[unclesams-uncle]

Belgium is a great test case for your theory.

The country is split linguistically between Dutch speakers in the northern Flemish region, and French in the southern Walloon region.

The Flemish region's television stations and cinemas run mostly subtitled programs (really, anything outside of children's shows and content made in the region or in the Netherlands).

In the French-speaking areas, the media companies and cinemas buy their content from France, where the vast majority of it comes overdubbed.

As a result, the Flemish have a much stronger command of English than their French-speaking counterparts.

That said, the French-speaking Belgians, at least in my experience of living there for a long time, speak English much better than the French.

A lot of that has to do with how international the country is, where Brussels not only hosts many international institutions, but also a lot of companies have their EU HQs there. Many people need to speak English to get jobs with these firms, so it drives up the English competency among the local population.

Your theory definitely has some merit.

[jack_arleth]

Though I'm willing to agree with this as a general idea, I would be cautious to state it as a fact.

I've encountered many Flemish Belgians who openly admit they can understand English but cannot speak it well. A member of my close familiy who works in aviation occasionally rants about "having to do everything in English", a position that I cannot begin to understand. Whereas I've worked for a Flemish Belgian company that also had Walloon Belgian customers who communicated not stubbornly in French (as the stereotype would suggest) but in professional English.

I believe that the language learning is affected by the generations. There has been a disregard, acceptance and now (what I believe) a new disregard of foreign languages in Flanders. Though I do not have any numbers to back that up. That said the news recently reported an all-time low for Flemish Belgian students with regard to reading and sciences (https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2019/12/03/_dutch-is-the-key-to...). So there might be a correlation between the two subjects.

It would be very interesting to have data on this subject as Belgium indeed is a great place to study this phenomenon.

[larnmar]

Maybe, you’ve also got to consider the fact that Flemish is more similar to English than French is, and cultural differences between French and Flemish/Dutch speakers overall (broadly overgeneralising, French people are salty that their language has been overtaken in relevance by English, while Dutch speakers are comfortable with the fact that their language was never all that important).

[mettamage]

I know that this is true for Dutch speakers in The Netherlands. I wonder how Flemish people think about Dutch. I never asked :D

[danioli]

Wow.