Forum Moderators: open
There's more than that in the UK alone.
>English is the first or second predominate language?
All of them.
rencke will be along shortly with a more in depth answer ;)
I'd put my money on German as a close second - very widely used. Aside from the officially german speaking countries, it's also being/has been taught in schools all over Europe.
English #1 in UK & Ireland only.
Second in almost all other, at least as far as northern and western Europe is concerned. Southern Europe may need a bit of research. Any Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek out there? Help us please!
Switzerland is a special case with four official languages - German, French, Italian and Reto-Roman (did I spell that last right?) Any Swiss who can help us with this? Do you pick one of the other national languages and then English, or what?
English is probably #3 in Belgium which has two official languages both necessary to know and was #3 in Finland, until they ceased to force Swedish upon the kids in school, so it is probably generational there.
In eastern Europe, things may be even trickier and also generational. Bartek's observation about German is valid. In some places in the east I have found it more useful than English, so either German or Russian might be second in some countries, with English in third or even fourth place. Any Estonians, Letts, Lithuanians, Poles, Czecs, Slovaks, Hungarian, Romanians, Moldavians, Slovenians, Croats, Bosnia-Herzegovians and Yugoslavs around, who can give us the right answer?
In Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine I think English has been #2, since the 50ies, but again - if anyone from there can tell us, please do. It could be generational, with younger people into English and older into German.
One thing to keep in mind is that all countries in Western Europe harbor huge numbers of refugees and immigrants from many different non-European countries. Often 10 percent of the population or more. Their children will learn the language of their new homeland as second language and English as third.
Manhattan taxi drivers form a special case, which fortunately falls outside of this discussion.
Aragonés, Arbëreshë, Asturianu, Bairisch, Balgarski, Bosanski, Brezhoneg, Català, Cestina, Corsu, Cymraeg, Dansk, Delnoserbski, Deutsch, Eesti, Ellinika, English, Euskara, Føroyskt, Français, Fränkisch, Francoprovençal, Friulano, Frysk, Gaeilge, Gaelg, Gàidhlig, Galego, Gascon, Ghalghaaj, Haieren, Hornoserbski, Hrvatski, Íslenska, Istriot, Istro-Romanian, Italiano, Jèrriais, Kabardian, Karaim, Karjalan, Kartuli, Kaszubski, Kernewek, Ladin, Latina, Latviska, Lëtzebuergesch, Lietuviskai, Líguru, Lívõnkél, Magyar, Makedonski, Malti, Neddersassisch, Nederlands, Nenets, Norsk, Noxçiyn, Occitan, Picard, Piemontèis, Polski, Português, Retorumantsch, Romani, Rumantsch, Sámi, Sardu, Schwäbisch , Scots, Serbcina, Shqip, Siciliano, Skånsk, Slovencina, Slovenscina, Srpski, Suomi, Svenska, Tosk, Valencià, Veneto, Vlaams, Walon, Weanarisch, Yidish.
What we find is that the figures you indicate relate to the majority of the population - not necessarily to the available or relevant audience. I'll try to explain - For example, our target audience consists of engineers, technical managers, managing directors, etc. Many of these individuals are already speaking English. Therefore, if I were to assess the relevant or available audience from these individuals, i'd find a much greater ratio of English speakers.
Has that explained what I'm getting at?
Youth are now preferring English in schools than the mandated Russian taught until the Velvet Revolution of 1991. Older generation doesn't use it much on the whole across the country (but sure do well with the Russian that got beat into them!). Can get around in Prague (business and tourist center) well with English but German is also right up there and many Czech business people speak German and/or English for trade purposes.
I have taught English a couple of summers there and the interest is great, especially for business.
Thanks for the input on the Czech Republic JamesR. This is exactly the sort of knowledge we all need for all countries. Can one assume that the same goes for Slovakia? Seems reasonable.
Also: If Russian was mandatory first foreign language until 1991, does that mean that people who quit school before that are likely to have a limited understanding of English? That would pretty much mean everyone born before 1970 or so?
On the pattern described by JamesR: Is this likey to be the same for all countries east of the old iron curtain? Does anyone know?
I'm often asked by clients wanting to "get to a European audience" and I always say, translate into the native tongue. This is not always possible, but, must be considered for the "serious" marketeer.
There is a very large interest in learning English here and whilst most of the chinese web is in chinese (no surprise there) you will find that a good majority of surfers speak english sufficiently to cope with most of the web.
