There is a huge amount of English used in Scandanavia. American Films and TV are usually shown with subtitles rather than dubbed. Some Danes I spoke to when I was there (I failed to learn any Danish 
), were worried that in a few generations Danish will stop being the primary language altogether, rather like Welsh (which is still spoke in some parts Wales, even as a first language in some places, but its secondary to English almost everywhere).
Welsh was heavily discouraged from integration with England up until the 19th century, so it’s not surprising that it all but died out. My father’s first language was Welsh, and many of his cousins that I met when I was a child still used English very infrequently, but virtually everyone in Wales is still fluent in English as a matter of necessity.
When I was in high school we had an exchange student from Norway. No one believed he was foreign because his English was absolutely flawless. What was funny, though, was that every once in awhile (I’m talking maybe 3 or 4 times in a whole year) a word would come up in conversation that he’d just never heard before. It was surreal trying to explain an English word to someone who normally speaks it better than you do.
Lust4Life writes:
> No I’m sorry as an English person who is very familiar with native English
> speakers internationally many of the people who slur or who have unitelligible
> accents and/or are heavy users of slang or colloquial speech are in fact
> incapable of speaking intelligent or lucid English.
>
> They do not speak the way they do as a matter of choice or because they are
> expounding their heritage but because they seem to know no better inspite of
> the media barrage upon their ears.
>
> And yes many Europeans speak much,much better English then us natives.
I normally wouldn’t make any comment on another poster’s English, but the irony is a bit too much in this case. Lust4Life, do you realize how many spelling, grammatical, and stylistic mistakes you’ve made in this post? It’s always strange when someone remarks on another person’s linguistic mistakes when they make mistakes themselves.
Not exactly. I do the same thing in reverse for Japanese since writing kanji takes longer than jotting down truncated English. Linguists think there’s some inter-language mode everyone thinks in to form concepts, which are then used for generating language. When you know what you want to say, but can’t find the right word for it, you’re in that mode. I hear Japanese, I write the concept in English. It’s not exactly translating, it’s more like generating equivalents. To properly translate I’d have to put a lot more thought into it to accurately reflect relationships, concepts, etc.
Actually a few years ago an intellectually challenged Doper commented on my many spelling mistakes and my incorrect use of commas amongst other things, not actually being aware that in British English words are spelled differently from their American versions and being completely unaware of the correct usage of commas .
I do not speak Oxford, or as it is more correctly known Received English,just as I do not post in stilted, unnatural terms when in an informal forum such as an MB as this is inappropriate to the genre.
But my communication whether vocal or in print is clearly understandable,not just to people in my particular locality or ethnic group but to people worldwide.
How do I know?
Because I have travelled extensively worldwide and spoken or otherwise communicated with people who’s first language is not English.
I have noticed at least one Typo no doubt being caused by speed,distraction or being drunk, but Typos are not spelling errors as I’m sure that someone of your undoubted intelligence and knowledge of the English language are completely
aware.
I am extremely gratified that someone of your undoubted eminence has chosen to favour me with advice on this topic and indeed you have most certainly broadened my knowledge by informing me that I made "Stylistic "mistakes.
Well fancy that,an English native posting in his own language wasn’t doing it in the correct style.
I most certainly in the future ensure that I will post in a style that is satisfactory to you.
I really must thank you for your advice and hope that you will not neglect passing on your incredibly deep knowledge,not just of language but no doubt of everything else from Quantum physics to Metaphysics to me.
Though unfortunately I may be to busy to reply as there is always drying paint that needs to be watched.
I find your comments on irony strangely ironic.
Poor old **Wagner ** ,and you tried so hard aswell.
Get your teacher to run an eye over your next homework asignment,her advice could well be invaluable.
It can go both ways. Certainly some people just speak poorly. On the other hand, nobody can figure out what the hell Geordies are saying, but that doesn’t mean they don’t speak correct English.
We’ve tried to return the favor.
Many Americans (male) spent hours watching & re-watching Scandinavian movies like I am Curious, Yellow and …, Blue – no doubt trying to learn to speak the language!
One thing nobody’s mentioned (or I didn’t see it), is that Dutch is about the closest language to English in the modern world (unless you count Scots as a separate language).
I imagine that makes it a lot easier for Dutch people to learn English- I’ve heard that learning Dutch if you speak English as a native language isn’t as hard as say… Italian.
As for the Scandinavians, I have no idea why they would speak English well.
