English NL

Hello, People of the blogosphere.

I have landed in The Netherlands. Den Haag/The Hague/'s-Gravenhage* (*delete as the mood takes you) to be exact - home to half a million people - Hagenaars and Hageneezen. And a total of 50% of the population have immigrated to the city - including me.

It's also home to Vermeer's Girl With The Pearl Earring, The Dutch Government, Scheveningen beach resort (if you can't pronounce it properly you are apparently a German spy), some nice sand dunes, the International Criminal Court, Radko Mladic and King Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands.... amongst others.....

They may live in the world's lowest country, but when it comes to English, the Dutch are high achievers. Pretty much everyone here can switch to English in an instant.... doctors, bus drivers, shop assistants, waiters and not just basic "Hello, how are you?, my name is...." English, but decent functional language useful in multiple complex situations. It makes life here easy as a visitor. Less easy if you want to practice your Dutch.

How do they do it? Some 87 percent of Dutch people report being able to speak English. There's not a massive private language school sector sucking in kids after school, no high-end British Council teaching centre, no International House, no Bell etc....

So how do they learn and get so good?

A country of 17 million people need to connect with the outside world to thrive - and not many people speak Dutch beyond the Netherlands and the Northern part of Belgium so there is a clear motivation and need at the highest level..

A close linguistic relationship between Dutch and English certainly makes it easier for the Dutch to learn English than it is for someone from China or Thailand - same script, thousands of cognates between the two languages. English all around the media and TV here.

And..... an education system geared to producing results in languages??

Lets have a look at this one in more detail......

#Netherlands