A newly updated index ranks English proficiency around the world

I don't mean to go all cui bono, but the company behind the study[] has a remarkably consistent knack for getting the message out in mainstream publications (HBR, Bloomberg, Economist) that the world's economies must learn English or fall behind. That may or may not be true, but the company's business is "language training" in 116 countries, seemingly with a focus on teaching English.

[]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_Education_First

I would take “openness”, as typed in an Economist article, to mean something like “[a country/government that] does not snuff out opinions contrary to that of the government, sometimes by disappearing, sending to concentration camps, and/or murdering contrarians”. Or something like that.

Also, I wish people would stop doing such mental gymnastics just to complain - your comment is effectively attempting to amplify the shortcomings of the study that are pointed out in the article you are quoting by then quoting them and adding slightly snarky commentary. Why? The author does a fine job framing what the study actually accomplishes, in their opinion, and then assessing its utility.

On that same note, The Economist article is a commentary on the study and not written by the authors of the actual study. So when The Economist says the results are “interesting” that is not Education First (the company behind the study) claiming their own results are interesting... it is an audience member doing so. Please be accurate if you are going to nitpick so aggressively.

The fact is the article does provide interesting commentary on the outcome of a vast and interesting survey while clearly acknowledging the interesting issues with the data.

Maybe they are saying it is much easier to enter the country? I will give an example with my own country -> South Africa. We have more white people than all other Africa countries combined. We have more Chinese people than all other African countries combined. We have more Indians than all other African countries combined. I won't even be surprised if we have more Indians than US percentage-wise. That sounds like a country that is more open to the rest of the world according to me.

However, there are nationalists who aren't welcoming if you are from a poor African country. They only welcome other races expect their own race -> African. It is mostly poor African people who think other Africans are coming to take their jobs. Good thing is that they don't have government support. Unlike in the US where it is the head of state telling people not to come to their country.

I suspect we even make our border to be porous just to allow other people to freely enter the country.

German pretty much only does dubbing (even for some live shows, amazingly) but is marked as "high proficiency".

Apropos the sampling question: English proficiency is (in my experience) poor outside large German cities.

Correlation for sure. Causation? Maybe in part. The cost of dubbing is very much higher that subtitling. So dubbing was only used when the target market was large enough. Larger language groups are more robust against cultural imperialism due to a more significant internal cultural market. Even science, which has universaly adopted English in Europe, was still written in French and German in their respective countries right up to the 1980s.

I have a friend whose wife is from the Netherlands, and she confirms this nearly has in-joke status among the Dutch - "we speak English better than the rest of Europe because we're in love with American TV and we can only get it with subtitles".

My experience as well. I visited a client in Berlin this summer. Pretty much everyone at work spoke perfect English and there were even workplace conversations in English between German native speakers, for the benefit of their international coworkers. All the usual touristy places in West Berlin were pretty much the same.

I stayed in Pankow though, which is a residential area of East Berlin, and I literally wasn't able to communicate a word in English. There wasn't much sympathy or patience to be seen when I was trying to speak German either, only annoyance. Which surprised me somehow - I remember living in Denmark people were both supportive and amused when I attempted to communicate in their language.

This is relative.

They're not saying "All Germans speak English well", they're saying "In average, Germans speak worse than the Dutch, better than the French and much better than Kuwaitis."

As others have mentioned, English is an official language in Singapore and South Africa.

As for Malaysia, English is not an "official language" however it is an official language in one state, and it is still an important language in government - particularly in the judiciary, where many cases are still conducted and judgements written in English. More importantly, it's the primary language in most larger private-sector businesses particularly in cities like KL where Malay is less dominant.

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edit: unless we're interpreting you wrong, and you mean that you're surprised that Northern Europeans do better than some Commonwealth countries - ignoring the obvious massive bias issues with this "study" as a whole, I'd remember that Europe has higher quality education in general than the poorer Commonwealth countries.

Even though South Africa has 11 official languages, English is the most official language in South Africa. When speeches are delivered by public officials, they are 99% in English. All official documents have English in it. Even the government official website is in English [1]. It is the only compulsory language at school. All private and urban schools teach English as a first language, then other languages as additional languages. Parents this side make sure their kids can speak English before they speak their own indigenous languages. Not mine though.

[1] https://www.gov.za/welcome-official-south-african-government...

English is an official language of Singapore, in fact probably effectively the official language, since it's the one everybody has to learn.

Singapore also has a lot of (temporary and permanent) immigration, and those immigrants may need to take ESL courses to adapt to Singapore, that would reflect on these results.

English is an official language in Singapore though. And it's at least partially official in South Africa too.

There are German schools in the US?

My favorite anecdote about Dutch people speaking English:

My husband and I were taking a few weeks after college graduation to visit Europe. I had studied French in school, so we made stops in a few different French cities. In one city, Lille, we were chatting in the town square when a group of 3 teenage boys came running up to us. In perfect English, one said "You speak English!! Thank God! We're here on a school trip from (some city in the Netherlands) and need to take a photo with someone here for a scavenger hunt." They admitted that they were completely horrified of the prospect of having to attempt to speak French in France.

A long time ago, before Analogue Terrestrial TV (OTA) was replaced by Digital broadcasts in the UK, I was visiting a friend in Amsterdam. I was surprised to discover that she was watching BBC television. The signal was strong enough to be received in Amsterdam, and I often wonder if this is why the Dutch are historically better at English because they watched so many British TV shows.

As an English speaker who knows a bit of German, Dutch basically seems like a random combination of English and German words with a few misspellings thrown in for kicks.

The Danes are better, at least for speaking and listening.

In Denmark, I can speak English to the cleaner, the security guard, the fast food seller, quite young children, the bus driver, and pensioners. Both in Copenhagen and smaller towns.

In the Netherlands, this has mixed results.

Writing can be mixed in Denmark. They are so confident in their ability, they don't check the result. I suspect few bothered to take the voluntary test this useless survey is based on.

(Source: I live in Denmark, I visit the Netherlands for work.)

Agreed. As a kid, I once picked a gaming name that was unbeknownst to me a Dutch word. So many other kids would join and start speaking what I presume to be Dutch, and when I said I'm American they'd have a laugh and speak in perfect English.

Gray appears to be countries which primarily speak English (e.g. US, UK) and countries that weren't able to get data (e.g. North Korea)