This one is for the Swedes and Czechs. While watching the pre-game show tonight I noticed that Lundqvist, a 23 year old rookie in North America has such an excellent command over the English language already whereas you've got a guy like Jagr who, after being a star in America for well over a decade still does not speak the language at a high level. Then there is Peter Forsberg who has been in N.A. for a similar amount of time as Jagr and in my estimation speaks better English than most Americans.
My question is, is English an emphasized subject in Swedish schools and not in the Czech Republic? Are there cultural factors in Sweden which make Swedes want to learn English on their own? Am I looking too far into this (i.e. are Lundqvist/Forsberg/Jagr not representative of their nationalities)?
P.S. I am not trying to disparage the Czechs in any way, AND, John Giannone looks like Brian Leetch. That is all.
My wife, who is of Swedish background, told me that English is taught in Sweden early on in schooling. Swedes become so proficient in English that they later take a third language, i.e. French, Spanish, or German, in secondary school.
This one is for the Swedes and Czechs. While watching the pre-game show tonight I noticed that Lundqvist, a 23 year old rookie in North America has such an excellent command over the English language already whereas you've got a guy like Jagr who, after being a star in America for well over a decade still does not speak the language at a high level. Then there is Peter Forsberg who has been in N.A. for a similar amount of time as Jagr and in my estimation speaks better English than most Americans.
My question is, is English an emphasized subject in Swedish schools and not in the Czech Republic? Are there cultural factors in Sweden which make Swedes want to learn English on their own? Am I looking too far into this (i.e. are Lundqvist/Forsberg/Jagr not representative of their nationalities)?
P.S. I am not trying to disparage the Czechs in any way, AND, John Giannone looks like Brian Leetch. That is all.
Czechs' second language, like other Eastern Euro's, was Russian. USSR, at the time, was the major cultural, economical and political partner for obvious reasons. I'm not sure about the Swedes though. But I did notice that the Swedes are the best English-speaking nation outside Anglo-Saxons.
When I worked in ocean shipping I shared a workspace with a guy named Mats. He didn't have even the slightest trace of an accent, so I asked him that since his name was Mats, if his parents were from Sweden. He started laughing and said, "Yes, they are. And so am I. I've only been in New York for less than a year!"
You could've knocked me over with a feather after hearing that. Not only did he have no trace of an accent, but he picked up many colloquial expressions. He definitely had me fooled.
My wife, who is of Swedish background, told me that English is taught in Sweden early on in schooling. Swedes become so proficient in English that they later take a third language, i.e. French, Spanish, or German, in secondary school.
We start to learn/read English when in the 4th grade here (10 years old) and we dont stop. We do not Dub movies or TV-shows like most of the other European countries. (Germany, Spain) We do Subtitles for the youngest kids but most of the time it is just English with Swe subs if you want it.
*There was alcohol involved when writing this post*
Even alot of TV-ad's is in english without any subtitles or such... I didn't notice it before quite recently so not sure if it is a new thing or just because I was actually looking for it.
I learnt my english from the TV, since we had few good channels when I was a child I watched a english or american channel instead, quite useful. I mostly read books in english too, why bother waiting for the translation?
Can't really give a good answer to why we learn out english at such a early age (compared to other countries, wouldn't mind teaching it out even earlier...), probably a combination of that we are a small country with a small language that won't help us when we travel. We are not a great country to invist in because of high salaries so the big industry-jobs doesn't really go to Sweden, therefor needing to have people that are more educated so we are able to bring other kind of works, maybe?
Even now, to my knowledge, it's easier to get around the Czech Republic (and other central European countries) with a good command of German than English.
We start to learn/read English when in the 4th grade here (10 years old) and we dont stop. We do not Dub movies or TV-shows like most of the other European countries. (Germany, Spain) We do Subtitles for the youngest kids but most of the time it is just English with Swe subs if you want it.
*There was alcohol involved when writing this post*
Hmm, very cool. I think learning another language should start early in the states like it does in Sweden.
At least I know if I ever visit Sweden I can communicate with people and not get lost lol.
Czechs' second language, like other Eastern Euro's, was Russian. USSR, at the time, was the major cultural, economical and political partner for obvious reasons. I'm not sure about the Swedes though. But I did notice that the Swedes are the best English-speaking nation outside Anglo-Saxons.
