Yann le Grenoblois:
You are right, I am prejudiced, as a Germanic speaker. The thing about pedantry: I also meant, the French often do not use the small "fill words" that make English humane, like "right", "isn't it", "well", "though" etc. Of course such words exist in French as well, I think the French tend to use them even less than other foreign speakers, because they cannot translate them directly from their own language, like we Germanic speakers can.
Thats true,Germanic languages tend to have more 'filling' ;)
Mais oui!
Fill words = particles
<<In the world maybe (of course not as much as Spanish), but not in Europa, where German is the most spoken language.>>
Absolutely, Hans-Ulrich.
French is the most spoken language in Europe in term of country, but the language that most Europeans speak in term of people is German.
And English is the most learned language, it goes without saying.
(gloops, Travis, are those sentences correct?)
Sander,
<<but with old people as well?>>
err... My grand-parents visited London for the first time last year. ;)
Fill words = particles
Particles for verb?
come up
run about
come by
look up
...
?
But do your grandparents represent all the elderly of France? (they sound pretty adventurous to me) ;)
Sander. Shh! ;)
No, seriously I think you're right about older people in France.
Some of them sometimes make this joke: "Those strangers, can't they speak French like everyone"? They usually do that to hide their embarassement for being monolingual. :)
Don't worry its not much different here...
"Strangers" >> should be "foreigners"
Well, Sander, when I've been to your country I couldn't believe how fluent people in their 40's were in English. Is that to say that the Dutch speaking good English is a relatively new thing?
Ever since the war,our english has been rather good...before that German and French were the most loved studies.
Really? This explains why 30% of your people speak French.
Like I said in "Dutch help needed", I think French and Dutch have very similar pronounciation (but that's the only thing those language have in common).
No,Dutch and French pronouncation is very different... 30 % speaks French? I would even dare to say 15% Arrent you confusing the Belgians with the Dutch?
I have all the time really impressed to see so many germans able to speak english, or french (less but some people do it), many dutch speak english quite well.
The fact french "don't speak english" is not a french rule. In Spain for example the Rolling Stones are translated into "Las piedras rolantes" and i am not talking about italians. Maybe there is something with latin people. I don't know.
There is a thing i really don't like, it's when some english native speakers come to you and speak to you in english without any question like "do you speak english?" They intend you to speak english, why don't they speak english like us. I think this is really unpolite.
So Hans, if your friends came to frendh and did the same, sure they will encounter some problems.
If i am with spanish, italians or any other latin people, i try to not use english with them. With a few knowledge and a little knowledge you can speak to an italian without too many difficulties.
Is it the same between Dutch and germans, sweden or Norwegians...?
No,since 0,00001% of the foreigners who we encounter actually speak Dutch,we usually reply in her language (mainly French/English/German)
Though you shouldent expect much of our french..you'll wont get much further then directions with the average Dutchman/woman
Yann le Grenoblois, I'd slightly reword that as:
"French is the most spoken language in Europe in term of number of countries, but the language that most Europeans speak in term of number of speakers is German."