15% Sri Lankan only spoke English. In other words, no, the numbers will not automatically add up. Slightly older studies place them even higher with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland occupying four of the top five spots for English proficiency. Almost the entire population can speak it to some degree. Let’s look at a quick overview of where these countries stand in overall global terms for English skills. In 2012, 44% of Finnish citizens with another registered primary language than Swedish could hold a conversation in this language. The main language is Finnish, a Finnic language of the Uralic language family. How Widely Spoken is English in Gibraltar. For tourists who want to learn a few phrases, see each of our articles on Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland for videos and tables of basic phrases you might want to use. Longer term visitors can choose to learn Finnish if they want, but should be aware that it is a very difficult language to learn, consistently ranked as one of the hardest in the world to master, with lots of complex verb and grammar rules. Either way, our comprehensive guide will cover you no matter which country (or countries) you are going to be visiting in the region. eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'howwidelyspoken_com-banner-1','ezslot_11',111,'0','0'])); Norway completes the triad of the three main Nordic countries that are considered most fluent in English. Icelanders learn English from a very early age and are exposed to English language film and TV a lot and so are very proficient at English. The Finnish language dates back about 500 hundred years and is closely related to Estonian and a little less closely related to the Sami languages. English is spoken as the language of government and commerce. Anywhere outside tourist areas and resorts, spoken English will be almost non existent. It has similar rates of English proficiency to Sweden and Dernmark (85-90% of the population) and consistently ranks as the fourth best country in the world for English language skills – see here and here. Shorter term visitors do not need to worry about speaking the local languages in any of the Nordic countries, such is the prevalence of English there. Can tourists from America, the UK... At How Widely Spoken we explore the prevalence of English and other languages all around the world. Scandinavian countries by contrast have plenty of fluent English speakers who can teach it. Just like the other Nordic countries, English is taught in schools, so most people except the oldest generations are able to speak it to some level, many of them very fluently. I often get asked about whether the Germans speak English. See our article on English in Sweden for more on this. An international school provides an international education in an international environment. Print whole topic. eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'howwidelyspoken_com-box-4','ezslot_9',110,'0','0'])); The situation in Denmark is very much similar to Sweden, with around 86% of the population estimated to speak English, the vast majority of them very fluently as well. When I first moved to Thailand, my professor made the joke that by the end of my Master’s program, I would speak 3 languages: English, Thai, and Thai-English. Consulta Mitofsky-Tracking Poll Roy Campos: Las Lenguas Extranjeras en México, January 2013; Figure for speakers of English as "main language", according to, Source: Euromonitor International report 2011, Source: Eurobarometer report 2006; Central Statistics Office. A diversity of international schools. With approximately 4,868,751 speakers which translate to 88.88% of Finland's population, the Finnish language is widely spoken by the majority in the country. The fluency rate is the lowest in Scandinavia but is still up there with other countries like Austria and Cyprus, where English speaking tourists can also get by fine. Finnish 97.45% English 45.25% Fluent or native speakers are estimated at less than 2M, and majority of them consists of immigrants from countries like Russia, Belarus, Ukraina, Moldova, Latvia, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Total population: Census 2010. Official Language, lingua franca and spoken amongst a wide proportion of the Pakistani Population – 49% as a second language (other estimates). It will be very widely spoken. Phuket – English not widely spoken. You can also get a pocket Nordic phrasebook to cover you for all the countries here. There are some minor differences between the countries but the Nordic states always feature in the top five, if not the top ten, of the most fluent English speakers in the world after native English speaking countries. Scandinavia also emphasizes the teaching of English, but has very high English fluency rates up in the 80-90% range. Why do they have competency and fluency rates which are so much higher than other countries around the world, which often put huge amounts of money into teaching English in schools, yet still have very low rates of English proficiency among their populations? Sami is also spoken in lapland. link to How Widely Spoken is English in Malaysia? It is widely understood, in cities like Colonia, Montevideo and Punta del Este. Source: 2015 Census. The Finnish language is a little further away from English than the other languages, belonging more to the Uralic family of languages that includes Hungarian and Estonian, rather than the Germanic languages of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Whilst they speak very good English, it tends to be quite difficult to learn their languages; nevertheless doing so can open up more work and social opportunities for people staying there longer term. While we have already discussed that Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland are some of the top English speaking countries, we shouldn’t forget that Germany and Belgium are very high up the list, with over 62% of the population in Germany being English speakers and 61% in Belgium! Only 5% of, Source: Eurobarometer report 2006 Note that the Belgian population is divided in two distinct linguistic regions: The. Statistics