Rod, at 10:59 on May 16 1995, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...

PE> Well whenever I speak to someone from Europe, I ask them
PE> if they all learnt English at school, and they say they do.

BG> What part of Europe though?  I'd expect the EEC countries
BG> to be teaching English, but not the (ex) Soviet Union,

RS> I'm pretty sure they always did. Its quite interesting to
RS> watch the spokespeople on TV current affairs like LateLine,
RS> very good english lots of them.

Sure, but educated spokespeople basically need English to commuicate with
those from other countries (which makes it a semi-official sort of
international language after all, which is what we were discussing anyway,
I guess).  That said, it's also fairly obvious when say Serb or Croats are
being interviewed in situ, that whilst their English is passable, their
colleagues generally wouldn't have a clue what's being said.  Also quite
noticeable on Foreign Correspondent too, and other shows of that ilk.

BG> nor much of Scandinavia either.

RS> They certainly did, I know quite a few.

Dunno, my "uncle" to whom I referred in an earlier message (the
one who put his Dragon Rapide down on Tugun beach twice in one week) was
Swedish, had brought his entire family out here in the early '50s (in the
same plane too!), and when we first met them a couple of years later, their
English was excellent, more like ours, but with Volvo crash-dummy accents. 
|-)

At that stage though, I still suspect they were the exception.

RS> And the other thing which makes a HELL of a difference now is 
RS> that the smaller countrys tend to have subtitled TV progs, which 

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me now.

RS> are very likely to be in english, and that helps heaps to teach 

Apart from China, where the subtitles are generally Mandarin, as most
movies are made by Cantonese-speaking Chinese.  Not much room on the screen
for English subtitles as well.  |-)

RS> them english. Very noticeable with the Dutch for example. Corse 
RS> they often have a very guttural accent which makes it hard to 
RS> understand them, but they generally dont do anywhere near as bad 
RS> at understanding an english speaker.

Yeah, and Flemmish and German don't sound much better either.

PE> My wife says that it is compulsory to
PE> learn English for SIX YEARS at school.

BG> Perhaps they did at Xiayi's school, but neither do I believe that
BG> this applies to anywhere near the majority of schools in China.

RS> I think you might be surprised.

Very.  English in provincial schools?  I'm not convinced.

BG> Most Chinese leaders and politicians are basically xenophobic,

RS> Well, they are a different matter, quite a while since they were 
RS> at school.

And as they make and enforce the laws, one would immediately presume that
their xenophobia would have them banning English, not making it compulsory.
 Unless it's all just a cunning communist plot to take over the world...

BG> and the rest of the population more or less do what they're told.

RS> Which happens to be compulsory english in school. You could say 
RS> the same thing about the Japanese, they also have compulsory 
RS> english anyway.

Yeah, don't I know it!  I can't even turn on the Kenwood without having
some JA call me.  I usually end up talking with them anyway, and most of
them involve themselves in ham radio for the sole purpose of improving
their English.  They tell me that English is a very difficult language for
them to learn, and after listening to them butcher it for hours on end, I
can believe that.

BG> Or has that all changed fairly recently?

RS> The english in school was there before the cultural revolution
RS> at least as far as I know. In fact there was considerable study
RS> of books in english as part of that which caused considerable
RS> problem during the cultural revolution.

Interesting.  I hadn't considered that aspect.  Must be more common than I
thought, but I still don't believe it's anything like compulsory.

Regards, Bill
@EOT:

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