I think people are missing that this is the 2nd most taught foreign language, not the 2nd most taught language. So there’s the native language, then the most taught foreign language, and then the 2nd most taught foreign language. I’d imagine for quite a few countries that English is the most taught foreign language, particularly ones that heavily rely on tourism.
Edit: just noticed it even says that in the text on the right.
This holds for Dutch and French in Belgium either. Though it is a difference, if a language is tought to a native speaker, e.g. Swedish to a Swedish speaking Finn, or as a foreign language, e.g. Swedish to a Finnish speaking Finn.
I’m confused by Belgium. Are they saying that English and Dutch are equally popular, or that the north half learns English while the south half learns Dutch, or is the shading like a percentage?
The area shaded for English is the area where most people already speak Dutch as their first language anyway, so maybe that's why it's not counted as a "foreign" language there. Although I'd think that Åland wouldn't be coloured for Swedish if that was being applied consistently
If dutch counts for the southern half shouldn’t the north be colored french then?
Also i am pretty sure Belgium has a german speaking section with German being a third National language. There is a section that looks colored yellow for german… but like i think the original op was confused what “foreign” means or Belgium was just to complicated to get right.
Edit: that spot is Luxembourg, the Belgian germans arent represented.
Not necessarily. We're looking at the second-most taught foreign language, so it could be something like:
Dutch areas: Dutch as first language, French as most common foreign language, English second
French areas: French as first language, English as most common foreign language, Dutch second
German areas: German as first language, French as most common foreign language, Dutch second
This would result in the map above even though all three are different once you look at them. I have no idea if it's actually true of course, just saying that it's possible
That’s pretty much it, yes! I’m not 100% sure about the German part, because they are are part of Wallonia (which is the southern part) but do have their own language representation so I’m not actually sure which government manages their curriculum.
The German-speaking part isn’t shown on the map, probably because it is too small or the map maker got confused with our amazing organization.
There’s also the region of Brussels, which is separate of Flanders and Wallonia, and officially bilingual french / dutch. They sort of tried to represent it on the map, but I have no idea what they tried to do there.
The Flemings (northern part of Belgium) are speaking Dutch, the Walloons (southern part) are speaking French.
The Fleming are learning French first, because even though the Walloon are a minority and not as developed economically its important for the unity of the country to make effort to understand each other. They are learning English in second.
The Walloon don’t care about the Fleming, learning dutch for them is not a priority. They are learning a bit of English and only few very motivated Walloon are learning Dutch
I love Walloon, they are probably the friendliest people I’ve ever met but the love/hate with the Fleming is interesting.
A funny experience is to take a train from Liege to Brussels. Liege is is Wallonia so announcement are only in French. Then we pass through Leuven in the Flanders so now all announcement are only in Dutch even though we are still the same train. Finally we arrive in Brussels so announcement are made in 2 language.
Danish of all languages being 2nd in Iceland caught me off guard. In Finland Swedish is 2nd because we’re a bilingual country, but why on earth would Icelanders go for Danish? Does Icelandic have like a large vowel inventory or something that makes Danish more natural to learn than say Norwegian (Nynorsk maybe?) or even Swedish? Because while grammatically Danish is nothing all that surprising among the Germanic languages here, their pronunciation is something else and their vowel inventory is so large that Danish kids acquire language slower than eg Swedish or Norwegian because the language is a frickin nightmare to learn to listen to
edit: ah I didn’t even know they were under Danish rule at one point, so it’s the same as we Finns have with Swedish
I asked in a direct comment but I’ll also put here: should Sweddish really be considered a foreign language in Finland? It’s a state ofiicial language ( as you know being a Finn)
Depends on how you view it, I guess. Officially we are a bilingual country and everybody speaks both Finnish and Swedish, but practically since the Fenno-Swedish minority is only about 6% of the population and they’re highly concentrated in specific areas, the vast majority of Finns don’t speak Swedish all that well if at all. Sure, we all have mandatory “other national language” classes all the way up to university level, but if you rarely use the language outside some tests, it might as well be a foreign language. Been 20 years since my last Swedish class, and I need a dictionary to read anything but the simplest Swedish text and speaking it would be painful to say the least.
So, officially it’s not a foreign language, but practically it might as well be
edit: here’s how Finnish, Swedish and Sámi are distributed when looking at the official languages of municipalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish-speaking_population_of_Finland#/media/File:Languages_of_Finnish_municipalities_(2016).svg
I would have assumed it was English in most places to be honest just based on the fluency in countries I’ve been to. I’m not sure why English isn’t considered a foreign language in Ireland also. It might be an official language but it is still foreign.
As far as I know the top two options for languages in secondary schools in Ireland is French and German and I’d consider English a foreign language too.
In the Republic of Ireland, under the Constitution of Ireland, both languages have official status, with Irish being the national and first official language.
In Northern Ireland, English is the primary language for 95% of the population, and de facto official language, while Irish is recognised as an official language and Ulster Scots is recognised as a minority language under the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022.
Yes, in Ireland, all students must study English, Irish and one other foreign language. French is most popular. German used to be second, but it seems that Spanish has now overtaken German.
In Ireland, few people speak Irish. So really, for comparison, French would be the second language studied after Irish, but officially Irish is the native tongue so not counted.
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