Are the Dutch really that good in English? - EF EPI 2019 

As well as the education system, I believe the good English spoken in the Netherlands is due to the amount of English language television - put out with sub-titles rather than dubbed into Dutch. Scandinavians have the same advantage, and also mostly speak excellent English.

I’ve met several Dutch people here in America, and their English was so good I couldn’t even tell until I had talked to them for awhile and heard the slightest accent.

We have 2 families in the Netherlands that are very good friends we have been over to stay with both of them over the years and all of them speak excellent English especially the younger members of the families also when we have been out with them for a meal in a restaurant etc as soon as the waiter/waitress realised we were English they instantly switched to English to explain the menu etc, nearly all were happy to practice their English on actual English people, I must mention the fact that most of the restaurants we went to were out in the country side away from the big tourist cities, we were very surprised by the amount of people who spoke our language with ease and fluency, one of our friends (Frank) who is in his late 40’s had never used his English language skills since he left school and when we first met him his English was quite limited but he was so excited to meet us and to use his long lost skill that his English is now (with the exception of a couple of pronunciation corrections now and then) excellent, when he comes over to England to visit us he’s always eager to visit our pubs and try out the beer and his English on the locals.

Many people don't realize this, but it's not the school system that provides good ways to learn English, it's the Dutch subtitles and original English/American audio in series and movies thta we watch and when growing up that subconsciously makes us more proficient at English.

My brother lives in Amsterdam & I’m over there a lot. I’ve not met a teenager or adult that didn’t speak English. Senior adults were hit or miss. Kids, about twenty years ago, didn’t speak it, but today, they mostly do. And The Dutch speak it really well.

Their quality of English is excellent and the tone has a certain sing-song pitch which is quite pleasing. Scandinavians do the same, but I find their frequencies tend to go higher, whereas in NL it is more mid-range based. What some folks find jarring at first is the native gh sound in NL - there is some harshness to it, but its raw intensity provides nice contrast to thoroughly amicable people.

You guys are very good at English. I’m from the UK and visited The Netherlands 🇳🇱 recently. The good news is I’m learning Dutch for the purpose of connecting more with the locals, reading 📖 and listening. I’m learning German which I know a bit more than Dutch.

One of my favourite places so different and friendly. Can honestly say I was shocked how everyone speaks English even in supermarkets what’s normally a nightmare if you can’t speak the language but in Amsterdam it was like shopping back in the uk.

I remember going to the USA and speaking English there when I was 14. My cousins asked me what language we spoke at home, with our friends and found it hard to believe that Dutch was actually our native language. Not sure if they were just being young and silly, or if our English was convincing enough though xD

heeft sowieso te maken met ons schoolsysteem. Leer nu al 9 jaar lang Engels en ben 17... ik kan me makkelijk in mijn eentje redden in het Engels. Toen ik van de basisschool afkwam gingen zelfs kinderen van groep 3 al Engels leren. Ze konden nog niet eens Nederlands schrijven, een goede verandering, als je het mij vraagt.

About 10 years ago I went on vacation to Canada with my family. In a restaurant we got into conversation with a Canadian family. When we said we were from Holland they wondered why we speak English so well?

I made a friend that lives in France a couple of years ago. She moved from England to France for a bigger house or smt, but anyways she told me ab her English teacher at her school (I have no idea why she's even in that class) and how the teacher tried to have a conversation with her in English, but apparently she didn't speak English that well for an English teacher lol. Also when her grandma went to visit her in France, she was soooo happy that she met me, because I was the only non-french person that actually spoke English very well.

Dutch people learn English when they are young. In many big cities in English speaking countries, many people learned English as a second language so in a lot of ways I found the Dutch had more proficient English than here in Toronto.

my answer is YESSSS and I love the accent!!

Are the subs even needed? Everyone in Amsterdam knows English lol.

I have a Co-worker from England, living 25 years in the Netherlands. But he can not speak Dutch, because 99% of the people in the Netherlands speaks perfectly English. And I have a Co-worker from Syria, living 3 years in the Netherlands and speak perfectly Dutch, because nobody speaks Syrian overhere.

