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They are standardizing on English. I recently moved to the Netherlands and only speak English and 99% of people I've met speak English. Nearly all meetups and t
by TimJRobinson 12y ago
They are standardizing on English. I recently moved to the Netherlands and only speak English and 99% of people I've met speak English. Nearly all meetups and tech conferences in western Europe are also done in English.
Also almost the entire world uses metric, it would really suck if everyone in the entire world spoke English except for the country you grew up in.
- adventured 12y agoThe countries in Europe with a high % of English language use, are simultaneously maintaining their old languages. For example the Netherlands are keeping Dutch, and Sweden is keeping Swedish. It'd be like arguing the US is standardizing on metric, while still commonly using imperial, keeping both would be extremely inefficient and pointless. I believe language standardization is more important than measurement standardization, and yet, again, half of Europe has no common language. Somehow language gets treated with special kid gloves, because it's supposedly an important tie to culture. I completely reject that claim as being any more valid than trying to claim imperial is an important tie to culture and thus should be preserved. Only about 35% of people in France speak English; for Italy it's sub 30%; Spain is only 22% or so. And this isn't fluency, it's the % of people with any meaningful knowledge of English. The rate of moderate fluency would be far lower.