[deltaqueue]

Just another anecdote, but every Dutchman and Swede I've met has a much better grasp of the English language than any other country, and they all attribute it to how much American TV they watch. Probably just a corollary relationship given how English classes start at an early age, but I can't imagine the practice hurts.

[tjoff]

I find it quite easy to find a correlation between countries that dubs their TV/movies with poor English comprehension.

It really helps and without it people wouldn't be in contact with English that often (at least before the internet) and if you never refresh your knowledge it will most definitely fade. Yes, we start learning English at an early age but a lot of students excel way faster than teaching allows once they get over the initial hurdle (much thanks to TV and internet).

As a Swede I feel that we are quite good at understanding English but we are quite poor (comparatively) at speaking it (although we can often make ourselves understood it isn't pretty), which isn't that surprising considering how seldom most people in Sweden need to talk in English (but we constantly consume it).

Compare France and Germany with Sweden and I think the biggest advantage that Sweden has is that we don't dub any movies or TV (except for cartoons and movies targeted towards small children). That and that people in France tend to get upset every time the are reminded that french isn't the only language in the world.

[risratorn]

That's an observation i've made myself a dozen times too, i'm from Flanders (Belgium) where basically not a single show on public television is dubbed, all shows are subtitled and I'm confident that it has been a great stimulation in my ability to speak and understand english, even though it's not perfect. When I look at the other side of the country (Wallonia) where they speak french natively almost all shows on public TV networks are dubbed in french. The wallonians I know are pretty hard to understand when they speak english, they might grasp the grammar and spelling but their pronunciation is really bad.

PS: I don't mean to generalize here, it's just my personal observation, of course there are a lot of french talking people who speak perfectly understandable english fluent. I just feel that the fact that I've watched english spoken television shows all my life has helped me a huge amount in learning english.

[jarek]

I don't think it's quite as simple. Poland has been dubbing foreign TV/movies since the early 90s (in addition to having a rich homegrown tradition of children's entertainment) and English among younger generations is widespread and quite good, if not Scandinavia/Netherlands good.

I'd be willing to bet a correlation with country's population and relative economic power would be much stronger.

[iaskwhy]

It might be then good to analise another country, a poorer one and not in the north, say Portugal. Almost nothing is dubbed in Portugal and you can see quite a difference between Portuguese and Spanish people speaking English. Same for French or Italian people.

Still, Scandinavian youth seem to have almost perfect English and that is not true about Portugal where it's mostly good enough. I'm sure education has a role here somewhere.