on second language speakers are inevitably not precise; partly because there is no widely agreed definition of second language speakers – there is no differentiation between countries where English is the. In practical terms this fluency rate doesn’t make a difference to short term tourists when compared to the other Scandinavian countries – you will still be able to get by just fine speaking English in any major city like Helsinki or Espoo. It really is a place that most Europeans can move around quite easily without having to know the Icelandic language. Uh, no. Malaysia is a very vibrant and growing country in South East Asia, with a tropical climate and plenty of lure for tourists. the colleges the following have particular fields that they are quite sturdy in, at the same time as different ones are undesirable to nonexistant. This is good news since Denmark has seen it’s tourism industry explode in recent years, receiving record numbers of visitors in 2018, despite having only a small population of around 6 million. As a subbranch of Indo-European, it is also closely related to other Germanic languages such as German, Dutch, and English. This is still a high rate in itself though, even if not quite up there with Sweden and Denmark, and fluency rates within this 70% are also very high. In this article we will provide a summary overview of the prevalence of English in all the Scandinavian countries – Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Several decades of really emphasizing English teaching in schools has paid dividends in that there is no shortage of skilled English speakers to teach the newer generations coming through. See our full article for more on this, but here are the main reasons in brief: As an additional point, skilled and fluent English teachers are hard to find in Asian and Latin American countries; there tends to be a chronic shortage. Germans, and especially their education system, are a pragmatic bunch. It has a population very proficient and fluent in English, with around 86% of the population estimated to speak English, most of them very well.eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'howwidelyspoken_com-medrectangle-4','ezslot_3',109,'0','0'])); Basically, anyone under the age of 60 who you stop on the street in Sweden is going to be able to speak English, and usually speak it very well. I have met so many Germans that speak English in one form or another. The overall conclusion does not change – the Scandinavians are very good at English. Click here to book your flights, hotels and more for trips to Scandinavia using the popular Agoda booking tool, with free cancellation and over 2 million hotels to choose from worldwide. You can see from the latest stats that the Scandinavian countries feature very prominently at the top of the world table for English proficiency. Why Are The Scandinavians So Good at English? Send as an e-mail. Source: Data from the 2011 census for England and Wales. English is somewhat more common in the Patong resort. English proficiency does fall off slighty in Finland compared to their Nordic neighbors, with estimates of around 70% of the population being able to speak English. Swedish is a North Germanic language, closely related to Norwegian and Danish. Russian occupies the first place in the list of non-state languages of the country, according to the data provided by Official Statistics of Finland, YLE reports. See our article on English in Norway for more on this. Iceland is often forgotten about when speaking of the Scandinavian nations, though is still technically a Nordic country, just somewhat isolated in the North Atlantic and quite a way from the other main cluster of Scandinavian countries. Finland has a population of approximately 5.5 million, making it the 25th-most populous country in Europe. Print current page. When taken from this list and added together, the total number of English speakers in the world adds up to around 1,200,000,000. link to The 5 Hardest Things About Learning Italian. English language knowledge in Europe Explore English knowledge in Europe - compare age groups and mother tongue vs. foreign language knowledge An interactive visualisation of language knowledge in Europe, based on the latest Europe-wide survey of languages in Europe by the European Commission. We use cookies on this site to improve the user experience. http://ow.ly/q9I850BBYoJ. (Census 2009), Source: Euromonitor International report 2009. It is widely used in business with 99% of employees of Finnish companies surveyed reporting they use English in their jobs. – K International", "Educational Characteristics of the Filipinos", "2011 Census: Quick Statistics for England and Wales, March 2011", "Census 2016, Proficiency in Spoken English/Language by Age by Sex", https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/Euromonitor%20Report%20A4.pdf, "The Benefits of the English Language for Individuals and Societies: Quantitative Indicators from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen", https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS?locations=ZW, https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR254/FR254.pdf, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02572117.2010.10587334?journalCode=rjal20, "English Language Education in Sri Lanka", "EF English Proficiency Index – A comprehensive ranking of countries by English skills", "ERIC – English Language Teaching Profile: Israel., 1976-Dec", "Bevölkerung 2001 nach Umgangssprache, Staatsangehörigkeit und Geburtsland", Resident population according to main language, "The most complete list of English schools and courses in Ireland", "Population Aged 5 and Over by Place of Birth, Usual Language and Ability to Speak Other Language/Dialect, 2011 (A123)", "Sociedad :: Los idiomas de los argentinos", "¿Qué porcentaje de la población colombiana habla inglés? Additionally, Finnic languages belong to the Uralic language family. Is English Widely Spoken in #Finland? The Long Answer. Much like Sweden, English is taught in schools from a very early age in Denmark, often from as early as age 6 onwards, and English language media is also very common in the culture