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2 remarks: - of course Europe's largest economies are going to be the least incentivized to adopt English due to their larger internal market both in terms of
by PeterStuer 7y ago
2 remarks:
- of course Europe's largest economies are going to be the least incentivized to adopt English due to their larger internal market both in terms of culture as well as economics.
- The International Englishes (plural) are different from both UK and US English. The scientific community has its own 'dialect', and the EU political/administration/diplomatic English is different still. Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture these nuances.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture these nuances. Standardized tests don't do well at assessing language fluency in general. For one example, my sister was born in the US, grew up in the US, was educated in English, spoke English (exclusively) at home, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She failed the State Department's test of fluency in English.
- magic_beans 7y agoThat's hilarious. Does the test involve arcane grammar rules?
- saagarjha 7y agoSimilarly, I know a number of fluent Spanish speakers who got caught up in high school Spanish because they didn’t have an understanding of grammar to the level of what was required in the class…
- sweeneyrod 7y agoGermans speak pretty good English though, the young ones that I've met basically seem like natives with an accent.
- Tainnor 7y agoDefinitely better than e.g. Italian or French people, but we do observe that e.g. most Scandinavian people speak better English.