There's a few more factors besides the ones in the article.
-Most of the languages high on the list are similar to English
-The countries don't dub movies. This has such a big impact. I learned most of my English from movies.
-Most of the languages high on the list are similar to English
-The countries don't dub movies. This has such a big impact. I learned most of my English from movies.
I'd say it's a generic trait of niche populations, that they gain better knowledge of languages in which information sources are available.
For example, I've consistently noticed programmers speak a better english than architects, and people who use some $RANDOM_NICHE_PLATFORM speak a better english than people who use $REALLY_POPULAR_PLATFORM, due to being forced to use english references.
Dutch has over twenty million native speakers, Swedish has ten million. That is not ridiculously small. Even Norwegian's four and a half million is, on a global scale, very respectable. To say nothing of the fact that the number of "translated sources" is not a function of the number of speakers, but of the wealth of the country and the spread of written culture (which is very high in all of these cases).
Moreover the wealth and cultural influence of these countries is a function of their willingness to interact beyond their linguistic sphere of influence.
I was referring to the economics of going after a much smaller market.
A publisher is more likely to target french and german before going after norwegian, thus a non mainstream author may appear in a finnish translation much after the publication in english, if ever. Or a movie distribution company may have less incentive to target the niche of TROMA aficionados in dutch than it does for the spanish ones.
They both would have relatively similar costs for the translation, but a much lower possible return.
Possibly more importantly, Finland shares a common history and religious background with Europe. There are many, many idioms and ways of looking at things that stem from historical and religious influences. Grimm's fairy tales, for example, spread through Europe widely, but not through Asia or the middle East. On result is that while Chinese often has sayings with a similar meaning as English ones, their literal meanings are very different. In European languages, on the other hand, the sayings are often literal translations.
Linguists whose focus is on Japanese generally do generally consider it an Altaic language. This includes the most prominent, such as Marshall Unger (under the name Macro-Tungusic). The classification is still somewhat controversial, but I think it's largely for historical reasons. Local Japanese language scholars, who are not linguists, have traditionally subscribed to the view that Japanese is special and separated from all other languages. Modern linguists do not generally subscribe to that view, regardless of whether a proto-Altaic existed or not.
In any case the points about shared cultural, historical and religious heritage still apply. Finns learning English have far more of a shared cultural framework to work from than Asians learning English do.
In any case, it's completely different than anything most people ever heard (I've been living in Finland for close to 5 years, and it just hasn't clicked for me yet, despite being very fluent in 3 languages and dabbling in 3 others).
You should maybe change the people you hang out with. I befriended "Finnish rednecks" for a year but that helped me go from 0 to fluent (YKI 5) in 2 years.
The word-forms of the Finnish noun kauppa 'shop' (N=2,253), generated automatically by Fred Karlsson
strawberry
strawberry-less
strawberry-less-ness
strawberry-less-ness-less
strawberry-less-ness-less-ness
.
.
.
∞[1] Dashes are on the page for clarity, they're not part of Finnish language
My friends in high school would attempt to construct perfect sentences in their head before speaking a word, which made them poor conversationalists.
The best thing about the Scandinavians is that they not only speak fantastic English, but they also adopt the accent of the English speaking country that they've spent the most time in or watched the most TV from.
Compare that to the French, Italian, etc, who can learn English very well but who never seem able (or willing) to shake the accent.
(A phoneme Swedish lacks is the "th" of "think", that was a problem to learn.)
If it's Britain, which accent ...
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ldyx_comedy-tour-of-briti...
I think his North Yorkshire and Blackburn are a bit off, others are a bit caricatured but generally he has them pretty well.
"Alright my booties?"
Or to ask differently: what do you think is good about the concept?
Disclaimer first: I'm absolutely no expert, by very far, on Japan or Japanese culture. I am writing this mostly to get answers from those who know better.
>>Don't you think the whole "lose face" part of the japanese culture is a run down model?
I don't know if I believe the face thing is the bad part.
I admire the hard work and dedication of the Japanese worker.
I'd guess (see disclaimer!) that the present problems rest with the higher levels of organisation in their society. A lack of accountability, from top to bottom.
Japan has, simplified, had a recession for close to two decades. I really don't want to know how a Western society would look in similar circumstances.
But this doesn't relate anything on why Japanse suck at English despite of all hard work on school.
It's a shame from where I see but it's ok cuz most people don't speak English.
Starting today, elementary schools has started to teach English to 5th(10 to 11 years old)graders. So that's 2 more years to learn English which adds up 8 years all together.
We'll have to wait and see our score improve. I doubt it.