How do Europeans speak many languages?

45 comments

1. So where I am from in Germany it is maybe 30 minutes by bike to France, so you can imaging why it reasonable and nice to learn French in school 😊 real-time practice is close by

   I suck in French but speak quite okay Spanish which I learned when participating the big European exchange program called Erasmus during my studies 😊

2. Yeah, many people know multiple languages. My cousin speaks 5 for example, I know only 3.

   Anyway Latin is used in many Universities. Back in my studies we had to know every latin name for plants/animals. I still remember some to this day.

3. From where I live in the UK it always seems a bit like a magical power when people can learn additional languages so well.

   Things are changing a bit, but learning foreign languages has always been a relatively low priority in school. I didn’t start being taught any until I started secondary school, and then it was about 1-2 hours a week doing French. By the time I stopped that at about 17 years old, I could do some very basic reading and talking, but nowhere near enough to hold a proper conversation.

   Now it’s starting earlier on in the education process (my ten year old daughter has been doing Spanish once a week at school for about a year), but there’s still a long way to go.

4. No one uses Latin that I know of but in general here in Sweden we learn 3 main language in school, (Swedish, English and a language of choice, most common is German). Then we have 2 sub language (Norwegian and Danish) that we understand. Many children also have something we call “home language”, the most common is Finnish.

   Learning language is just like any other skill. The more you know the easier it gets.

5. Well I guess english is learnt because so much of the entertainment and media is in english; it provides both incentive and constant practice.

6. But Korean and English are completely different languages. English is very closely related to numerous other European languages and many have numerous words derived from Latin.
   You also don’t need Latin for all subjects at university and I don’t think in all countries either. In Austria, you need it for medicine, law, and all historical and almost all linguistic subjects. But that doesn’t mean you have to be fluent in Latin, you just have to have some basic knowledge. There are numerous courses for this, and some Latin is also taught in schools.

7. With English it helps that (almost) all of Europe speaks indoeuropean languages, so it’s not that difficult to learn. Similarly, usually the other languages people learn will also be European and won’t be that different either.

8. In the case of Sweden, not only do we teach it at an early age in school, but we also use subtitles instead of dubbing TV shows. So I grew up watching The Simpsons in English as a 8 year old or something.

   Not to mention playing lots of RuneScape.

9. Our language skills are probably hugely exaggerated. Maybe we have a greater share of people who have international parents and grown up bilingual or who have moved internationally and developed better English skills or even skills in another language out of necessity, but the AVERAGE person here struggles even with English, not to mention a third language. Latin is only necessary for studying medicine or Latin as far as I’m aware. I’ve picked it as my third language in school and forgotten absolutely everything about it since graduating.

10. There’s too few of us for anyone to bother publishing a regionalized version for Swedish in videogames. You either learn English or don’t understand the game.

    I learnt to spell “Power overwhelming” way before I understood what it meant.

11. Where adults have to slog through many months of studies kids are basically language sponges and they take in languages insanely fast and without them putting much work into it.

    Once they are 14-15 it’s already kind of too late and so you have to start very early.

12. I’m from Japan but moved to EU (Belgium) almost 6 years ago.

    Just as OP, I learned only English at school. I did have an English tutor from UK when I was in elementary. And at the time, I really didn’t like it at all, but now I’m pretty glad I had it because my English, compared to many other Japanese people, is better (especially spoken English).Besides English, I know very little Korean (my mother is South Korean but due to some reason, I never learned proper Korean).

    I’m learning Dutch now (even from before I moved) but it’s really hard. And it’s not easy to practice speaking, because when native Dutch speakers hear me, they switch to English.

    My Belgian friends, they speak a lot of languages.

    My best friend here is native Dutch (Flemmish) but he had to learn French, English, German and Latin at school (not sure when). He also studied Greek and Spanish at school (I think high school).At university, he studied Japanese (and also had a bit of Korean and Chinese I think).

    He said because he is native Dutch, it was easy to learn German and English (because they are similar). And because he learned French very early, it was also easy to learn Latin and Spanish.And because he knew a wide range of languages, he could study Japanese without too many trouble (biggest issue for him was kanji, but because he was interested in it, he has no issues with it now).

    I work with people from all over EU. And only a few are native English. So everyone has their own accent but I rarely have issue to understand them.Most of them speak their native language, English and one or more other languages.

