Scandinavian students tops at English in Europe ( France last)

[Flagg]

SCANDINAVIAN STUDENTS TOPS AT ENGLISH IN EUROPE

STOCKHOLM, March 2 (AFP) - Swedish and Norwegian students aced a study of English levels among 15 and 16 year-olds in eight non-English speaking European countries, the Swedish National Agency for Education announced on Tuesday.
Students from Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark also scored well while Spain and France lagged far behind in the Assessment of English study, carried out by the European Network of Policy Makers for the Evaluation of Education Systems in cooperation with the French education ministry.
Swedish and Norwegian ninth-graders showed the best results in reading, writing and comprehending English.
According to the Swedish National Agency for Education, Swedish students show a more positive attitude towards learning English in school than students in many other European countries, with more than 90 percent of all Swedish ninth-graders saying they believe English is important.


http://www.ttc.org/ta40302b.htm

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. Le Francais ne parlent pas bien anglais? Dites c'est pas vrai!

[gula]

8. Um

I believe it should be "Le Français ne parle" or "Les Français ne parlent"

[West Coast Democrat]

2. That's because few people in the world speak the Scandinavian

languages...it is an absolute necessity for them to become fluent in English and other languages.

[northzax]

4. exactly

find a scandinavian who doesn't speak at least two other languages (in addition to probably another scandinavian one) and I'll show you a fifth grader.

[West Coast Democrat]

5. Also, I find that most Scandinavians speak with only a very minor.....

accent. When they're speaking English, often the accent is very hard to detect.

[happyslug]

9. Have you ever heard someone speak one of the Scandinavian Languages

It sounds like bad English. Trade between Scandinavia and England existed prior to 1066 and lasted while into the Norman Period. Thus English is closer to Norwegian, Danish and Swedish than any of the four are to German (Which is closer to English than any of the romance languages).

The same similarity exists between Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. Very closely related languages that in some ways are more dialects of each other than separate languages.

As to the French, does Paris think there is any other language one needs to speak besides French? Parisians look down on people who speak Provincial (Which is closer to Spanish and Italian than French) and Provincial is spoken in Southern France (The Roman "Province" which was speaking Latin 200 years before the Rest of right is now France was Conquered by the Roman Empire).

All told this result does not surprise me at all.

[PurityOfEssence]

10. They're also germanic languages, like English, hence it's easier to learn

If you want to quibble about Finnish being a non-germanic language, I'll quibble about Finland often not being considered part of Scandanavia.

French, although it was the official language of England for something like 400 years, and contributed greatly to English, is a romance language.

[smirkymonkey]

11. I thought Finnish was in a completely different

language family than the Scandinavian tongues? I think it is more closely related to Korean & Hungarian than to the Germanic languages. Supposed to be very hard to learn.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Flagg, the link doesn't lead to the story but to a story about

Aristide. :shrug:

Flagg? Is that you, Colonel Flagg? ;-)

[Flagg]

6. link fixed. sorry about that

I'm Flagg from Stephen KIng's the Stand

[gula]

7. English is a lot closer to the Nordic languages than French is

Having grown up German speaking, actually the Germans dispute this, I can tell you that it was a lot easier for me to learn English than it was to learn French.

[Festivito]

12. My Swedish relations speak perfect English.

Despite living their whole lives in Sweden, when we phone and start saying hello in English, they delightedly continue in flawless understandable English.

American Engish has become a long list of exceptions to various rules, exceptions not covered on tests.

Watcha mean Willis. Seems unknown until written as: What do you mean Willis.

My family doesn't say: Whatcha. Neither would any test.

[Voice_of_Europe]

13. Similarities

I think there are many similarities between scandinavian languages and english (Normans invaded england and helped to form the English language)
Even in ancient German and amazingly in Swiss German (which uses rather older words) there are many many links and grammatical similarities...
Thats the Celt, German and Norman heritage...


Whereas French and Italian are much more influented by Roman and even Greek heritage. They really have to turn the sentences in their heads before they can speak it out loud and they unfortunately often have real bad accents. In Itally I experienced first hand that teachers with really bad accent teach their pupils the same accent who of course think this is the real thing until they meet some native english speakers.


On the other hand France was always more self-oriented than the Scandinavians but that's with all "big" countries. Smaller or humbler countries depend much more on communication and trade and are more oriented towards the outside.