My anecdotal experience with native Dutch people: Pronunciation...not quite right, but better than scotland, ireland, north carolina, australia, alabama, arkansas, nyc, india, manila, boston, montreal... Grammar...probably about a 3rd grade level on average, which is fluent American idioms...surprisingly fluent

Yeah definitely Dutch people are very good speaking English. I lived almost five years in the Netherlands, and never had any trouble communicating, the down side though, I wasn't able to practice my Dutch that well

Tv is de reden, alles was in t Engels met Nederlandse ondertiteling, de laatste 20 jaar is het niveau van kinderen 2 t/m 5 langzaam aan het dalen door het grotere aanbod van na-gesynchroniseerde peuter series

When I learned that the English Harry potter books came out months earlier when I was 12 I started reading them instead, that helped more than English schooling. It was a bit weird at first because who's this Dumbledore guy? Only to realize later on it was Perkamentus

In France, they know English they just pretend not to understand you lol

i live in the North of the country, in a little village in the Groningen province, and many people here do not even speak standard Dutch, let alone English, I find that extremely frustrating. I can speak Dutch, but I use it only when I go to Groningen or other parts of the Netherlands, cause here most people answer me in the local dialect. I think it really depends on which part of the Netherlands one comes from. As many people have mentioned here, The Netherlands is not just the capital and the Randstad

I don’t think it’s our education system. I think it’s because we use subtitles in stead of dubbing everything. And Dutch and English are also pretty similar. We are such a tiny country that we relied on trading for many centuries. So therefore we also needed to speak English.

I studied In Amsterdam when I was too younger and officially English in The Netherlands comes naturally. Thanks to this Beauty nation I got the facilities to know English.

Dutch people have a great education system and they like to travel. So if they learn english they can communicate in many countries. Also they have very nice accent

English is not taught in primary schools. At least it wasn't back in the 90s. Perhaps they have a few classes nowadays. But all the English we knew was from watching TV without subtitles (usually the subs were off by half an hour or so) and playing with computers... By the time I got English at school around age 12 I was already fluent in different English dialects.

The Spanish person said they’re terrible in Spain, then proceeds to speak English better and a clearer accent than host. The Scottish guy has a really beautiful accent, but in truth he did of course know that the interviewer was not a native speaker as his Dutch accent is quite strong.

I dunno if I'll ever have the money to travel but one thing I'd like to do is see the country side of countries, and not just the cities. Can I get by with just speaking english in the Dutch Country side or should I learn some dutch for the Rural people? (Problem with me learning languages is that its hard for me to remember complex things as someone with ADHD)

Uk, Ireland, Scandinavia, Netherlands and Portugal.

Do not forget that many Dutch words are used in the English language. Sometimes written slightly differently, but the origin of the word is Dutch. This applies even more to the English American language. Simple example The Yankees (famous New York baseball team) is actually JanKees. Bluff (Bluffen) Bundle (Bundel) Candy (Candij) etc. The words often sound the same too, phonetically almost the same. And we are travel-loving people and this for centuries, so that people have left something everywhere (not always well think of the words and the meaning apartheid and slave, we have unfortunately also left these words and their content)

Have spent some time here in Australia in hostels in the tropics and met many people from the Netherlands. Their English is great but they tend to slur. As tourists in hostels are permanently drunk and drunk people slur..... Drunk Dutch people are incomprehensible.

The Dutch are good at English, but the Scandinavians are just as good

I'm always in contact with Dutch men and women who speak English, sometimes I even sleep listening to them speak it, it's beautiful, they have a native level even better than natives, they speak even better than natives, they study English, they are addicted to English and there is no regionalism in their language. Not their English, look, English is full of dialects and languages and versions of English too. Dutch, Swedes, Frisians, Norwegians and Icelanders and Danes should compete to see who has the best English as a playful lady. Italians use a lot of English, even too much of their own language. I also get lost with the Italians, they explain beautiful interpretive English, they beat the natives because they apply the international phonetic alphabet in English. Others do this too, and these guys have another level of English. They encourage you to speak, they excite you and encourage you to speak English even if you are a non-native and just a basic and interpretative level of explanation, they even like to help, of course, people today have to speak international English like Dutch to be understood. In France, it's horrible, most people don't want to speak English and culturally they are left behind, but the French who speak English have good native or almost native language, but there are very few of them, but when you think about it, they also help you a lot with communication, but France and Germany They do need to improve their communication in English. hugs to everyone.