13. To be fair, most European languages all belong to one same family – other than a few exceptions, they’re all indo-european languages and therefore way more similar to each other than to Korean or Chinese or Arabic. I mean after learning English and some German, Swedish seemed like super intuitive and after learning Russian, even Latvian, that is at the completely other end of the Slavic family tree and barely Slavic at all, had a very similar logic to Russian.

    Where I live, 3 foreign languages are compulsory at school. Usually people get only pretty basic skills in one of them, but can talk the two other ones (English + 1 more) well enough. It helps if you start early (in my case 1st language at age 8, 2nd language at age 9 and 3rd language at age ~14, but this varies from school to school).

14. In germany you learn english in 3rd grade and its a mandatory subject until graduation. Then most schools also have mandatory second foreign language classes (usually french, spanish, italian or latin). And then higher level education schools offer voluntary third foreign language courses (also usually french, spanish, italian or latin. Some even offer russian, chinese or other languages, depending on what region you’re in).

    You have to know as well that germany is smack in the middle of europe. From where I live I can drive 5h in different directions and reach 8 different countries.

    And due to the EU and open borders it’s easy to visit other countries, and therefore other cultures and languages. French (Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Swizerland), Dutch (Netherlands), Danish (Denmark), German (Swizerland, Lichtenstein, Austria), Chech (Czechia), Polish (Poland).

    Proximity is also the reason why lots of germany have mixed european or middle eastern (usually turkish) heritage. Therefore many of us either grow up bilingual or at least are used to having relatives who speak different languages and live in different countries.

15. Latin is definitely not used or required at universities here. A lot of people do speak at least passable English though (not counting the painful accent), and especially at university people are usually pretty good at it. I think it’s less about the high school education and more because movies, shows, games, and obviously a lot on the internet, is mostly in English (except some children’s stuff, nothing gets dubbed, just subtitled), so there is a lot of exposure to it and a lot of incentive to be able to get sufficiently good at it.

    As for other languages, they’re not as ubiquitously spoken here as English, but by no means uncommon for people to know some; primarily German and French. Not sure exactly what the situation in high school with those is now, but in my day both were mandatory for the first three or four years; probably similar now, still. And Germany and France (and Wallonia) are quite popular and nearby holiday destinations for Dutch people as well, so people will pick up more of it because of that as well. German in particular is fairly easy to learn for Dutch people anyway; despite barely paying attention to it in high school, if you eg. give me a German newspaper I’ll probably be able to tell you most of what it says.

16. I am from France and for us it is mandatory to learn at least English + 1 other language, usually Spanish, German or Italian depending on the school you’re at. It’s also encouraged to take a 3rd foreign language if you enjoy it, and you often have Latin or Greek included in too.
    So for example I speak English, Spanish and Japanese because I enjoyed it, and forgot all my Latin tbh, haha.

17. Belgium here, and latin is in no way a requirement for university. It is taught in high school and people who follow it will generally go into university but that more causality than an actual requirement.

    As for languages, In the Flemish part of the country its normal to learn 3 languages being Dutch, English and French, should you follow a more language oriented course german is usually added and i have seen spanish and italian taught as well. In the walloon region you usually learn French and English with one optional language which is usually Dutch, German or Spanish.

    Now do know that the jump from dutch to any of these languages isnt -that-much of a stretch. And even if i had never learned any german i would probably still understand 50% what a german was saying provided they talked slow. Same with english and french.

    The jump from Korean to English is probably a lot harder so dont fret it too much. It may be easier for you to learn Mandarin or Japanese comparatively. (thou cant say i can say this with any degree of certainty so dont beat me up over this)

18. It’s a requirement in schools for many countries.

    In Belgium we have 3 national languages: Dutch, French, and German. Depending on your first language, you have to learn at least one other, plus English, plus sometimes you can take other languages.

    Europeans are also a lot more mobile – you can take a train for 2 hours and be in a different country – so the opportunity to know your neighbour’s language is much higher.

    In South Korea, you have to fly to leave and visit other countries. Not to mention South Korea has tons of media, entertainment and information, which makes it a lot easier to stay put.

19. its easy.

    We learn 2 languages at birth. so we we are 5, most already know 2 languages fluently.

    In school we learn 2 new languages. thus we get 3-4 languages.

    depending on the country you will learn: French, German, Spanish, and/or English in school

20. I am from Estonia and I speak 5 languages. Estonian, Russian (was born in Russian speaking family). Then English and German we start to learn at school as a school program. And i think as for Europeans there is no problem with living abroad, people start to learn some other languages (for me it’s Italian).
    Mby in the end it’s all about traveling and open borders.

