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In the Netherlands children in higher secondary education learn English, French and German, besides Dutch. Many schools also offer courses in either Spanish or

• stingraycharles 15y ago
  Yes, but bear in mind that many Dutch people, while having had a few years of education in highschool, struggle when confronted with a conversation in French or German, and it's a long stretch to claim they are fluent. It's not comparable with the way people from Luxembourg speak French and German. (Disclaimer: my roots are in Luxembourg I live in The Netherlands).
• ghshephard 15y ago
  In Canada it's mandatory to take french (or at least, it was when I went to school) from Grade 7 through 9. I"m prepared to wager that 90%+ of the high school graduates in British Columbia/Alberta (where there isn't much french spoken) couldn't manage a simple conversation in french. The difference was in Luxembourg, where people effortlessly switched between french and german - and then fell back to english as the common european language if the speaker didn't understand either of those. (The service workers, at Subway and other restaurants tended to speak portugese - possibly speaking to where many of them had come from) Put another way - you could get by fine, anywhere in Luxembourg, speaking only French. You could get almost nowhere in British Columbia speaking only French (even though, theoretically, it's one of the two national languages of Canada). In the Netherlands - could a speaker in just French or German get by in only that language everywhere?