an arbitrary country need to learn English?

Also, could you provide a source for the fact that English literacy rates are actually decreasing? I find that difficult to believe.

I don't see where he said it's decreasing.

And as I understand it, it's improving. Catalonia's fortunate in that most people are bilingual to begin with, which is known to ease the introduction of other languages considerably.

That's not a problem if you never want to communicate with people from countries where they don't speak Spanish nor learn Spanish in schools. It is a problem however if it's an international city like Barcelona and most people I've met between 20 and 30 have very hard time understanding or speaking English.

I didn't say the English literacy rates are decreasing, I'm simply stating that they speak a whole more English in the north than in the south as far as young people go and it generally surprises me how bad English among young people here is. Is it because while they do learn English in schools, they don't practice it enough? Certainly can't be the case in Barcelona, right?

Why the locals not speaking English is a bad thing?

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