Transcript - “Listening Time” Episode 182

Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and
you're listening to Episode 182 of the Listening Time Podcast. I hope you're all doing
great. I hope that you feel like your English has improved with all of this listening
practice that you've done with these episodes.
And today, we're going to talk about English. Speci cally, we're going to talk
about the topic of which countries speak English the best. Obviously, I'm referring to
speaking English as a foreign language. Which countries have a high English level,
even though English isn't the rst language of the country? Okay? So obviously, I’m
not including countries like Australia and Ireland and the UK and the US, etc. Okay?
So, I think this is an interesting topic, to look at the level of English around the
world, and maybe think about why certain countries have a higher level of English than
other countries. And I just want to say that even though I'm kind of ranking the
countries here, I don't want you to get the wrong idea about this. Your English level is
not an indicator of your worth, okay?
So, just because someone has a higher English level than another person, that
doesn't mean that they're a better person, okay? So, I'm just talking about this topic
because it's interesting. I don't want to make it sound like certain countries are better
than others in a general sense… of course not. Okay? This is just an interesting topic
to discuss. So, we're going to talk about that today.
And, of course, as always, I want to encourage you to become a Listening Time
Family Member so you can use my advanced episodes to practice with English spoken
fast. Okay? That will take you to the next step in your listening and in your English. So,
the link to sign up is down below. And I also encourage you to use my US
Conversations Podcast so you can start listening to conversations that two people
have while speaking at normal speed. And of course, I provide the transcript for you
and the de nitions of key words and phrases that we use to help you understand
everything.
That's really good practice to help you reach the level where you can actually
understand other people when they're talking, and not just understand one person
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below. And as always, please give this podcast a ve-star rating and write a review if
you can. Alright, let's get started.
Okay, I'm going to give the list of the top 10 countries around the world in terms
of their English level. And of course, like I mentioned, I'm talking about countries that
don't speak English as their rst language. Okay? So, I got this information from a
website. I think it's the EF EPI, which stands for English Pro ciency Index. This is some
type of index where they have the di erent countries ranked in terms of their English
level. So, that's where I got this information. And this will probably be di erent from
other charts that you might see online. So, you'll probably be able to nd other
rankings on other websites that are di erent, but I'm going to use this one. It seems
pretty o cial. Okay?
Alright, so the number one country is obvious for me. I don't know if it's obvious
for you, but it was no surprise to me. The number one country is the Netherlands. So,
people in the Netherlands speak English very well. And I'm not saying that everyone
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does, but in general, this country speaks English well. If you go there as a tourist and
you speak English, I'm sure that you'll be able to communicate very well in the
Netherlands.
So, there are a couple reasons why this was obvious for me. I think, number
one, Dutch, the language in the Netherlands, the main language, is one of the closest
languages to English. Okay? I think that it's probably one of the top three or top ve
closest languages to English. I think that there are a couple that are even closer. I think
Afrikaans, a language spoken in the south… the southern part of Africa… I think that
that is even closer. I think there's a certain minor dialect of a certain language that
might also be closer to English. There are a couple that are closer, probably, but Dutch
is very closely-related to English.
However, funny enough, I, for example, can't understand Dutch. If someone
speaks Dutch to me, there will probably be a few words here and there that I can
understand, but it's completely incomprehensible to me. So, it's not like when you
speak Portuguese as your native language and you hear someone speak Spanish, and
even though you don't speak Spanish, you can understand a lot of what they're saying.
No, it's not like that with English and the other Germanic languages that English is
related to. So, it's not that easy to understand the other languages in the same family
with English, but Dutch is a closely related language. So, it makes sense that people in
the Netherlands can speak English well.
And also just because the countries in, let's say, the northern part of Europe…
it's a common thing for these countries to speak English well. So, you'll see some of
these other countries on the list. I won't get ahead of myself here. When you “get
ahead of yourself,” this means that you start talking about something before it's time to
talk about it yet. So, like you're already talking about the next thing, but you're not
ready to talk about it yet. Okay? So, I'm not going to get ahead of myself here, but
you'll see other countries from the north of Europe on this list.
So, because of those two things, I was not surprised to see that the Netherlands
is number one. And I have never had a student from the Netherlands in all of my years
teaching English. Not many people there would need to take classes with someone like
me, because a lot of them speak English well.
Alright, number two. The second country on this list is Singapore. So, for some
of you who don't know anything about Singapore, this might be surprising. It sounds
kind of random that this country is number two, but there's a very good reason why it's
number two, and that is that English is a lingua franca there. A “lingua franca” is a
common language that is used among speakers of di erent languages, so that they
can communicate with each other, right?
So, for example, many years ago, French was the lingua franca all around
Europe. So, people from di erent countries might speak French to each other in order
to communicate with each other if they didn't speak the same native language. Okay?
