I’m currently abroad in the Netherlands, and having a chat with a local Dutch guy, he told me English is taking over Dutch, with English words all over advertising, public notices and everyday conversations. So, up to what point has English “replaced” your home language?

26 comments

  1. I wouldn’t use the term “replaced” but there is A LOT of English terms, especially in advertising and whatnot.

  3. I don’t think it has taken over. It’s true in advertisements English words are frequently used. For new phenomena, especially tech related, often we use English words like computer for example. And in places like Amsterdam there are so many foreigners either tourists, expats or foreign students some waiters in restaurants speaking English to the customer. I find this a bit strange.

  4. Well almost entirely but that was a few hundred years in the making.

    I don’t like the idea of other European languages being watered down by English but it’s just such a pervasive language

  5. The Flemish youth uses one sentence in Dutch, one sentence in English. I am surprised to which extent and how fast it happened but I find it interesting because both languages share the same origin.

    Just came back home from Brussels and it is so easy to communicate with people thanks to the English language than even a decade ago. I am so happy and everyone is so chilled now because you can just switch to the English language. I am happy with this development.

  6. It is more popular than the second official language.

    Edit: Actually, let me take it step further. It is more common to use English than Swedish between a swede and a Finn.

  7. Replaced certainly not, but there are now several English loans in Italian, some of them decidedly unnecessary.

  8. The guy was massively exaggerating tbh. English is fairly commonly mixed in advertising and conversations to some extent, sure, but to call that “taking over”?

  9. Outside of some Denglish terms in youth language, and some loan words – not at all.

  10. It’s very common in advertisements and other business related stuff. When it comes to day to day usage we obviously have English loanwords for things that just never had a name in our native language but apart from that I wouldn’t say it’s too widespread. I will mention however that a lot of “gamers” use a TONNE of English in their everyday speech simply because they spend so much time online that a large portion of their naturally accrued vocabulary consists of English words rather than their native language’s already existing counterparts.

  11. It’s not even close.

    Most young (40 and younger) people do speak it, or at the very least understand it to some degree, but there’s no sign of it taking over, at all.

  12. In Spain I think English is used mainly in marketing, so the slogans seem more serious or modern.

    There’s also a demand for bilingual primary schools, but besides that everything is in Spanish

  13. I speak both English and Spanish at a native level, I sometimes talk to myself in English though so I would say I use English more.

  14. To the point that I often have to repeat sentences to my grandpa who doesn’t speak English, as the weird mix of Slovenian and English I speak in day to day life contains a bit too much English for him to just ignore the words he doesn’t understand. It is common for the younger generation to switch languages multiple times during a single sentence or to just have a whole part of a conversation in English. Obviously it depends on the person in question and where in the country you are though.

  15. We do have quite a few English loanwords and young people obviously use them very often, but I wouldn’t say English has replaced Croatian (or Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin). Those are just loanwords, you’d never see two Croats (or Serbs/etc.) speaking English to each other.

  16. We use some english Words without translating them (like jeans for exemple) but it haven’t Taken over (39 % of the population speak some form of english (two-fifth of our population : here the source : https://howwidelyspoken.com/how-widely-spoken-english-france/) ( Where not very good at speaking english even if we learn english in school and university (even if we don’t study language (but it’s an option the choice is often with german but it can be another language)

  17. English is far from having replaced it. Some English words for which we have a perfect translation in French are entering common speech (i. e. saying *safe* when “sûr” is already a word with the exact same meaning), others are mostly used in the media only. In both cases they really grind my gears.

    But I wouldn’t call it an invasion, a lot of French speakers don’t really speak English that well so it would benefit no one.

  18. We use a lot of loan words, we don’t bother translating stuff like our cousins Spain and France do , but in day to day life ?

    Yeah no one really knows English honestly

  19. A lot. But nowhere close to French. Blond, enorm, frisyr, journalist, modern, trottoar, garage, paraply and hundreds of other French words are now part of the Swedish language.

  20. It’s not really replacing but definitely has an impact, with young people mixing up some English words as they speak, even though there are translations for these words. Nonetheless, the preference for foreign words, especially English ones, it’s not a few phenomenon. There are dozens of portuguese brands with non-portuguese names.

    But Portugal isn’t only influenced by English and American media. The impact of Brasil in the country is also growing.

  21. I do notice in Belgium that many Flemish (Dutch speakers) and Walloons (French speakers) nowadays speak English to each other. That’s actually pretty wild if you look at it from a historical perspective. They even decided to present the national football team as the “Red Devils” (in English!) so to avoid using both Dutch and French, and I also heard that in the federal government, Walloons and Flemish are often switching to English. So, it’s actually even gaining some political ground.

  22. It almost entirely replaced the language of my country with now about 1% of people who are gaelic speakers.

    This isn’t about my country but I was disappointed to hear about something my Polish friend told me. In Poland Tourette’s Syndrome is more commonly being called smth much closer to English which is disappointing for 2 reasons. Firstly any language being changed bc of English is already sad. Also he told me about a joke in Polish that doesn’t really translate well into English but now it won’t work at all in Polish either if the new name sticks.

  24. Well, our Capital city Podgorica is having a construction boom and the new parts of the city are named on english like Central Point, Master Quart, name of buildings, name of companies are on English, even in conversations people use English words because it just sounds better.

  25. It’s complicated. Contrary to many Danes I don’t think the problem is too much English, it’s the lack of pride in Danish. Danes are constantly told our language is ugly and useless, even by other Scandinavians, and we eat that shit that up, to the point that this is the standard opinion among many Danes. It’s so normalized and ingrained that I honestly thought that was just how all small languages felt about their language. Saying that you actually think Danish can be pretty cool sounding is genuinely an unpopular opinion, at least in my experience.

    So in my mind with a proper appreciation for Danish like most small languages, it wouldn’t feel like English “took over”, but due to our complex around Danish that’s kinda what it feels like sometimes.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like