[mtrimpe]

Apart from London Amsterdam is probably the city where you can get by most easily speaking only English.

It will be hard to fully integrate into Dutch social life without learning proper Dutch of course, but professionally it will not be much of a problem and the expat community is so large that it is fairly easy to build a decent social life within it.

[jonascopenhagen]

> Amsterdam is probably the only city, apart from London, where you can get by perfectly speaking only English.

You can get by perfectly speaking only English in most of Northern Europe.

Southern Europe is a different story.

[mtrimpe]

Seeing that your from Copenhagen; how is the expat community there?

Here it feels very thriving, lively and well-functioning, but quite insular because on the one hand we make it so easy to get by with English alone but on the other hand we don't truly accept people into our social circles unless they speak Dutch.

Can you relate to that?

[jonascopenhagen]

Yes and no - the Americans I know who live here are generally very happy with it. Some are so used to being able to speak English everywhere in Denmark that they live here for years without getting to know the language. But I would definitely recommend people who live here for a longer time (two or more years) to learn a little Danish. It's not that hard, and they can use their knowledge of Danish to easily learn similar languages like German, Swedish, etc.

[mtrimpe]

That sounds very similar to here; although here learning the language usually starts closer to the 4 or 5 year mark.

Once again I'm forgetting Denmark as 'the other country that is so much like ours.'

[sgt]

Exactly my point. It's going to be possible to get by, but hard to integrate into dutch society and social life. That's just how it is in every country. Let's be realistic here.

Take Norway for instance, everybody loves to speak English but you'd really need to learn Norwegian to fully enjoy living there for years on end.

[patrickk]

Dublin? Everyone in Ireland (well 99.99%) speaks English as their first language. Some people even speak Irish ;)

[mtrimpe]

Isn't Dublin a part of England though? ;)

But good catch... I meant countries where English is not already the native language.

[ay]

Just for the record: No, it's not part of England ;-)

The Northern Ireland (its capital Belfast) is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, alongside with England, Scotland, and Wales.

Dublin is a capital of the Republic of Ireland, which is on the south, and is a separate country (TLD .ie :) which uses euro as the currency, contrary to the UK's pound.

I am being a bit pedantic with since the whole UK/Ireland story is still a pretty fresh wound and making such a mistake might get one some negative brownie points in the conversation :-)

[mtrimpe]

Just for the record, I was being facetious. My apologies if I misjudged the freshness of the wound.

[patrickk]

It's a bit like making a joke about Israel/Palestine.

In Northern Ireland at least, you had state-sponsored terrorism by the police, IRA blowing up civilians, thousands killed - the very worst sectarianism imaginable. Some of this continued into the 90s so yes, the wounds are still fresh.

That doesn't even delve into the long, brutal history between Ireland and England spanning centuries, a relationship that's only healing today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

[ay]

My girlfriend is Irish, and we went for the 2-day "tour" to Belfast this Xmas.

The overall feeling was quite cautious and tense, and people looked at us as we walked around and sat in the bar.

Less than a week after we came back, there were "issues" - aka some confrontation between the opposing sides.

It felt really strange. You do not expect this in the north of Europe.

I hope it gets better and calmer and the common sense prevails. Belfast is a beautiful place to visit.

(+1 for enriching my vocabulary with a new word :)

[jonascopenhagen]

> I meant countries where English is not already the native language.

English isn't the native language in the Scandinavian countries or Finland, and yet most of us speak English fluently :)

[intelekshual]

I can't tell if you are joking, but no, Dublin is not a part of England. It hasn't been for over 90 years.

[LaGrange]

There is a high availability of Dutch courses for expats, though, and if you know English and/or German already, you actually have quite a good start.