The position of the Netherlands on the list is easy to understand, foreign TV programmes are subtitled not dubbed.
The position of the Netherlands on the list is easy to understand, foreign TV programmes are subtitled not dubbed.
Subtitles might help some but putting effort into actively learning a language is more important; I've seen many subtitled French, Italian and German movies, but I haven't picked up those languages by osmosis... I wish it were that easy.
There are about 20 million Dutch speakers, vs. perhaps 400 million English speakers in the US and UK, which have large markets for TV shows and movies with correspondingly large budgets. For the average Dutch speaker, the subtitled offerings in English are apparently much richer than the home-grown stuff.
This, at least, was how it was explained to me by multiple independent Dutch-speaking Belgians who all had an embarrassingly firm command of idiomatic English.