So, in Singapore, English is the lingua franca. People use it to communicate with each
other, because there might be people from di erent language backgrounds there, so
they need a language to use in order to talk to each other, and English is that language.
So for that reason, it's not a huge surprise that Singapore is number two because
people use it as their second language or third language to talk to other people that
don't speak their language. Okay?
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 Alright, number three. Number three was a little bit surprising to me, but when I
thought more about it, it wasn't as surprising anymore, and that is Austria. So, I was a
little surprised, because I just assumed that almost all of the top six or seven countries
would be countries from the northern part of Europe, and Austria isn't that far north.
So, that's why I was a little surprised.
But when I thought more about it, I wasn't quite as surprised, because when I
thought back to my years of teaching, I realized that… I think I've only had, like one
student, or maybe not even a single student from Austria. Out of all of the many
thousands of hours of teaching I've done, I might have had one student from Austria,
maybe. So, when that's the case, that tells me that that country is good at speaking
English… when it comes to, like, European countries.
Of course, there are many countries in other parts of the world where people
don't really have the ability to take online English classes, so that's di erent. But in
Europe, online English classes are pretty accessible, so if I've never had a student from
a country, that's a good indicator that that country is probably decent in terms of their
English level. So, Austria is number three… a little surprising, but I guess not too
surprising for me.
Number four. This one is not surprising. This one is Denmark. Okay? Denmark is
one of those northern European countries that I'm talking about, and that's why I'm not
at all surprised. I've never had a student from Denmark, and I would say that most
online English teachers would probably say the same thing, because a lot of people in
Denmark speak English really well. If you travel there and you only speak English, you'll
be ne. Danish is also a language that is somewhat similar to English… not as similar
as Dutch, but it is somewhat similar. So, that also helps a lot.
And in general… I already mentioned that Northern Europe has the tendency to
speak English well, and that's also because these countries don't have really big
populations, and people from other countries don't usually speak the languages of
these countries, so in order to be more connected to the outside world and to
consume entertaining content like movies and TV and stu like that, the people in
these countries use English in order to connect to the world outside their country. So,
that's a tendency in Northern Europe, and Denmark is part of that region. So, that's
number four.
Number ve, no surprise, is Norway. This is another one of those northern
European countries. I've never had a student from Norway. I've, of course, had
students that live in these countries, that live in the Netherlands, in Denmark, in
Norway, etc, but these are students from other countries that have moved to these
countries. But I've never had a student from Norway. So, it's pretty much the same
story as Denmark and Norwegian is in the same family, the same language family, so
it's also similar to English. And so all of that is why Norway is number ve.
Number six… again, no surprise, Sweden. Another Northern European country.
Same story. I've never had a student from here. It's a similar language to English. It's in
that same general family of those northern European languages, right? So, no surprise
there… Sweden, number six.
Number seven. This one is a little bit surprising to me, but again, when I thought
more about it, it wasn't that surprising, because I've actually never had a student from
this country, which is a little strange, and that is Belgium. So, Belgium is number seven
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on this list. So apparently, this country has a high level of English. And in this country,
people speak either Dutch or French, and they might use a di erent name for their
variety of Dutch. But I guess it's not a surprise that the Dutch speaking portion of the
population speaks English well, because the Netherlands is number one on this list,
and they speak Dutch. So, I guess that's not a big surprise.
However, there are many French speakers in Belgium, and so I'm not sure what
the level of just the French-speaking portion of the population is That would be
interesting to see, but I don't have those numbers in front of me. But I was a little
surprised at this, but again, I keep going back to my experience as a teacher, and the
fact that I've never had a student from Belgium tells me that this is a country that
speaks English pretty well.
Number eight… this might be a little surprising to some of you. It's not as
surprising to me, actually, and that is Portugal. I say that it's not as surprising to me
because I've been to Portugal before, and I saw that, yeah, they speak English pretty
well. I tried to speak Portuguese as much as possible when I was in Portugal, and
sometimes, the people there just weren't interested in talking to me in Portuguese,
unfortunately.
It wasn't my favorite linguistic experience that I had in Europe, because I came
prepared, thinking that I would speak a bunch of Portuguese, but I ran into many
situations in which I would say something in Portuguese, and then the person
responded in English. And I've said this before… many of you probably disagree with
me about this… but I really like when I travel to a country and I can actually practice
the language in that country, and the people don't just immediately respond in English.
I am not a big fan of those situations, because I'm a language learner. I don't
want the person to just immediately talk to me in English. So, it wasn't my favorite
linguistic experience, but I loved Portugal. It's a beautiful country. But yeah, people in
Portugal speak English pretty well… not everyone, of course, but I'm not surprised that
Portugal is pretty high on this list.