21. English is easy because we are exposed to it and it’s needed. But when it comes to other languages we are far from fluent. It’s not common to be able to really speak anything other than finnish and english when excluding family language some kids grow up with. Sure, people study some french or german but really knowing the language is rare.

22. Among many educated people in Romania there is a strong accent placed on learning a third language (other than Romanian and English). While German or French are commonly studied as a second foreign language in schools (sometimes even first with English being second), Spanish is also really popular, as are – occasiy – other languages.

23. In Spain in some regions (autonomous communities) we have or own regional language so we just grow up bilingual, then in school we learn English (badly, the system needs lots of improvement, so most people just go to academies) and lastly usually high schools have a second foreign language as an optative class, in my high school’s case it was Franch and some of my friends also took German but just for 1 year.

    edit. Wording

24. It is because most Western languages have the same base. That is also the reason why you find it very difficult to pick up English, whilst it would probably be easier for you to pick up Eastern languages.

    In the west it is also very difficult for us to pick up an Eastern language compared to another Western one.

    Dont give up. The harder the lessons, the more fruits they bear.

25. It’s not that much of a thing here, 50+ people speak/understand russian (as it was obligatory in school) nowadays english/german is compulsory starting from 4th grade, and a student has to choose one language from: german, spanish, french, italian, russian (in some schools even chinese/norwegian/japanese/hebrew) in 7th grade. Latin and ancient culture is a subject in high school, there are competitions etc, but it’s really rare. It’s common for younger people to only speak polish and english

26. Not that many europeans speak that many languages. Lots of us only speak one language or speak basic English as well.

    In my case, I am fluent in three. My native language is Catalan, I am legally mandated to know spanish (and it’s inescapable, honestly, so I’m pretty much a native speaker as well) and English. A part from those three, I can read and write fairly well in Latin and communicate basic info orally, I know soke german (less than I would like) and I know some Ancient Greek. These last three were optative subjects for me in high school and I’ve tried to keep my knowledge of them as best I can.

    I believe that the more languages you speak the easier it gets to notice patterns and integrate new structures. This doesn’t work if the languages are not related, though, so your difficulties with English (and believe me, there’s lots of struggle here as well) are entirely normal.

27. Because we speak similar languages. English is a Germanic language but it is heavily influenced by French, and grammar-wise is similar to many European languages. Once you learn English, it is easy to learn Dutch and a little bit easier to learn German, for example. Also, for a Romance speaker it is pretty easy to learn another Romance language, plus Latin (in this case especially Italians and I guess also Spaniards).

28. European countries have low amounts of people thus low amounts of content per country and the content they have is usually dubbed in english so it can reach a wider audience. So basically learning english becomes a neccessity to try to watch anything online or on a tv. Besides that its common to occupy ur child with tv or the internet before they even learn to read so even the stuff that has homeland sub is not actually read by them. For a 3rd language no one actually knows how to speak spanish, french or german from school and its placed in after 6th grade cuz learning english is a joke for most kids.

29. In Italy it’s fairly common to be able to speak English, Spanish or French as a second language. However, most people can only speak decently just one of these. I say decently because, unlike other countries, we dub everything so the only exposure to other languages we get from media has to be intentionally seeked after (school is barely enough to cover the basics). Romance language are the easiest to learn due to similarities in grammar and vocabulary (I think that more than the 80% of Italian words has a perfect counterpart in French. So, while pronunciation can be tricky I can still understand a good bunch of written French even though I hardly ever studied it). English is not bad either as grammar is similar enough and many words share a common root.

    As for Latin, it is taught in “licei”(one type of high school) for 3-5 years. It is not a requirement for any kind of university, and seldomly ever asked after finishing high school (unless one decides to go on and study it at university).

30. Language learning is something that becoming a norm in Europe because it’s always nice to find someone who speaks the same language as you. Now, I don’t expect anyone to speak my language but a few words here and there would be nice. I speak both English and Russian and people were please when I speak to them in those languages. Especially Russian tourists.

31. There are countries with multiple national languages so some people can be bilingual. In my country, we only learn English at school and then a second language in like high school (sometimes earlier). This was like 20 years ago and now kids start English even in kindergarten. However, I heard they want to scrap the second language, which I think is a shame.

