Hi, I'm back in Vancouver, and today I wanna talk about how much the level of English spoken by non-native speakers of English, how much that has improved and what that means for the opportunities to learn other languages. What triggered this was watching the celebrations in Budapest, where they recently had an election and the supporters of the winning party were all, you know, giving interviews to the, uh, foreign media. As I have noticed in so many other countries, the level of English spoken by these people, predominantly young people, is astounding in how good it is.

We have a chance to, to live a life where we are free. We have, uh, our right, we have opportunities. This is a win for freedom for Europe, for democracy, and it's amazing. And of course, Hungarian is not a language that's similar to English in any way. Other than that, it uses the Latin alphabet. So why has the level of English improved so much everywhere? This takes me back to sort of what I have always said about language learning. It's a function of motivation, it's a function of the time you put in, divided by the amount of friction, difficulty, ambition, frustration that the language learner experiences.

The big factors are motivation and friction because if you're motivated and there's less friction, you will put in the time. So what has happened in the last 20 years, I don't think is that the know the quality of language instruction in schools has all of a sudden dramatically improved. I don't think it has changed at all. What has changed is that the world has become a smaller place. People can have access through the internet, through social media to YouTube, uh, you know, Instagram, whatever it might be.

People are surrounded by language, content in English. Let's just start with English. And so the opportunity to hear English, to interact in English. It's much greater than it ever was before. So the world has become a smaller place that has strengthened the position of English as a lingua franca. And so some of the things that influence that, obviously if we talk about friction, first of all, in terms of opportunity, if you live in a country where foreign movies are dubbed, you have less opportunity.

Typically smaller countries, if I compare Portugal to Spain, if we look at, you know, Holland, Finland countries with smaller populations are less likely to dub the films, whereas larger countries, perhaps Spain or Germany, I'm not sure about these situations, but where the films are dubbed in the local language, they have less exposure to English. Another consideration is how similar is your language to the say in this case, to English. And obviously Dutch people, Swedish people have an advantage, but you know, there's not that much difference between Dutch and German, and yet Dutch people are by and large, on average, better speakers of English than German.

So there are other factors at play. We could argue that English shares 50% of its vocabulary with French, and yet the English speakers, by and large, are not as good in learning languages as the Dutch or other speakers or even as, as good as the Portuguese. So another consideration is attitude. So as long as English is perceived as the necessary language, the prestigious language, the language of pop culture, then there's far more motivation on the part of people who don't speak English to learn English. And there's less motivation on the part of English speakers to learn other languages. So size of the country dubbed or not dubbed, similarity of the language.

All of these things can contribute, but by and large it's a function of how motivated are you and if language content in other languages were more readily available, that would reduce the friction, the uh, resistance, and particularly too, and they kind of go hand in hand as people are more motivated, they overcome the resistance. And if we look at lingua franca in the world, historically, there have been periods of time in history where certain languages have been the lingua franca over hundreds and hundreds of years, I think of Aramaic in the Middle East, the Persian Empire, which was a lingua franca for, I don't know, 6, 7, 800 years.

We think of Greek in that part of the world for a long period of time. We think of Latin, which was an important lingua franca, but many of these, and even say quechua, in the case of the Andes. Or Arabic, as Islam spread through much of what is today the Arabic world. In many cases, these languages were imposed by the elites, religious elites or educational elites or government elites. What's happening today is different. What's happening today is a, a groundswell of interest and an ability to access language, content, or other kinds of functionality.

Uh, on the internet that makes language learning easier, therefore less resistance. So what does all of this mean for the future? Now, over the last 20 or 30 years, English has become more and more dominant. There's no question that even in countries like Italy or uh, you know, which we traditionally don't think of as centers of language learning the, the standards, the level of English has improved dramatically. But what's gonna happen going forward? I think some of the same factors like motivation, like the ease of accessing content because the world has become a smaller place, uh, other,

you know, systems on the internet that help people learn characters. For example, in the case of Chinese, all of these factors which have increased the motivation, triggering, say, curiosity on the part of people in the world to learn other languages other than English, increasing availability, for example, of, you know, anime for Japanese or K-pop. And I think it's not impossible that there will be some kind of Chinese equivalent that, uh, all of a sudden becomes a, a source of fascination for young people in the world. So it is not impossible that there will be increasing motive, motivation, perhaps more dispersed motivation to learn other languages, and it'll be easier

to access content in these languages. So I think some of these factors can also help to spread other languages. A big part of language learning is a mindset. So if you live in Europe, it's simply considered normal to speak English. It's just normal. It's nothing exceptional. I speak, you speak English, okay? Big deal. Everyone speaks English. It's not impossible in my mind that we could move to a situation where it's normal to speak three languages. If it becomes that much easier to learn more languages, easier to access content in these languages, it'll just be considered a normal thing to do.

There have been places in the world where historically people speak three, four languages. I, I think of, uh, you know, Singapore today, or I think of apparently Ethiopia, although I have no experience there, but some things which say if you live in the North American continent, it's considered, uh, exceptional to speak in other language. I think there are societies and times in history where it was considered normal to speak different languages, perhaps only amongst an elite. But I think what I'm discovering now is that a lot of the things that the elites did or impose are now becoming commonplace because of a, a, a groundswell of interest and enthusiasm amongst ordinary people.

So while it is true that English seems to be more and more sort of established as the lingua franca, the language that everybody wants to learn, and I think that trend will continue and will strengthen. Not only amongst young people, but apparently according to statistics, even middle-aged people are trying to learn English now because the, there are more and more, you know, opportunities to learn and to use English. I personally think it's not impossible that some of these same factors will contribute to more and more learning of other languages in general, which is a very positive thing because it enables us to connect with other cultures, uh,

and people who, you know, maybe think differently than we do, and we learn about their cultures and their histories. And that's been my experience in learning languages from Asia, you know, from, uh, you know, the Middle East, central Asia. It's a wonderful thing to do. And, uh, all it takes, as I said, is that motivation, which can come from anything, curiosity and ways to make it easier to do, less friction, and, uh, so. There you have it. I'm an optimist when it comes to how other languages will gradually create, you know, room for themselves alongside the spread of English.

Look forward to your comments. Thank you.