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
RS> to watch the spokespeople on TV current affairs like
RS> LateLine, very good english lots of them.

BG> Sure, but educated spokespeople basically need English
BG> to commuicate with those from other countries (which
BG> makes it a semi-official sort of international language
BG> after all, which is what we were discussing anyway, I guess).

Sure, I said that a bit too cryptically. What I meant was that they
have such good english that I find it hard to believe that they have
just managed to get that after the breakup of the old USSR, once they
got a lot of western journalists wanting to interview them on TV etc.

Particularly the engineers, scientists, medical people and people
like that have always needed english to keep up with what was going
on in the west technology etc wise. Which presumably was they reason
they always had a big emphasis on english in their education system.

BG> That said, it's also fairly obvious when say Serb or Croats are
BG> being interviewed in situ, that whilst their English is passable,
BG> their colleagues generally wouldn't have a clue what's being said.

Cant agree with that, particularly with the Croats. When the journo
is interviewing people in the street, particularly in the big citys,
they usually do manage to find some that speak quite possible english.
The Croats have always been a lot closer to the west, like the Czechs.

BG> Also quite noticeable on Foreign Correspondent too,
BG> and other shows of that ilk.

Sure, but I still think that there are a decent number of the normal
people who get interviewed on programs like that, who do speak acceptible
english, and who arent spokespeople etc. And like someone else said, we
have had french compulsory for many years, but only a tiny handful ever
leave school with usable colloquial french that would allow them to speak
french to say a TV crew in the street. So I think it is pretty clear that
english is taught in most of the european schools.

BG> nor much of Scandinavia either.

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

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

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

I doubt it. I know a surprising number of scandinavians and I dont
know a single one who arrived here with no knowledge of english at all.
And you could say the same thing for all the western europeans too.

The Italians, particularly those who came relatively soon after the
war, certainly didnt have any english, apart from the educated ones.
And many of them never even bothered to learn english here either and
still basically cant speak english. You never go that effect with the
western europeans tho.

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

BG> Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me now.

RS> which are very likely to be in english,

BG> Apart from China, where the subtitles are generally Mandarin,

Welp, its hardly a 'smaller country' is it |-)

BG> as most movies are made by Cantonese-speaking Chinese.
BG> Not much room on the screen for English subtitles as well.  |-)

Could be a problem I guess.

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

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

Yeah, one german fellow I knew well was pretty damned hard to understand
even after he had been here 15 years. Mostly just the accent.

You get an odd effect with some chinese, some arent too bad at all
as far as understanding them is concerned, but one fellow was hopeless.
Stuffed if I know what the reason was, never really tried to analyse
what was so hard to understand about his english. You can get the same
effect with the Thais too.

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.

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

Welp, its true anyway. I think I've got some memoirs
that say that quite explicitly come to think of it.

BG> Most Chinese leaders and politicians are basically xenophobic,

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

BG> And as they make and enforce the laws, one would immediately
BG> presume that their xenophobia would have them banning English,
BG> not making it compulsory.

The chinese have always been a surprisingly pragmatic lot. There was
a rash of hatred for western arts stuff, particularly music etc, but
they appear to have realised that they would be cutting of their nose
to spite their face on the technology side without english.

BG> Unless it's all just a cunning communist plot to take over the world...

I dont think it was take over so much as a recognition that particularly
on the industrial side, they were still importing all that stuff. So
english was important to keep up. As far as the education is concerned.

Many of those older people, particularly the ones who had
actually taken part on the revolution, often missed out on
much of their education due to the revolution itself.

Then later the Cultural Revolution essentially chopped quite a few
years out of the education of the people of school age at that time.
Most of whom were the actual pack of loonys running around fucking
up society in the most spectacular fashion.

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 the
RS> same thing about the Japanese, they also have compulsory english anyway.

(Continued to next message)

--- PQWK202