NFFC has asked me to report on the internet in China which I will do ( watch these fora ) but the English aspect seemed relevant here.
Onya
Woz
This ties in neatly with what Woz wrote above. And also, hunting for details on European understanding of English, I stumbled across an article saying that many Chinese e-mail each other in English, simply because of the problems with Kanji and keyboards.
was wondering if any here know what the popular SE in Europe that use English as a main language are..
Woz .. could you supply the same for China (have a few websites that are translated into Chinese)??
Edited by: rencke
And did he!
rencke, thank you for all the incredible work you have put into this forum. I sincerely hope that your efforts are rewarded and our fellow Europeans contribute to the Grand Pan-European Effort.
Oops!! Sorry I missed that request. Give me a couple of days and I will post a list.
Brett, where should I post it??? Here???
Onya
Woz
OK!
>>One condition on posting foriegn languages is that we must have someone on moderators staff that can read the language.
It will be all in English. I can speak some Chinese but reading??? too hard!
Onya
Woz
in the nearly future americans would realize that the europan market is as big as the usa not even bigger. ( I think about german speaking people, there are 82 mio in Germany, and 15 mio in Switzerland and Austria.) I can recommend: try to build websites in their own language because it would be more successful than english websites. not the majority speaks english as foreign language...if they do at all;-)
But you are right of course. Only 28% of all Europeans understand English at all and of the 100 million currently online only 32% access the net in English. At the end of next year there will 200 million Europeans online, more than in USA and Canada. So, the only chance to communicate with them is to translate web pages and have them optimized locally for the 300+ European search engines.
BTW: There are 4,5 million Indians online now, 16,9 mill Chinese (+1,9 in Hong Kong and 6,4 in Taiwan), 27 million Japanese and 15,3 million South Koreans.
Russia.
The recent research of Russian part of the Internet [internet.strana.ru] showed up the knowledge of English among the Russian internet users.
Fluent English -- 7% of Russian internet users
Quite good English -- 23%
Intermediate -- 38%
Pre-intermediate -- 18%
Beginner -- 7%
Don't know -- 6%
Can't answer -- 2%
Ukraine.
The second predominant language is Ukrainian. It sounds like a miracle, but most of people know Russian better than Ukrainian, especially in the East of Ukraine. (It is industrial part of the country. There are five cities in Ukraine, which have population more than 1 million people, and three of five are situated in the East of Ukraine).
I don't know exactly about the knowledge of English in Ukraine, but I am sure, that it is the same as in Russia, because educational systems of Russia and Ukraine are very similar.
Belorussia.
I think, the situation is like Ukrainian situation. The first language is Russian, the second one is Belorussian. The knowledge of English is the same as in Russia.
Bottom line.
Now you know the state of the art. The Russian-speaking part of the Internet is usually called 'Runet'. I think, in most cases you should use in Runet Russian and English. You can try to use Ukrainian or Belorussian only if it is important for you to reach out to the full audience.
Maybe, domination of Russian langugage is a main reason of the very slow developing of the internet markets in Belorussia and Ukraine.
I hope, my answer was useful. Is it true? Don't worry about my horrible English -- I'm constantly trying to improve it. :)
That was excellent information you provided on the linguistic abilities of the online population in eastern Europe. Would it be fair to say that approximately 30% of the Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian surfers could both read and write in English with relatively small difficulty? And that another 38% could read English, although with some difficulty?
Five months ago, I started a discussion thread on your country. It is right here:
[webmasterworld.com...]
So far, that is the total of our knowledge about Ukraina and its search engines. If you could add anything to this, we would be more than happy. One thing I am curious about is if there are any recent figures published about the number of Internet users. The latest one we have is 200.000 out of a population of over 49 million. I think that may have increased quite a lot.
- Jan
PS. Do not apologize for your English. Many of the Americans can't write English as well as you do, and we don't want to embarrass them ;)
Yes, I think, it's true. However, you should take into account that the knowledge of English depends on the age of site users, on the topic of your site, and so on. Above-mentioned research showed up, for example, that active surfers know English better than users, who seldom connect to the Internet; you can find the best English among the users who are interested in traveling, radio and TV (more that 40% know it well); the users who are interested in sports have the worst English (less than 25% know it well).
I've found also statistics about native languages in Ukraine (Jan 2001). More than 80% usually speak Russian, and only 20% speak Ukrainian.
I am going to add information about Ukraine. Could you wait a bit? I am busy now...
