Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Italy and Greece most likely rely on tourism to a greater extent, and speak languages not spoken in other countries, so based on that one might expect them to have a higher position than Austria.

Subtitles might help some but putting effort into actively learning a language is more important; I've seen many subtitled French, Italian and German movies, but I haven't picked up those languages by osmosis... I wish it were that easy.




Girlfriend's family is from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Her sister speaks fluent English despite very modest formal language training. (On the order of the n<=3 years of Spanish or French that most American students take without much to show for it.) She did, however, watch a lot of subtitled TV.

There are about 20 million Dutch speakers, vs. perhaps 400 million English speakers in the US and UK, which have large markets for TV shows and movies with correspondingly large budgets. For the average Dutch speaker, the subtitled offerings in English are apparently much richer than the home-grown stuff.

This, at least, was how it was explained to me by multiple independent Dutch-speaking Belgians who all had an embarrassingly firm command of idiomatic English.


When we really liked some movie, we tended to geek out by picking up phrases from them and repeat them with friends. It helped in picking up words that "these are not the droids you are looking for" etc. were not dubbed.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: