Irish can't be a foreign language in Ireland as it's an official language of the country. This is also why it doesn't get EU help for minority languages (even though it has few fluent speakers). It's also incorrect to call Welsh and Gaelic foreign languages in the UK as they have been spoken here longer than English has. But the study surely ought to be interested in people studying these languages at school.
I did find that fairly absurd about Ireland. In the UK I'm not sure there are enough people taking Welsh or Gaelic in their A-levels to make much of a difference in the data...
Does it include, for example, Francophone Belgians studying Dutch, or doesn't that count as a "foreign" language there either?
If you look at the data for learning languages in school, you'll see Belgium doesn't have any data at all. Possibly because Eurostat only has separate data for Flanders and Francophone Belgium, but not for the two together, or because they find it pointless to add them up. But when it comes to how many people know a foreign language, there Belgium does have data, and I'm really not sure if they consider the other national language(s) as a "foreign" language there or not. In any case, Walloons are notoriously bad at foreign languages whether it's Dutch or English or something else, as bad or even worse than the French themselves. Though there is a distinct improvement these past years - the last fifteen years or so their politicians have actually realized they need a working knowledge of their country's majority language if they don't want to look ridiculous, and that's quite new. While many of the richer Francophone families in Brussels are now sending their children to Dutch-language schools, creating an extreme overpopulation there, firstly because those schools are quite simply a ton better and secondly so their children will end up more or less bilingual.
/Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 24/09/2010 01:37:42 PM
1412 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
- 24/09/2010 02:10:57 PM
829 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
- 24/09/2010 03:32:09 PM
762 Views
That is rather sad to say the least.
- 24/09/2010 04:15:32 PM
1001 Views
Indeed
- 24/09/2010 06:23:52 PM
808 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
- 24/09/2010 04:00:04 PM
881 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe
- 24/09/2010 05:47:09 PM
870 Views
Interesting.
- 24/09/2010 06:04:30 PM
805 Views
Re: Interesting.
- 24/09/2010 06:42:02 PM
948 Views
Re: Interesting.
- 24/09/2010 07:05:44 PM
857 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 24/09/2010 09:38:05 PM
950 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 25/09/2010 05:49:05 AM
951 Views
Self-study can be worth as much as formal classroom study, I suppose
- 25/09/2010 03:43:14 PM
903 Views
Certainly it can.
- 26/09/2010 12:35:56 PM
914 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 25/09/2010 04:54:40 PM
1046 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 25/09/2010 07:38:29 PM
968 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 26/09/2010 12:07:19 AM
984 Views
They should have asked about second languages rather than foreign languages.
- 26/09/2010 11:34:27 AM
828 Views
Aye, they should have.
- 26/09/2010 12:26:51 PM
937 Views
Re: /Survey: Foreign language knowledge in Europe (and elsewhere)
- 27/09/2010 03:18:30 PM
889 Views


*NM*