[memling]

> Can anyone care to elaborate the situation where you live? I'm very curious what motivates people to learn dead languages and read books thousands years old.

I'd guess religion is one driver. My impression of Sweden is that it's not a terribly religious country, so interest in languages like Latin or Koine Greek might be less compared to countries where religion has a deeper hold like the US.

It could also simply be a question of population size: more people suggests more people might share those interests.

It might also have to do with foreign language learning. I don't know about Sweden, but my impression of the Netherlands is that they teach foreign languages very early (e.g., my Dutch professors all sounded mostly American). It may be that if you have early language learning, the barrier to entry is lowered for subsequent languages.

[barry-cotter]

> I don't know about Sweden, but my impression of the Netherlands is that they teach foreign languages very early

I don’t think this is the case. I believe it’s all Dutch, all the time through primary school. They don’t dub anything though, everything is subtitled whether it’s in English, French, German or something else. And Dutch is the closest living language to English unless you count Scots. Dutch people speaking great English is as surprising as Portuguese speaking great Spanish, except English is a great deal more useful.

[Mediterraneo10]

"And Dutch is the closest living language to English unless you count Scots."

Dutch is from a different branch of Germanic than English. The "closest relative" is typically held to be Frisian, which is part of the same Germanic subgroup as English.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language