Why Spain seems to be not interested in introducing english as second language?

Question

We just came back from holiday in Madrid, Spain, honestly, I admire the place, but it is discouraging that not many can speak english and it's quite hard to communicate. Additionally, the language used in their tv stations are in spanish unlike in Germany, they have CNN television station that uses pure english. Considering that lots of english-speaking tourists flock Spain and the fact that it is a member of the EU, why don't their leaders encourage their people to speak english?

Answer 1

i think that many countries in europe have that thing that they dont want to learn english, probably proud thing (i was in france and maybe 5% of the people there knew english well enough to speak in a conversation)
also in europe they take many movies and change the voices to their languages instead of using subtitles.


i also dont think a tourist should be expected to know spanish, you people in spain who welcome tourists should know how to talk to them.

in israel they teach english from 2nd or 3rd grade, 7th grade arabic (for the jewish people), im not sure but i think its one of the countries with high percent of people who knows english (the official languages in israel are hebrew and arabic)

english is the language of the world and everyone should know it.


Ian F

leaders of the world talk english. in the internet we use english. you used english right now.

english is the language people comunicate with other people who dont know their language.
i dont know spanish and im sure ill be fine EVERYWHERE in the world. but if i wouldnt know english i couldnt do anything anywhere, except for my country.

i want to see you come to israel or any country in asia, also some europe and africa trying to do something only speaking spanish.

Answer 2

First off all I doubt that English is not taught in Spain. I guess that in Spain especially older people do not understand English.
You said that a lot of English speaking tourists flock Spain - as do a lot of German speaking ones or people from France, Italy....
Spain is a long time member of the EU - as you mentioned but the EU is not an English speaking union. In fact there are very little languages in the EU that are official languages in more than one country.
It's always good to know more than one language - but why only for those who do not speak English as a second language?
Languages were always important in Europe and the educated always spoke more than one.
The general education level is going up constantly and more and more people are taught English as a second language from very early ages on (here in Austria it starts at the age of six or seven) but our first language will remain the one of our home place - the one we use in everyday life and no politician who wants to be taken serious will ever propose people to speak a different language in everyday life.

As you mentioned CNN - this is not a German TV station but an American one.

But of course we have to face the fact that bad English is the new Esperanto

Answer 3

In Spain, humans older than 50 learnt French at university and top-university. Only a couple of did be trained English just lately in a language university. All more youthful humans be trained English in principal and secondary schooling however that does not imply that they are able to talk well English. In France, Italy and Spain the expertise of English is as an alternative low in evaluation with Germany, Holland or Sweden. However, the poorest expertise of overseas languages is within the UK and Ireland.

Answer 4

yea I agree with u Spanish people should learn English. then tourists or foreigners will be able to understand them n have better communication. Besides, now English is a universal language n almost everybody knows how to speak it n it has indeed improved communication among people. People from different parts of the world will be able to speak to each other. If spain's people do not learn the language then I'm afraid they will be lagging behind.

n in the recent news, even Australia wanna adopt a second language to each of its students in schools so that they will be able to speak something else other than english, which i think is very good as China n india n other countries are continuosly improving everyday n r going global soon. thus, plp must learn english n other languages to face the future language obstacles they may face.

The leaders of Spain did not wanna introduce learning English to the people maybe its bcos' they wanna follow traditions since the spanish people have spoken spanish since long time ago or something like that. before this question came out I didnt know that spanish dont speak english but its a shock to hear that they DONT. sadly, spain is not a third-world country or something. its one of the rich n wealthy nations in the world n thus, I wonder why their government can't spend a little money on educating the young in schools to learn English as a Second language.
Even in my country a.k.a Singapore, everyone learns English AS A FIRST LANGUAGE. however, we still learn our mother tongue which is either, Mandarin, Malay or Tamil etc... as a Second language n its going well. so Spain should learn from the rest of the world n let its ppl learn english as its important

Answer 5

Spanish is one of the most widespread of the major languages in the world. A native Spanish speaker has a connection to a far greater portion of the world than a native German or Italian speaker does.

If they don't take to English to the same degree as the rest of Europe, it is because they don't HAVE to.

Answer 6

English is taught in Spanish schools from a very early age. Although many people do try to speak English (especially on the Costa Blanca where I come from), you must understand that you are the one that went to visit Spain and so are expected to at least try to speak Spanish. Spaniards, along with everyone else in the world, are more likely to help someone who tries and fails than someone who doesn't try at all.