there, meaning people are usually very fluent at understanding and speaking English by the time they are adults. See more of NordicTrans - Translation Services on Facebook We have covered many of the reasons in passing when dealing with each country, and also dedicated an entire article to examining why Scandinavians tend to be so good at English, having higher proficiency rates than almost every other country where English is not the primary language. Source: British council (2012) and EF. Five of the largest of these are sometimes described as the "core Anglosphere"; they are the United States of America (with at least 231 million native English speakers), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), and New Zealand (4.8 million). But just why are the Scandinavians so good at English? Some numbers have been calculated by Wikipedia editors by mixing data from different sources; Click to jump to sectionseval(ez_write_tag([[728,90],'howwidelyspoken_com-box-3','ezslot_1',107,'0','0'])); The Scandinavian countries have a reputation for having high rates of English fluency among their populations, but is this really true or just an over-exaggerated cliche? https://howwidelyspoken.com/is-engish-widely-spoken-finland Children are taught from the age of 7 or 8 onwards and like the other countries we mentioned receive a lot of English language TV to further develop their competency. This may make learning English a little harder for Finns than for other Scandinavians, but the overall fluency rates are still high. Most Finns of all ages speak Finnish almost all the time. This list may be sorted by column by clicking on the column header. 63.71% is what the cited source, From mid-2009 to late 2013 this entry overstated the number of native speakers by roughly 100fold, and inflated the number of total speakers, on the alleged basis of material in. The teaching of English is so rigorous in schools from such an early age that most youngsters are fluent even by the time they reach their mid teens, and certainly adulthood. Recess is part of the fun of going to school. Are some Nordic countries better than others? It took me about 2 months to understand my professor’s heavy Thai accent. Longer term stayers can definitely benefit from learning some Swedish, since it allows you to assimilate into the culture better. It showed up as the top country in the world in a 2018 study by Education First that ranked countries by English skills. English is likewise fluently spoken in Iceland; a lot of human beings the following could even bypass for interior sight English audio gadget. This question gets asked in different forms, but the short answer is yes (mostly). The number of native speakers is the sum of Americans and Englishmen "by nationality". Demographics Yearbook of Poland: 2014, Table 1, 32,44,190, 100million is Back of Envelope Calculation. We start with Sweden, which is possibly the most proficient of all the Scandinavian countries in terms of English fluency. Last reply was Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:57:26 +0000. Continue browsing or click to consent. 27.6k … Show all posts for this topic. A large percentage of Finns are able to speak English, but it is certainly not the primary language they use for day-to-day communication. Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region, List of English speaking populations by country. Almost 70 thousand people have a strong command of the Russian language in Finland. ", https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/country/colombia.htm, "The Language Planning Situation in Malawi", "Bilingual Cambodians See Pathways to Progress", Eurobarometer report – Europeans and their languages, February 2006 (pdf), Eurobarometer report – Europeans and their languages, June 2012 (pdf), List of countries by English-speaking population, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Current real density based on food growing capacity, Antiviral medications for pandemic influenza, Percentage suffering from undernourishment, Health expenditure by country by type of financing, Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, List of top international rankings by country, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population&oldid=1006865943, Articles with dead external links from January 2021, Articles with dead external links from December 2016, Articles with permanently dead external links, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014, Articles lacking reliable references from May 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. What percentage of English is spoken in Portugal? Some people in the tourism and service sector may speak a few words of English, but will not be conversational. Click any language to explore how widely it is spoken in each country or click a country to explore which languages are most spoken within in. See our article on English in Denmark for more on the topic. Note this includes speakers of an English creole. don´t know. Any Finn who does speak English will tend to speak it very well. It is worth including here, since it has similarities with the other Nordic countries and also attracts a decent amount of tourists for the great scenery and outdoor warm baths and hot springs.eval(ez_write_tag([[336,280],'howwidelyspoken_com-leader-1','ezslot_14',113,'0','0'])); Iceland also has excellent rates of English proficiency, possibly even higher than Sweden, though exact statistics are hard to find since it does not tend to be included in studies, since it has such a small population. This is still a high rate in itself though, even if not quite up there with Sweden and Denmark, and fluency rates within this 70% are also very high. Second language speaker figure only includes those literate in English aged 15 or more and does not include third language proficiency. English is the primary natively spoken language in several countries and territories. Hence it is most meaningful to express the English-speaking per cent without including the … As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Print whole topic. English being the first language of approximately more than 3 million