Number nine is South Africa. So, this is a tricky one, because some people think
of South Africa as being an English-speaking country, and yeah, it kind of is. And I
think that it's on this list because there are many other languages that are spoken
there, and English is more the lingua franca there, rather than just the native language
that everyone speaks when they're born.
So, I didn't know if South Africa would be included on this list, but they included
it. I don't know too much about the linguistic culture of South Africa, so I can't say how
many people grow up speaking English as their native language. So, I don't know that,
but I do know that English is a lingua franca there. And so, of course, South Africa is a
country where you can speak English, and tons of people understand you perfectly.
And many people there speak it as a native language as well, I assume. Again, I don't
know all the details, but that's what I'm assuming.
And number 10 on this list… number 10 is Germany. So nowadays, we think of
Germany as a pretty good English speaking country. I think that people that have spent
a lot of time in Germany and have gone to the di erent regions of Germany, including
the North and the South, East and West, I'm sure people that have traveled all around
Germany have run into plenty of German people that aren't really comfortable speaking
English. It's de nitely not at the level of those northern European countries that I
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mentioned before, like Denmark and Norway and Sweden and, of course, the
Netherlands, right?
But we tend to think of Germany nowadays as a pretty good country when it
comes to speaking English, but I have had German students before. So, this tells me a
lot. I haven't had students from those other countries, but I have had students from
Germany. So, I would assume that Germany is lower than those other countries, but
it's still a very good English-speaking country. So, it's number 10 on this list.
So, as you can see, most of the countries that we talked about on this list, in the
top 10, are European countries, and if you look at the top 25, it's mostly European
countries. However, there are some notable exceptions in terms of European countries
that aren't near the top of this list, countries like Spain and Italy and France. And why is
that? Why aren't these countries at the top of the list?
I think there are several reasons for this. I think one of the biggest reasons is that
the languages in these three countries have a lot of power in terms of their history, like,
if you just look back at the history of these languages And how many people have
spoken them, how powerful they've been. For example, French used to be like the
lingua franca of the world in the past, and there are many speakers of these languages
nowadays… more so Spanish and French… more than Italian.
But still, if you compare like how many Spanish speakers there are in the world
to how many Danish speakers there are, you can't even compare them, right? Or if you
compare how many French speakers there are to the number of Norwegian speakers,
again, you can't even compare them. There are so many more French speakers around
the world. So, they have more native speakers. Like, Spanish has more native speakers
than English, even. Okay? So, there are many speakers. There's a lot of power,
historically speaking, in these languages.
Even, like Italian, for example. There aren't a huge number of Italian speakers,
but Italian just has, like a very set place in our minds as being like a beautiful language
that is related to art and culture and food and things like this. It's related to these other
things, and so people want to learn it for di erent reasons. And so, those are all
reasons why.
And I think that there's a lot of content in these languages. So, if you're a
Spanish speaker, you can live your whole life and just consume Spanish content on
social media and YouTube and movies and TV and podcasts. There are all kinds of
interesting things to consume in Spanish and in French and in Italian, I think. So,
there's a lot of content in these languages. So, people in those countries don't
necessarily have to learn English in order to nd interesting content for entertainment
or to learn things or whatever. So, that's another reason.
And I think that people in these countries are a little bit more, let's say, proud of
their language. They might really love their language and the culture around their
language, its history. So, for that reason, too, they might be less inclined to want to
speak English, right? So I think that's why those countries aren't in the top 25, for
example, right?
And one last thing. I wanted to mention the top non-European country on this
list where English has absolutely no o cial status. Because, like I mentioned, in
Singapore and in South Africa… yeah, these countries were on the list, but English is a
lingua franca there. It's an o cial language in those countries, I think. What is the top
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country that is not in Europe and in which English has no o cial status? I was really
surprised by this. That is Argentina. Argentina is number 28.
I have a lot of listeners from Argentina, and I've had plenty of students from
Argentina, so this is a little surprising to me, but maybe to some of you or people that
live in Argentina, this might not be as surprising. But I was surprised by Argentina being
number 28 on this list. Pretty cool.
Alright, I hope this episode was interesting for you. Again, I'm not trying to say
that some countries are better than others because of their English level. No. I just
wanted to talk about this topic. It's pretty interesting.
And as always, remember that you have my advanced podcast episodes that
you can use to practice with real English spoken fast. Okay? The link to sign up for
those is down below. And you also have my US Conversations Podcast that you can
use to listen to two people talking at normal speed. So, the link to sign up for that is
also down below. Alright, thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to
you on the next episode of Listening Time.
*Get my training and advanced episodes: www.patreon.com/listeningtime
*US Conversations Podcast: www.patreon.com/USConversations
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