Quote Originally Posted by TiMsTeR_Of_hEaVeN View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Yliette View Post
Are Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark) prolifically English-speaking? Just a curiosity.
you mean if scandinavian languages are similar to english so we can understand english because of that? in that case no, maybe a few words are similar but those are not many (and i guess imported words as well...)
i live in sweden so that is my mother tongue, but i also understand danish and nowegian VERY well, a bit hard to spek though but i think i would manage it(but not fluently)...
Basically, what he said.

Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German and English are all Germanic languages, and because of that they are all somewhat similar, which makes it easier for someone speaking just one of those to learn one of the other ones. Many words in the English dictionary are very similar to Danish words, and some are even directly taken from the Danish tongue. That probably mostly has something to do with the fact that England once belonged to Denmark, and that Denmark and England used to trade with each other a lot way back when.
Another reason why Scandinavians are generally good at English is the fact that foreign movies/TV shows (and thereby mostly American and English) aren't dubbed, like they are in e.g. Germany, Spain, France, Italy etc. where they - honestly - generally don't speak English as well as we do up north. A lot of my English has come from watching TV and movies.