Over one hundred different languages are spoken by the people in Europe.
We have borrowed words from each others languages during different periods of time, mainly from English, French and German. We also learn other languages in school, but we have different systems in every country. If you went to Greece, would you be able to communicate with them? Or if I go to Macedonia and want to talk to someone, will we find a language that both of us know?

According to an investigation done by the EU commission in all EU-Member States, over half of the population speaks at least one more European language besides their mother tongue and about 26% speak two more languages. English is the largest foreign language and about 40 % who say that they know it and on second place comes French, 19 % and German, 10%. But note that this investigation is only made in the EU-Member States. So over half of the countries are forgotten.
In all Europe, Russian is the largest language and it is spoken by 110 million Europeans. Second largest is German, spoken by 90 millions. English is on third place, spoken by 63 millions.
In UK and Ireland the first foreign language is French (Irish is by 38 % seen as a foreign language in Ireland) and in France, Spain and Italy the first foreign language is English. So English, French and German are most useful to know, except from Russian.

Most people, according to the EU-Commission, learn a foreign language at school but also by travelling, some take an evening course and some learn on their own.
Some examples, how people get motivated to learn languages, are: They need to have it on holidays abroad, for personal satisfaction, to understand people from other cultures and some people could get a better job in their country with language knowledge as a merit.
And some reasons why people don’t want to learn a foreign language, could be that they have no time, are not motivated enough, it costs to much (If the lessens were free maybe more people would learn language.) or maybe they do not think themselves good at languages.

Different school systems
To understand each other is an important thing, but why is English and French the two most common foreign languages in western Europe?

It is difficult to find facts about this subject, but we can give you some examples.
In Germany, you have to choose one language at 5th grade, French or English, and at 7th grade you can choose the one you didn’t choose in 5th grade, or Latin. This language you will learn until you graduate. At 9th grade you can take a special course in Spanish, Russian or Latin, but these vary from school to school.
One reason that they learn French in German schools, a friend in Berlin told us, could be because of their history. After the Second World War and the Cold War, France was one of the allied occupation countries. They did a lot for the education, for instance a school reform. French might have been left as a language in school because of that.

In England, another friend told us, that since they know English already, they don’t find it so important to learn a second language. But, he says that’s not the way it should be. All countries should maintain their own languages to maintain their identity, but all people in the European Union (or in the entire Europe) should be taught at least one foreign language.

And here in Sweden, most children start learning English at 4th grade, in some schools even from first grade. In 7th grade you choose a second foreign language. In Upper Secondary School, you continue learning English, which is compulsory. Depending on which study program you’re in, you can continue learning your second foreign language, or start with a new one. At Parkskolan we can choose between French, German and Spanish as second foreign languages. In some other schools, you can also study Italian, Russian and Latin.

Half of our class just returned from a trip to Belarus, so we asked them if they could speak English with the people there. Well, some knew a little English, some more and some very little. They do learn English at school, and some even take extra courses for example at the university. Still, their English is very poor.

Our conclusion is that everyone should be able to learn other languages, wherever they live. It would increase our understanding of other cultures, and prevent misunderstandings. People that don’t know more than their native language often feel uncertain to go abroad.

What is your opinion about learning foreign languages?

© 2002 Freeway
Writers: Emma Hallin (sp03-08@park.se) and Kristina Eriksson (sp03-31@park.se).
HTML by: ONy (olle@park.se).