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> A lot Dutch people think they are really good in English, but we really aren't (sometimes native English speakers beg us to not try and speak English but use
by lawlorino 8y ago
> A lot Dutch people think they are really good in English, but we really aren't (sometimes native English speakers beg us to not try and speak English but use Dutch instead so they at least understand what is being said given their limited knowledge of the Dutch language).
As a native English speaker living in NL I'm really curious about this, could you describe a situation? The few Dutch people I work with have outstanding levels of English, although being at a company where ~90% of people in my department are non-Dutch, so English is widely spoken, my observation is clearly very biased. Plus I live in Amsterdam which I hear is very different from the rest of the country in this respect.
- PoachedSausage 8y agoAnother native English person here, so usual disclaimers. I have visited and traveled extensively from an early age around the southern Netherlands (Noord-Brabant) due to my parents meeting and befriending a Dutch couple whilst traveling there before I was born. I have found levels of English there to also be excellent, one possible reason could be that English language television and radio broadcasts (BBC etc) have been available to the Dutch for decades, and in a lot of cases actively consumed. That was certainly the case when I was there as a child.