Idk what you average over, but I learned English in school from the first grade over twenty years ago. When I was done with school, I worked as a tutor for it too. At least the youth seems to be getting on with it alright, and in the IT world, a level of English proficiency is expected and in places even required. I can mix in English phrases if I can’t think of the German one and my colleagues understand me well enough.
Sure, the other person’s “better than native speakers” might be hyperbolic, but English proficiency isn’t as awful as you make it out to be.
In the particular context of a Hamburg Airport sign, I think the language requirements for working in aviation mean that anyone working there will speak English. I don’t think it’s particularly surprising that their IT system would be configured in English at an intersection between two English-heavy industries.
Now I wanna know which elementary school you went to because they certainly didn’t teach me English in mine; also about twenty years ago.
In fact, I didn’t learn jack shit about English from school, I pretty much taught myself after getting in contact with the language at a young age through my relatives. As far as I can remember I only started having English classes in middle school.
It’s true that a certain proficiency of the language is expected in the IT field but I’m a sysadmin and have more than enough colleagues that can’t really speak English, they know the IT lingo but that’s about it. I guess every company handles things differently when it comes to that; I wasn’t even asked of my English skills during my job interview.
Some rural place down in BaWü. The headmaster wasn’t even a fan of advanced education. I wonder how state policy may have had an impact on this. Maybe BaWü was just more bent on being internationally attractive in its education policies?
Also, my current employer’s company has been internationally active and accordingly multilingual for over two decades too, from what I hear, so that might introduce additional bias.
I guess it boils down to “our country is too diverse to allow sweeping generalisations”. I am glad to learn your perspective on this :)
Because Germans speak English better than your average native speaker?
Eh… Not really. The average German nowadays knows a few “trendy” English words and maybe even knows how to use them correctly but that’s about it.
Idk what you average over, but I learned English in school from the first grade over twenty years ago. When I was done with school, I worked as a tutor for it too. At least the youth seems to be getting on with it alright, and in the IT world, a level of English proficiency is expected and in places even required. I can mix in English phrases if I can’t think of the German one and my colleagues understand me well enough.
Sure, the other person’s “better than native speakers” might be hyperbolic, but English proficiency isn’t as awful as you make it out to be.
In the particular context of a Hamburg Airport sign, I think the language requirements for working in aviation mean that anyone working there will speak English. I don’t think it’s particularly surprising that their IT system would be configured in English at an intersection between two English-heavy industries.
Now I wanna know which elementary school you went to because they certainly didn’t teach me English in mine; also about twenty years ago.
In fact, I didn’t learn jack shit about English from school, I pretty much taught myself after getting in contact with the language at a young age through my relatives. As far as I can remember I only started having English classes in middle school.
It’s true that a certain proficiency of the language is expected in the IT field but I’m a sysadmin and have more than enough colleagues that can’t really speak English, they know the IT lingo but that’s about it. I guess every company handles things differently when it comes to that; I wasn’t even asked of my English skills during my job interview.
Some rural place down in BaWü. The headmaster wasn’t even a fan of advanced education. I wonder how state policy may have had an impact on this. Maybe BaWü was just more bent on being internationally attractive in its education policies?
Also, my current employer’s company has been internationally active and accordingly multilingual for over two decades too, from what I hear, so that might introduce additional bias.
I guess it boils down to “our country is too diverse to allow sweeping generalisations”. I am glad to learn your perspective on this :)
Same here, funnily enough
What year? Mine was 2003, I think. Apparently it was just introduced back then (second heading, second paragraph).
I think mine was 2004