people. Recent stats suggest that 37% of Poles have English as a second language. There anyone visiting any of the Scandinavian countries has nothing to worry about in terms of being understood when speaking English. https://www.nordictrans.com/blog/is-english-widely-spoken-in-finland It is a native language for them. Russians and Germans also like to visit Finland a lot, as do fellow Scandinavians from neighboring countries.eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'howwidelyspoken_com-large-leaderboard-2','ezslot_12',112,'0','0'])); English proficiency does fall off slighty in Finland compared to their Nordic neighbors, with estimates of around 70% of the population being able to speak English. English is almost universally spoken in Iceland, with many people very fluent as well, so tourists will have no problem conversing in English there. Photo: Riitta Supperi/Keksi . There is no need to learn the Icelandic language at all, which is just as well because like Finnish it is a fiendishly difficult language to master, one of the hardest in the world and unique in that it has remained largely unchanged since the 9th and 10th centuries. This ranges from a few words to real fluency. The rating was revealed in the fourth edition of the EF English Proficiency Index on Friday. See our article on English in Finland for more on this, including a deeper look into the interesting culture and mindset of the Finns plus some basic Finnish phrases to get you get by in this unique country. consistently ranks in the top four countries, one of the hardest in the world to master. Iceland is a very tourist friendly country overall though, with not just English but also other languages like Danish, German, French and Spanish being spoken by quite a lot of the population. Therefore Finnish is distantly related to various languages as diverse as the Ugric language of Hungary and the Siberian Samoyedic languag… The everyday reality for visitors is the same as Sweden – you will be able to be understood in English pretty much everywhere in Denmark, especially with younger people. Again tourists visiting here will have no problem getting around using English; you will be understood whether you are in the capital Oslo or anywhere else in the country. Therefore tourists will have no problem using English when visiting Sweden, whether in the larger cities like Stockholm or anywhere else. This is an important issue, since many other countries in Asia especially (see our article on Japan) pour huge amounts of money into teaching English to their youngsters and yet still have very low proficiency rates in spoken English among the general population, often stuck at around 5-15%. This implies that there are approximately 850,000,000 people who speak English as an additional language. This page was last edited on 15 February 2021, at 06:38. The main languages are French and Malagasy. Before mistakenly correcting the percentage again, please note that there are fewer people aged 5 years or more in any country than there are people in that country, because some people are toddlers or infants. Let’s look in more detail at the proficiency rates in each major Nordic country in turn, along with some possible reasons as to why they are so much better at speaking English in this part of the world than elsewhere. Are the Scandinavians really so good at English? The 5 Hardest Things About Learning Italian. 1. Also note that in most sources, the results shown are of people who say that they can speak English, while that was not verified; which means the actual number of English speakers could be higher or lower (because of certain people who over- or underestimate their English skills). Note this includes speakers of an English creole. Russian language is the most widely spoken language in Finland. However, anecdotally, visitors there report that English fluency is near universal across the whole population, with almost every person you stop on the street being able to converse in English, and do so very fluently. Percentage of people in Finland who speak the languages below as a mother tongue or foreign language. Translations in context of "widely spoken" in English-French from Reverso Context: In anglophone provinces, Pidgin English is widely spoken. He was right. Note this includes speakers of. Longer term visitors who are going for work or study can also find links to introductory courses on each of the Scandinavian langages in each article. Total was estimated by multiplying projected population for 2014 (DANE) by percentage of Colombian population that speaks English 4.09%, Source: Eurobarometer report 2012 and 2011 Census, Number of those who understand spoken English, from these 1.9 million: 311,435 (2.6%/16.6%) can only read, 931,444 (7.7%/49.6%) can read and write in English. 31.03.2017. Thorn Tree forum Country forums Scandinavia & the Nordics Finland. Finland places among the top four countries in the world when it comes to the fluency of English. The following is a list of English-speaking population by country, including information on both native speakers and second-language speakers. Proportion of total speakers: Census 2000. Source: Crystal (2003), p. 109. See our article on the prevalence of English in Iceland for more on this. Swedish is the main language of 5.2% of the population in 2019 (92.4% in the Åland autonomous province), down from 14% at the beginning of the 20th century. From personal experience they are often more fluent and articulate than native English speakers who are meant to be using English as a first language! Finland is the fourth of the main Scandinavian countries, and attracts around 7 million tourists a year, well over half a million of them from English speaking countries. They are a very introverted but straightforward people and it is best to be aware of this before you go there to avoid any surprises. Enter custom title (optional) This topic is locked. As for universities, it relies upon on what you want to study. Tourists need not go into this depth, but longer term migrants have their work cut out for them to really get proficient in Finnish.
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