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What exactly to you base your assertions on? For me as a Norwegian it is perfectly natural to read HN. For many Europeans tech is primarly done in english. When

What exactly to you base your assertions on? For me as a Norwegian it is perfectly natural to read HN. For many Europeans tech is primarly done in english. When studying at Uni we use english books in most tech fields. Most European countries are too small to rely exclusively on a home market and hence is used to doing businness abroad and working in english. I work for a Norewgian company but all our company wide emails are written in english and so is most documentation. In fact our software does not exist with an Norwegian language localization. And as with many other Norwegians and I suppose many other europeans I have no idea what most software concepts are called in my native language.

Karnickel 9y ago
Speaking from Germany: While lots of professionals speak English more or less well, what is telling to me and a big indicator that the situation does not look as good as some people want to believe is the fact that there is hardly any English-language cinema or movies/series (on TV). Even where I am, a major German city, there is the one huge cinema complex (10 cinemas) that only shows 2 or 3 English language movies - in their smallest rooms and with less than 10% of seats taken. Every single movie and TV series gets German speakers for this market. I can't say how reliable of an indicator this is, but I think given that this stuff (TV and cinema) still is a huge part of daily mass entertainment the fact that those offering the (often originally US-made) material choose to spend a lot of effort creating a German voice track pretty much without exception probably is significant.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Germany is big enough, both population- and business-wise, to not have to lean nearly as much on English compared to smaller countries. You also see this in book translations. Here in Denmark, the choice is sometimes rather limited (outside of bestsellers) and the translation quality suffers. Compare this to Germany, where the market is significantly larger, so more more and higher quality translations are available. I'm Danish and my girlfriend is German, and I definitely notice the difference whenever I visit her family in Baden-Württemberg. I also noticed it while I was studying. Technical documentation was usually only available in English and German. When you have a population of >80 million people, there is a large incentive for producing native language products. As a consequence, a lot of Germans over a certain age simply do not speak English very well, or at all.
microcolonel 9y ago
Norway is among exceptions (Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg), as far as I can tell, with a combined English literate population under that of say... Canada[0]. Most seem to (understandably) support their native language at the expense of English. Granted Germany, Austria, Poland, and Belgium all have relatively high English proficiency nonetheless, but it isn't anywhere near as ubiquitous as it is in Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Luxembourg. [0]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Population+of+Norway+%2B+Population+of+Netherlands+%2B+Population+of+Sweden+%2B+Population+of+Denmark+%2B+Population+of+Finland+%2B+Population+of+Luxembourg https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Population+of+Norway+%...
- NicoJuicy 9y ago
  Actually, Flanders ( part of Belgium) speaks Dutch, French and English ( even some German), you are talking about Wallonia

Karnickel 9y ago

Speaking from Germany: While lots of professionals speak English more or less well, what is telling to me and a big indicator that the situation does not look as good as some people want to believe is the fact that there is hardly any English-language cinema or movies/series (on TV). Even where I am, a major German city, there is the one huge cinema complex (10 cinemas) that only shows 2 or 3 English language movies - in their smallest rooms and with less than 10% of seats taken. Every single movie and TV series gets German speakers for this market. I can't say how reliable of an indicator this is, but I think given that this stuff (TV and cinema) still is a huge part of daily mass entertainment the fact that those offering the (often originally US-made) material choose to spend a lot of effort creating a German voice track pretty much without exception probably is significant.

KozmoNau7 9y ago
Germany is big enough, both population- and business-wise, to not have to lean nearly as much on English compared to smaller countries. You also see this in book translations. Here in Denmark, the choice is sometimes rather limited (outside of bestsellers) and the translation quality suffers. Compare this to Germany, where the market is significantly larger, so more more and higher quality translations are available. I'm Danish and my girlfriend is German, and I definitely notice the difference whenever I visit her family in Baden-Württemberg. I also noticed it while I was studying. Technical documentation was usually only available in English and German. When you have a population of >80 million people, there is a large incentive for producing native language products. As a consequence, a lot of Germans over a certain age simply do not speak English very well, or at all.

microcolonel 9y ago

Norway is among exceptions (Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg), as far as I can tell, with a combined English literate population under that of say... Canada[0]. Most seem to (understandably) support their native language at the expense of English. Granted Germany, Austria, Poland, and Belgium all have relatively high English proficiency nonetheless, but it isn't anywhere near as ubiquitous as it is in Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Luxembourg. [0]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Population+of+Norway+%2B+Population+of+Netherlands+%2B+Population+of+Sweden+%2B+Population+of+Denmark+%2B+Population+of+Finland+%2B+Population+of+Luxembourg https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Population+of+Norway+%...

NicoJuicy 9y ago
Actually, Flanders ( part of Belgium) speaks Dutch, French and English ( even some German), you are talking about Wallonia