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Comment by Lukas_Skywalker | Hacker News Reader

That doesn‘t match my experience.

About 40% of all Swiss inhabitants speak English at least once a week [1].

Anecdotally, I can't think of a single acquaintance younger than 50 years old that doesn't speak fluently. Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.

Some of my German speaking friends even talk in English to French speaking people, even when both have learned the other‘s respective language at school.

[1]: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerun...

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> Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.

We learn the other's respective language for 7 years, too. Yet, as you pointed out, people speak in English because there is no willingness to learn and apply the other's language.

Some of my friends speak English fluently, but I have a very hard bias as I work in IT. My whole family doesn't speak any language other than French. Most of the people I've been to school with don't come close to speaking English casually. None would watch an English content creator.

Due to the shared heritage between the English and German languages, perhaps it's different in the German-speaking region. If you ask someone slightly complicated English questions, they might not be completely lost - after all, some words share the same etymology. But Switzerland is absolutely not an English-speaking country at all.

No, I wouldn't say it's an English-speaking country either. No one talks in English to their peers that are from the same language region.

But yes, I can mostly speak of the German-speaking part. People generally have little problems switching to English, and are used to speaking as well.

Would you say this is also true of Swiss living in more rural areas? And among older people, too?

This is just a feeling, and I am still speaking for the German part only, but I think age matters less than urban/rural.

Many older people I know have no problems communicating in English when they‘re abroad.

Would be interesting to have the BFS statistics split by age group and region as well…

Where in that link does it mention that? I read through the whole thing, and what I saw is wildly lower than you said.

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