When I was travelling around Eastern Europe before the Wall fell, many people spoke German too. Both because East Germany was the most important economy in Eastern Europe and because Germans (from both the west and the east) were the most common tourists there too. Most people I talked with in Yugoslovia and Hungary told me it was really rare to meet an America traveler and most of the time we were communicating in a mixture of German (which I really don't speak, but understand quite a bit) French, and a bunch of phrases pulled from Dirty Harry movies. German Marks were much more in demand than American dollars too
I know a bunch of Swedes from doing the whole "music thing". They -all- speak english. Every one of them that I know... and they speak well. Some have accents, some have no accents whatsoever. They tell me they learn it at an early age in school. One of my friends is a part-time English teacher over there, as a matter of fact.
When I was travelling around Eastern Europe before the Wall fell, many people spoke German too. Both because East Germany was the most important economy in Eastern Europe and because Germans (from both the west and the east) were the most common tourists there too. Most people I talked with in Yugoslovia and Hungary told me it was really rare to meet an America traveler and most of the time we were communicating in a mixture of German (which I really don't speak, but understand quite a bit) French, and a bunch of phrases pulled from Dirty Harry movies. German Marks were much more in demand than American dollars too
Makes sense.
An interesting fact: the Sudeten (sp?) area has been returned to Czechoslovakia after WWII with its German population. There is a number of Czechs that have German last names and are most likely to be of German descent - Martin Richter, Robert Reichel come to mind...
This one is for the Swedes and Czechs. While watching the pre-game show tonight I noticed that Lundqvist, a 23 year old rookie in North America has such an excellent command over the English language already whereas you've got a guy like Jagr who, after being a star in America for well over a decade still does not speak the language at a high level. Then there is Peter Forsberg who has been in N.A. for a similar amount of time as Jagr and in my estimation speaks better English than most Americans.
My question is, is English an emphasized subject in Swedish schools and not in the Czech Republic? Are there cultural factors in Sweden which make Swedes want to learn English on their own? Am I looking too far into this (i.e. are Lundqvist/Forsberg/Jagr not representative of their nationalities)?
P.S. I am not trying to disparage the Czechs in any way, AND, John Giannone looks like Brian Leetch. That is all.
im a big fan of look-a-likes and have a great eye for them, but i dont know how you say Giannone looks like Leetch. By the way, MLB slugger Valadamir Guerrero has been around the league for a while and he uses a translator. he hails from the Dominican Republic but all his other country men in the league seem to speak english fine. kinda weird...
Well when Jagr was at school we were still occupied by Russians and communists ruled(ruined) Czechoslovakia. There was no other language allowed then russian. We got rid of our komrads in 1989, and Jagr went to US that year, so...
Now it's getting better, kids are starting to learn foreign languages when they are 10-11, but i guess it's 60/40 in english/germany.
Anyway, some people don't have "brain" for foreign languages, looks like Jagr is one of them.
This one is for the Swedes and Czechs. While watching the pre-game show tonight I noticed that Lundqvist, a 23 year old rookie in North America has such an excellent command over the English language already whereas you've got a guy like Jagr who, after being a star in America for well over a decade still does not speak the language at a high level. Then there is Peter Forsberg who has been in N.A. for a similar amount of time as Jagr and in my estimation speaks better English than most Americans.
My question is, is English an emphasized subject in Swedish schools and not in the Czech Republic? Are there cultural factors in Sweden which make Swedes want to learn English on their own? Am I looking too far into this (i.e. are Lundqvist/Forsberg/Jagr not representative of their nationalities)?
P.S. I am not trying to disparage the Czechs in any way, AND, John Giannone looks like Brian Leetch. That is all.
i agree with you on forsberg, i was impressed with how well he speaks english
In Swedish schools you start learning english at the age of 10 (4th grade). Furthermore you start reading a third language at the age of 12 (6th grade), there's often spanish, german and french to choose from (sometimes also sign language).
Yeah, so is Dutch. Possibly Icelandic, too.