32. Soo… I grew up near the border to Germany, so as a kid I watched ***a lot*** of German TV, they dub everything, so no subtitles. Eventually I just learned to understand and speak German. I took German as an elective in grade 7 and beyond in school, but I already knew German way before taking classes.

    All Danish TV is in original language, and much of it is in English (if not Danish), but we also started English classes in school in grade 4 (I think today they start in grade 0 or 1).

    Later I wanted to learn another language, after visiting Slovenia I decided to try and learn Slovenian, so I bought a beginners PC program, it was okay, but I didn’t keep it up, so I only know some basic words and the numbers.

    Then even later I decided to learn Spanish, in the meantime (free) online language learning had become popular (duolingo) so I startet practicing, I managed to learn a lot of words and a little bit of grammar, by no means had I become fluent, but I could make myself understood for basic stuff. Then I met this girl that spoke Spanish, her English was not very good so I tried to communicate in Spanish, so it just became more and more until I eventually became fluent in Spanish as well.

    Learning a language well is all about being exposed to it, if you are not exposed to it frequently (several times weekly or even daily) you’re not going to be able to learn it well. If you actively seek the language, you’re going to improve. If you don’t, you won’t!

33. Latin’s not in wide use at all, certain areas of study (law, medicine) will require you to know certain Latin terms but you’re not learning the actual language any more, at least not in most countries.

    The main contributing factor to European language skills is simply that most European languages are too small. You’ll need another language to access a lot of culture, or to study, or to work. You can see a general pattern that native speakers of larger languages have worse foreign language skills – simply because they have much less need for them. If your native language is French, you can access most books, movies or games you’d like in French, you can have university-level textbooks on chemistry, Roman Republic law or geology of North America. If your native language is Estonian, you will find approximately zero translated video games or TV series and there won’t be enough in-depth academic books on most subjects.

    The other factor that helps a lot is that most European languages belong to some family with other languages that are similar enough to make learning easier. Korean is the opposite of that, it’s not closely similar to any other language so learning any foreign language for a Korean speaker is going to be harder. In Europe, it’s easier. If you speak Swedish, it has enough similarity to English that you’ll learn English much easier – and you would naturally pick up Norwegian without actively learning. If you speak Spanish, it’s much easier to learn say Italian or a regional language of Spain like Catalan. If you speak Czech, it would not be too much trouble to learn Polish.

    Sometimes it’s just the political reality. I’m a native Latvian speaker, Latvian isn’t too similar to Russian but I know Russian, as do probably 95% of Latvian speakers my age because it was de-facto required. Belgium has an interesting situation where most of the country is split between Dutch and French speaking regions and so it’s common for people to also speak the other language, even though normally French and Dutch aren’t closely related.

    Schools are, I think, universally bad at teaching languages but even with poor teaching in schools, most students will learn something after years of repetitive lessons.

34. Imagine this. You barely have any entertainment in your native language and if you want to do anything, play video games, read comics etc, you have to learn at least English.

    Works as a pretty effective motivator. Add that to the fact that you’re exposed to English everywhere.

35. First thing is English, has already been answered many times here.

    For Macedonians, you are basically born knowing anything from Croatian to Bulgarian. Takes a little effort of course. If you for example interact on a daily basis with those people or their media, you will easily learn their languages in a few months.

    Then, there is German for example. Which is often taught at school, along with French. A lot of people migrate to Switzerland, Germany or Austria so a lot of them learn the language or know it, because they lived there.

    Finally, Russian is common amongst older people who learned it in school and used it way more than now. A lot of books were in Russian for example.

36. ​

    In germany, atleast in my experience, most people speak “okay” English. Most of my friends (including people who studied or are studying) can read basic stuff in english (like Reddit) and that’s it.

    You just don’t need english in germany, if you don’t need it for work. Nearly every big movie, show, game etc. get dubbed (thanks god), in common holiday places they understand german and politic stuff (from the EU for example) gets translated anyway. There are enough german youtube channels if you look for example look for guides for a game or what ever. So in the end english is nice because you got access to a wider selection of stuff, but you really don’t need english in germany (exception, like I already said, if it’s required for work or something).

    ​

    It’s probably similar in Korea? (Idk tbh just guessing)

    Some other reasons why some (other) Europeans can speak multiple languages (close boarders, similar languages, no dubs etc.) got already mentioned.

37. I speak English and French, English very well and French… well…

    But tbf, French and Romanian are part of the same group of languages and English is everywhere.