I walk allot outside and I see my neighbours allot. This Polish guy who lives near me, always greets me when we see eachother (in English). But after 5+ years of this, I started thinking. This guy lives in this country for 5+ years and still he doesn't greet/speak to me in Dutch. Now I just speak all in Dutch, I don't really care if he understand it or not. (Don't get me wrong I like the guy. He's nice)But if I were to live in Poland, I would do my best to speak Polish.

I chat with a young Dutch guy on Tinder and WhatsApp and his English is excellent. He's very fluent and says he speaks English better than German, which is interesting. Dutch is basically a cousin language to both English and German.

Nice video, I was born in Leeuwarden but raised in Zwolle. I used to have English back in primary and high school. I have met many Dutch people that dont speak English at all, but also I met a few people that do speak English. I moved to the UK when I was 15 and I was able to improve my English a bit more. Yes the Netherlands has definitely the best education system hence why Dutch people speak English very well!

3:25 Does the Scottish guy not think Scotland's in Europe?

I'd say about 50-75% of them speak english. Roughly. So if you got a group of 5 people, at least 1-2 will speak it. The key is in the numbers.

I love the sound of Italians speaking English

In het VK spreken ze overigens meer talen dan alleen het Engels.. Pak maar is een trein vanuit Engeland richting Wales met geluk heb je gelijk een trein die in het tweetalig is anders zie je het wel bij aankomst op station dat bordjes etc allemaal tweetalig is.

Ok I was born in Germany but raised in Landgraff , Nederlands . My parents are American. People always ask me why I only know basic Dutch. Well honestly I know 100 percent I can travel to my favorite country and speak english without a worry. I will take it upon myself to brush up on Dutch but they are shocked when I speak it 😂😂😂

Absolutely the Dutch are the top for speaking English.

English learning for kids already start at Kindergarten

I had a funny moment in the USA. There an american reacted on my english. He said that my English was better than his. On which I replied that he did not spoke English but American. ;)

Absolutely the best are the Dutch in english .

Dat omdat alle films en series gewoon in het Engels zijn, met ondertiteling.

It's more the influence from English media than the education system really. You learn a language by using it. Nowadays you'll find Dutch kids, like elementary school age, speak English pretty fluently because of the internet.

The Dutch speak English fairly well. But there's still a lot of room for improvement. I say this as a native Dutchman. Perhaps I'm too demanding, but I studied at teacher-training college and I still recall my very first lesson extremely well. My professor was a former professional translator and interpreter for the EU parliament. She spent over 45 minutes making clear to us how awful and unjustifiably overconfident the Dutch are about their language skills. After that lesson, I hardly dared to speak in English while she was around. But she really spoke impeccable English and she loved it to correct native English speakers.

You do tend to slur some vowels and consonants, but, other than that, its perfect

It's not the school system, it's not the 'trading nation', it's subbing not dubbing.

Dutch are best for English, plus we arguably were taken over by Dutch by William of Orange. LOL

Het is soms zelfs als franstalige belg met een goeie kennis van het nederlands in de Nederlands moeilijk nederlands te praten: je krijgt vaak een aantwoord in het engels!!

And I think they are a little overselfassured, which is the main reason for Dunglish. For example the other day I went to my son’s school for the first “intake” and we discussed his school “traject”

the Dutch are amazing at English that is very true

I suppose not, because grammatically the caption of this video should read: "Are the Dutch really that good AT English?" 🤣

I find it very funny that the Scandinavians brought Anglo-Saxon to England, and boy now English is spread all over Northern Europe

denk dat het ook is dat we veel tv shows zien in het engels en dat ze niet ingesproken worden in het nederlands

Ik

Some people are good at it but not everyone. It depens!

