Or is it just Erasmus students? It seemed like everyone knew three or four languages - their own, Spanish, and English. Is this typical of today's younger Europeans as a whole, or just the smarter of them, which Erasmus students would be?
I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
I don't think it's just Erasmus students, but generally most of young people in any European country are able to speak in English. Furtherly, because between some neighbouring countries the languages are similar, there can be some degree of mutual inteligebility.
I was a Erasmus student in Poland and can understand some of it. Plus, I speak English, Spanish, French and some Italian. I'm Portuguese, by the way!
Sometimes I wish the rest of the world would stop speaking English so well because over here in the England most people know they don't really need to speak a foreign language so they don't bother. I speak a few but I'm more and more in the minority here. In some European countries it's a given that kids will learn many languages to fluency but here you have to have real determination.
shareThings are changing; there is more and more emphasis on learning European languages here in the British Isles. Europe is fast becoming a federal nation, and in all seriousness, the English speaking nations don't want to be seen as ignorant. At the local primary schools, they all now learn Italian from a young age, and all signs are in Italian.
shareNot all Europeans are trilingual, but the average of trilinguals may be higher than in other parts of the world (except, perhaps, India). My opinion is that most Europeans under 30 speak their language and some English - acceptable level in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, middle to almost non-existing in other countries. I guess the Netherlands and Scandinavia speak English better because their languages are closer and they have more audiovisual exposure to it, not as in France, Spain, Italy or Germany, where English films and series are dubbed.
But then one must take into account that many countries in Europe have more than one language, so many people speak their mother tongue, the one from the country and then some English. That's what happens indeed with Catalans, as pictured in the film. In fact, I read years ago that Belgians and Catalans were on average the most trilingual of all Europeans. I guess that you could easily find trilinguals too in Luxembourg, the Basque Country or Switzerland, for instance.
This also varies among individuals. A young well-educated European who's travelled around Europe or lives in a touristic resort will probably speak more languages than other people from his/her same country.
Actually Scandinavian languages ain't close to English, at least not Finnish, but the reason we learn English so well, is because we start studying it when we are 8-9 years old and also thanks to movies and tv-shows that aren't dubbed. (I personally think dubbing is soooo bad!)
I'm from Finland and we have to official languages here, Finnish and Swedish. My mother tongue is Swedish, but I speak equally good Finnish and English plus I'm learning Spanish. Being trilingual is pretty normal here.. apart from those kids who don't even want to learn e.g. Swedish...
At the moment I'm actually studying in Spain as an Erasmus-student, two hours away from Barcelona, so watching this movie should be interesting ;) It's also a task to watch it for our Spanish course.. may be cheating with the English subtitles I got.. :D
I've been wondering about that, too! I'm fifteen and from New York, and I've been speaking English for about ten years, and speak Spanish when I must and French reasonably well. But I don't know a lot of people who are trilingual, not the even the Western Europeans.
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I don't think erasmus students are smarter:-) it doesn't have to do anything with that. I think it depends on which country you're from, in Luxembourg for instance it's perfectly normal to speak three to four other languages besides Luxemburgish. Many people from European countries have to learn other languages because their own is only spoken in their own country. I would think that Americans don't really need to study foreign languages, they can, but they don't have to.
shareWell, I'm from the Netherlands, so I speak Dutch, and I speak English just about fluently. I'm also reasonably adept at German and French, which I studied in school, especially German.
I think most people here in the Netherlands speak English to some degree, some better than others. Most of my friends are between okay and very good at it. Many people also studied German and/or French (not Spanish so much) in school, so depending on their feeling for language, they will have picked up some of these languages.
If you say someone's trilingual just for being able to use some of three languages (maybe excluding those they can just say "hello" and "I love you" in or whatever), I would say many Europeans are indeed trilingual.
I think it depends on the official language of your country, I mean, people in England, USA or Australia probably only speak English, some are at least bilingual but I mean that a significant number of people can speak only one language. This is because English can be used anywhere! Same goes for countries like Mexico, where most people can speak only Spanish (but I have come across a lot of mexicans who speak conversational English), cos Spanish can be used in big parts of the world. I have been to Madrid and people there barely speak English properly. Whereas people from Holland all speak excellent English because they can't really use Dutch outside of Holland. Same goes for places like Norway.
I, myself, is not European. I'm from Hong Kong and New Zealand so I'm native in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. But I'm also fluent in Spanish cos I learnt it at school. Those are probably among the most useful languages compared to others, since they can be used practically anywhere. But I also want to learn German.
That's a good way of putting it, and you're probably right. I can imagine the specific country you live in, and more precisely the language(s) spoken in that country officially will have a big influence on whether certain other languages will be spoken well by most people in that country, however complicated a sentence this has become.
And I do think German is an excellent language to speak as well :) I wish I spoke it better.
I live in Iceland and there to finish basic education (6-16 year old) we have to learn three languages (Icelandic, English and Danish) but to finish gymnasium (16-20 year old) we must learn at least four languages, the forth one being usually German, French or Spanish, and if we chose language as major we have to learn five. I think it's not like that in European countries where the population speaking your native tongue is bigger. I also know that in Switzerland you must learn four: French, German, Italian and English, because of how the country is splitted.
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