    European languages tend to be related to each other, and it’s also easier to learn a language if you’re constantly required to use it. So, when you think about it, a European living in Europe speaking 3 Latin based languages is less impressive than a Chinese/Korean/some other east Asian language speaker speaking one European language.

38. We travel a lot between countries and we often learn a language since a really young age.

    Our countries works with each other a lot, so learning another language is essential.

    We also have a lot of persons from all around the world living here.

39. I speak 2 because they’re necessary for conversation in German and English. I’m learning French mainly for a hobby but it does help. A lot of our languages are related and similar to each other or at least similar to one other European language so pairs of languages can be easier to learn like Spanish and Portuguese or German and Dutch.

40. I second the guy who said runescape — so much of my language skills was built through online mmos like old school runescape.

    You could even try online tutors like [this](https://go.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=449296&brand=fiverrhybrid&landingPage=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fiverr.com%2Fdtbrazelton%2Fteaching-business-english-at-all-levels%3Fcontext_referrer%3Dsubcategory_listing%26source%3Dgig_nested_sub_category_link%26ref_ctx_id%3D6b819cc42a4209bdea64f8fa6fa69b54%26pckg_id%3D1%26pos%3D1%26context_type%3Drating%26funnel%3D6b819cc42a4209bdea64f8fa6fa69b54%26imp_id%3D9a062e98-1d84-4ee9-959d-4f9725e08481) guy I used last year

41. First of all: very few of us do really speak Latin. But the Greek and Latin language have influenced a lot of European languages and some of that vocabulary comes up in one way or another in a lot of languages.

    The Latin word for “window” is “fenestra”. In German it’s “Fenster”, in French “fenêtre”. The Greek “Kronos” means “time” and it shows up in “chronology”, “chronologisch” and “chronologique” through several languages. Latin vocabulary is also used in medicine and law, so those studies require some Latin vocabulary knowledge.

    I do speak three languages absolutely fluent (and I can stutter my way through two more) because I just like to talk to my neighbors ;o)

42. It’s partly a myth. Tradeoffs in time invested into another language, energy invested, exposure etc don’t disappear just because your flag changes. In Finland most people are _very_ good at English, but barely speak Swedish outside of school even though it’s compulsory to my knowledge (outside of Åland).

    That being said: Having moved from the US to northern Finland and seen firsthand just how strong the English skills of the average person here are, I can see two reasons.

    1. Most of the good TV/video games/movies are not subbed, let alone dubbed, into Finnish. But _everything on the planet_ that a Finnish child or teen would want to watch is at least subbed in English. This is true to the extent that machine translators will often translate into English, then out of it, as an intermediate step between two unrelated languages.
    2. Finland is _tiny_ and has to rely on a strong international trade game to keep afloat. While domestic taxes are high by US standards, this is still rated as one of the best places on Earth to do business internationally. Having a reputation for strong English is a big plus to keeping that reputation.

43. Switzerland is a multilingual country and we (in the German part) all learn French and English at school, often Italian as well.

    Also, many children here grew up with foreign parents (I grew up in a Portuguese household)

44. The average number of languages spoken in Europe is around 2 (a native language and one second language)

    https://jakubmarian.com/average-number-of-languages-spoken-by-the-eu-population/

    And the most common second language in Europe is English (by a decent margin)

    https://jakubmarian.com/map-of-the-most-spoken-foreign-languages-of-the-eu-by-country/

    I imagine the key difference is that learning English is easier for most Europeans that it would be for the average Korean as English shares a lot of similarities with many European languages.

45. Latin would be super rare where I’m from but learning languages just comes from the fact that you hear many of them from early age

    My son for example is 3 years old. I speak Finnish to him and Swedish to my wife. So he is pretty fluent in those two already. In daycare he most speaks Dutch and English because that’s what most kids speak in Haarlem where we live. He also speaks a bit of Spanish as our nanny is Spanish.

    By the time he is going to school he will likely speak at least 4-5 languages and learning something like German or French is going be very easy on top.

    Personal I speak 7 languages fluently and understand few more but I didn’t learn any of them in school.

    I think way schools teach languages makes it really hard to learn. It’s like memorisation competition while if you are just exposed to language you will just pick it up. This works expecially well when you younger.

    When I moved to Netherlands 3 years ago I didn’t for example know any Dutch but being fluent in German, Swedish and English picking up Dutch was quick. Due knowing relative languages I could figure out 90% of the words from context and grammar I just parroted from what I heard.