Well, we do have good schools (doesn’t the USA?*) but they can’t be responsible. Most kids are taught just as many hours of English class as they have French class and German class. And our mastery of those two language is, on average, clumsy and spotty. No. it’s TV, songs and Internet.
Odd little factoid: before the Second World War, the roles of language in Holland were reversed. No-one spoke English, and all the schoolkids recited German poets to each other. German was our language of cool, poetry and stories then.
- Hijackinng my own answer here…it’s just a WAG, but I suppose that the problems in USA inner city highschools are similar to those in some of our Dutch inner-city “black high schools”. I define those as highschools attended by over 50 % of kids from a lower class, immigrant background. Usually a mix of Morroccan, Surinam and Antillean kids. There has been some research into the cause of the generally lower academic results and higher percentage of drop-outs of children in these schools. The cause, apparently, wasn’t lack of funding, nor the amount or quality of teachers and teaching materials. The problem was the absence of a “learning culture” IN the school. Peer pressure was at odds with getting good grades, and was instead aimed at securing social status and 'cool ness" among peers. These kids were far too busy one-upping each other socially,to busy themselves with something as uncool as schoolwork.
AK84: We don’t have a word for “Dutch courage”. We make a long sentence around it. “zich moed indrinken” comes closest, I guess. (“to drink courage into oneself”) but it isn’t as pejorative.
Bump, the languages are not that similar. I don’t think that’s it.
Ok, tell me;what language is closer to English?
Dutch and Scandanavians have one thing else that sets them apart, its how good their written english is, something which is noticably absent in other European nations. Case in point, I have a roomate from Portugal and while his spoken english is ok, he once asked me to correct a paper he had written; I gave up a third of the way through.
Actually, the German language area is usually considered to be 100 million people: Germany 80 mil. + Austria 15 mil. + Switzerland.
I don’t know, I’m not a linguiist. German might be closer to Dutch then English, for all I know. I just wanted to correct the idea that learning English is almost effortless for native Dutch speakers. It certainly isn’t.
Actually, Frisian is closer to English than Dutch is. However, all these languages are sufficiently different that it’s not trivial for speakers of one of them to learn another one.
Compare that to the mainland Scandinavian language. If you put a Norwegian, a Swede, and a Dane in the same room, they will speak to one another in their own languages. (Add an Icelander and he’s likely to try the Danish he learned in school.) And they will understand each other, within limits. Generally Norwegians and Swedes understand one another okay, with caveats for some of the odder dialects, and both groups can understand Danish with effort. On the other hand, Norwegians, especially those who use bokmål as their written standard, can understand written Danish fairly easily. This is, because it looks a lot like Norwegian, but with extra commas, where you wouldn’t expect them 
(Bokmål is based on Danish, you see. It’s complicated.)
On the other hand, an English speaker hearing spoken Frisian won’t be able to follow it, nor will he be able to read written Frisian. Some bits will be familiar, but not enough.
I have to beg to differ here. If you put a Swede in the same room as a Norwegian and a Dane, they will most likely start speaking English 
The same with the Icelander.
That based completely on personal experience.
I blame the Dane! Without him/her in the room, it is doubtful that English would be the chosen language of conversation. That is from my experience of traveling in Norway as a Swede. I always spoke Swedish with the local populace, the replies came back in Norwegian, and all was well.
The near incomprehensibility of Danish speech makes it a necessity for them to speak English if you want to understand anything but a tiny fraction of what they are saying. So when a Dane joins the conversation, it’s easier to switch to English allowing everybody to understand and be understood.
I’m sorry Danes, but it’s true. 
Absolutely! Or if the Norwegian speaks Nynorsk (which is equally weird).
That’s interesting- what if a Finn is in the conversation? I understand their language is way different than English or the other Scandinavian languages and is only close to Estonian and Hungarian.
I’m an American who always had a great talent for foreign languages by American standards- I got the top score in the state in the standardized German test in high school. Yet since I started learning so late and since German is so hard and is so rarely spoken in the US I never got to speak it fluently. And I soon realized there was no point in my trying to gain fluency- it’s of absolutely no benefit in daily or work life in the US. I will still occasionally watch the news in German (at tagesschau.de) but never get the chance the speak it. If someone like me with a talent and interest in it never got fluent in German then I imagine there’s very few people living in the US who gain true fluency in a foreign language without special circumstances like speaking it at home.