I know I can understand Dutch pretty well and I've never studied it
The tree is pretty simple:
West Germanic English (incl. Scots, Orkney, Shetlands et similar), High-German, Dutch/Flemish, Frisian, Plattdeutsch (Lo-german), Jiddisch
East Germanic
Gothic (Extinct)
North Germanic
Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faeroic
Funny note: Linguistically speaking, Danish and Swedish are much closer related to each other than to Norwegian. Still the Danish are the ones you need subtitling/translators for today.
Anyway, the reason Swedes speak English quite fluently is naturally due to early schooling and immense media pressure. Any kid growing up in Sweden since at least the 60s will have seen massive amounts of English/american spoken television, movies, computer games. When importing new nouns and terms to Swedish, we seldom translate them. Heck, we don't even change the spelling to match Swedish phonetics. A silly example: "Boxplay" in Swedish doesn't simply mean you're playing 4 against 5 (in a box), but has become the expression for penalty killing in general.
Speaking of subtitles.. I heard that Russian TV, when not overdubbing, have a narrator's voice reading all the lines on top of the original soundtrack
There is a simple and very over looked reason why Swedes, Norwegians, Danish and Dutch people speak better english then Germans, Italians, Spanish, Frensh, ect and that reason is TV dubbing.
In the four countries I mentioned there is no dubbing what so ever. All TV programs are subtitled no matter what the original language of the program is. Since over 50% of the TV time is english speaking country produced (US, UK, Aussie, Canda) that means that at least 50% of all the TV time we have we are spoon fed with english.
There is not a single day that passes without hearing English. This is actually a very contributing fact to why the english vocabulary and pronounciation is so good. You hear alot of words and frases all the time and you hear it in good english.
In countries where you have dubbed TV you never hear english. You dont hear it you forget it. Only time you hear english is when you speak to people. Most of the time when you speak to people in english the person you speak to doesnt have english as his first language. So when you on a rare occation hear english its a restricted vocabular and a bad english pronounciation. Hence people from countries with dubbing have less training in english and the training they get is worse.
As someone said above in the Czech rep (as rest of east block) russian WAS the 2nd language you had in school. That means you learned English at a much higher age then you learned it in sweden. I dont know if the Czech rep still dubs (not been there since 91) but up untill 90 the Czech rep did dub their TV shows.
Actually the english community in sweden (there are quite alot of english, irish, us, ect people working here) are complaining that its hard for them to learn swedish because everyone speaks english.
You go to a McDonalds and everyone working there speaks good english. Litteraly the drunks living in the streets know quite decent english.
The only people you find not having a decent english in sweden are people who are in their 75+ with low education.
This also produces another problem in sweden and that is the decay of the swedish language. Most companies have enlish as their official language as they are more or less interantional. All documents produced are in english. Almost all higher learning (univ level) is done with enlish literature. When you listen to the swedish spoken at tech related work places (be it engineering, chemistry, it or any other higher learning oriented company) its horrible because its basicly english with swedish filler words.
My question is, is English an emphasized subject in Swedish schools and not in the Czech Republic? Are there cultural factors in Sweden which make Swedes want to learn English on their own? Am I looking too far into this (i.e. are Lundqvist/Forsberg/Jagr not representative of their nationalities)?
P.S. I am not trying to disparage the Czechs in any way, AND, John Giannone looks like Brian Leetch. That is all.
And why do you think most of the Czechs will speak better Slovak than any American evr? And why will Czechs speak Croatian without any dramatic accent unlike the Americans or Swedes?
C¨mon I think the answer is obvious.
P.S. And yes before 1989 English language was not taught in elementary schools as it is nowadays.
Well when Jagr was at school we were still occupied by Russians and communists ruled(ruined) Czechoslovakia. There was no other language allowed then russian. We got rid of our komrads in 1989, and Jagr went to US that year, so...
Now it's getting better, kids are starting to learn foreign languages when they are 10-11, but i guess it's 60/40 in english/germany.
Anyway, some people don't have "brain" for foreign languages, looks like Jagr is one of them.
That makes sense, but what if I brought up Petr Prucha?? Different era completely (I'm assuming there are major differences). He still has a lot of trouble with English when I saw one of his interviews. And I guess stayin with Jagr isn't helping it haha
) from the US/Canada.
I think learning another language should start early in the states like it does in Sweden.
