4 ms·

Nope, I think the reason that user "petke" has mentioned is correct. I know this is only anecdotal evidence, but here it is: I live in a small town near the ser

Nope, I think the reason that user "petke" has mentioned is correct. I know this is only anecdotal evidence, but here it is: I live in a small town near the serbian-hungarian border and we can watch both Hungarian and Serbian TV stations. In Serbia movies are subtitled (so you can hear English language all the time) while in Hungary movies are dubbed (so you can't hear anything other than hungarian language on TV). Serbian families who live here watch mostly serbian TV and hungarian families watch mostly hungarian TV stations. Ask any English teacher here and they will all tell you that there is very clear distinction between level of knowledge in serbian vs hungarian kids. They all live in the same town, go to the same school, the only difference is that those kids who watched serbian TV stations had much bigger exposure to english language as opposed to those who watched hungarian TV stations. Your reasoning that the size of the country matters doesn't hold water because both countries are small.

scarmig 11y ago
Wow, that's an awesome natural experiment. Can you share the name of the town? Or would any town near the border do?
- dragandj 11y ago
  That is probably Subotica.
- perakojotgenije 11y ago
  The name of the town is Senta, although I guess that any nearby town which has bilingual population would do.
bad_user 11y ago
In Romania, my country, we are also not dubbing movies, although there is a trend for that when it comes to cartoons for little kids. In Bulgaria on the other hand, our neighbors, they've been dubbing movies at least since I was little. Not sure what the deal is there, but Romania has almost 3 times the population of Bulgaria, so I don't buy that it's about size. Anyway, in Romania we are speaking far better English than any of our neighbors, which includes Hungary and Ukraine. I used to think that happens because Romanian is a romance language, but that doesn't fully explain it. Oh, and people here learn Italian and Spanish as well, almost effortlessly, just by watching soap opera :-) And many of us have learned French in school, though I was not lucky to have good teachers. BTW, English has some nice features for learners. For example it doesn't assign gender to objects, like all romance languages are doing. Those of us that speak in such languages forgot how hard it was to learn those genders when we were kids.

scarmig 11y ago

Wow, that's an awesome natural experiment. Can you share the name of the town? Or would any town near the border do?

dragandj 11y ago
That is probably Subotica.
perakojotgenije 11y ago
The name of the town is Senta, although I guess that any nearby town which has bilingual population would do.

bad_user 11y ago

In Romania, my country, we are also not dubbing movies, although there is a trend for that when it comes to cartoons for little kids. In Bulgaria on the other hand, our neighbors, they've been dubbing movies at least since I was little. Not sure what the deal is there, but Romania has almost 3 times the population of Bulgaria, so I don't buy that it's about size. Anyway, in Romania we are speaking far better English than any of our neighbors, which includes Hungary and Ukraine. I used to think that happens because Romanian is a romance language, but that doesn't fully explain it. Oh, and people here learn Italian and Spanish as well, almost effortlessly, just by watching soap opera :-) And many of us have learned French in school, though I was not lucky to have good teachers. BTW, English has some nice features for learners. For example it doesn't assign gender to objects, like all romance languages are doing. Those of us that speak in such languages forgot how hard it was to learn those genders when we were kids.