Do you think it would be possible to live in the netherlands just with knowing english

I love dutch English accent

It's true and undoubtful, both language are so close related to the same root, which is the North Sea Germanic language. So why question about how good they are good in English?

They speak american english or british?

or because Dutch and English are very closely related

I've been in Sweden, the people I met spoke amazingly well English. Also their accent was very good, often sounding like a native speaker (American or UK), and much better than the Dunglish I often hear (like Rutte).

Then I must have had a different experience here in Rotterdam. I'm originally from Aruba, there we speak 4 languages (Papiamento, Dutch, English and Spanish). When I moved to the Netherlands to study abroad in college (HBO) I have met a lot of native and non-native students. From what I can recall, the non-natives spoke English better than the natives. The natives student had a lot of trouble speaking english or their pronounciation weren't that good. So to my suprise I came across this video and couldn't believe it. I must say that the only city where I heard native people speaking fluent English is, in Amsterdam, all of the cashiers at the markets or shopping centre speaks English because of how many clients (tourists) they recieve on a daily basis. Not shaming anyone, just flabbergasted about the video and with my experiences during my college times.

Do European speak British accent or American accent?

English is the first language of amsterdam

It's cool knowing other languages, but why do people in the Netherlands take such pride in speaking English? What is so good about it?

I have been living in the Netherlands for 8 months, maybe because I live in a small town, I have never experienced all these positive things everybody mentioned about the Dutch people’s English. They have an accentnot strong but they do, you can hear it especially when they are articulating the v, s and sh sounds- one man told me about Covid test and we were standing next to a vending machine and I thought he was talking about the coffee taste. Also, maybe again in the town I’m living, many people can speak the basic phrases and when the conversation gets deeper they mske a lot of mistakes and can’t even find the correct words.

1:34 shits true.

I speak English very well.. nog niet zo snel, but that komt nog wel... :P

We speak better English than others speaks Dutch.

They speak good English

but this guy, is having an splaak geblek in dutch

That good? Yep! Try outstanding ! 😀

Try speak english in rural netherlands, villages, and small towns, youll discover great things

We've interviewed several people who speak English very poorly in an endeavor to pride pride ourselves.

I think Dutch pronunciation of English is cute

Nederlanders spreek fantastiche Engels. And that's from a Brit who speaks Flemish and French!

bad bunny 1:05

Some people from the Netherlands are so good at English and have accents that can be persuasively similar to accents that are found in North America. If you want to have a bit of fun, you can try tricking Americans or Canadians over the internet through voice chats.

01:10 "Like we don't like speak that much like English, like like". Yeah, you don't say 01:15 Like wth, like is he like serious?

At english not in english. And dutch people do not speak english as welk as you may think

I am an ace in English as long as I don't open my mouth. Writing and reading on "expert level" but when I talk you know... that dude is Dutch. I have a horrible fat accent.

yalklka arb ade at inglejhs

Like die gast met die like ring in z'n oor is echt like een valley girl, like..

The best English speeking Dutch people live in the East Northeast of Holland. Their accent seems to merge perfectly with English . Most of our best singers are borne in that region .

ever heard of stonecoal english? You speak it.....

Italian people sound like they're from New York or Boston

just ask the Americans, which language they also speak.... probably Spanish, and that's it....

The man in the street speaks English ok, but politicians do so in a horrible way.

Pronunciation is a problem. Grammatics is ok to good. Vocabulary is ok to good.

I couldn’t disagree more

Niet zo verwonderlijk, Engels is een afgeleide van Nederlands, maar de Engelsen horen dat natuurlijk niet zo graag.

DUTCH ARE GREAT ENGLISH SPEAKERS WITH GREAT ACCENT ALMOST WITH AMERICAN ACCENT

no

Fun fact. The most widely used Dutch word on the planet is : boss. (baas). It could have been any word, like fork or lemon but it just had to be the guy in charge. Now deal with it.

The Dutch people are good in English.Some character needs to change.

Good 'at' English.... The answer: no.