It usually requires a lot of work to talk a foreign language. If you meet people from Europe that talk English well, you will find out that their English-skills deteriorate significantly, if they are trying to solve a complex problem, whereas their native language does not deteriorate in a similar way.
Denmark is one of the European countries where the population is best at English, but even though you can ask for directions in English everywhere, only few can read a license agreement, security instructions or other legal texts in the consumer space. Last, but not least, English is not the second language for many - for some, like me, it's the third language. And many people never learned the language. I know many people that know two languages well, where English is not one of them.
Just 2 decades ago, English was totally unnecessary for normal people here. Local TV was Danish, foreign TV was Swedish or German. In similar ways, shopping across borders was usually done in Swedish, German, Polish or Dutch. Tourists were usually talking German, some Japanese, some Dutch, some Swedish, and maybe some English. American movies were subtitled or synchronized, so you didn't need to know English here, either. In order to study M.Sc. in mechanical engineering, you needed to know German, not English.
Today, the internet and the breakdown of communism changed all this. German could not regain it's strong position as the universal language of Europe because of the internet. Even my 6 year old daughter now knows English words, and can hear the difference between a Danish music group singing English or an American music group singing English. With proper training, she will hopefully be able to use English almost as well as Danish. But until the population has been replaced with her generation, it will not make sense to sell non-localized products widely to consumers around here. |
