Over 90% of Germans speak English. What foreign language do you speak?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

92. Professional competence in Japanese, conversational knowledge of

German and French, muddle-through tourist knowledge of Spanish, Chinese, and Norwegian.

I grew up hearing German and Latvian as a child, so my upbringing was different from that of the typical monolingual American.

On my 2012 trip through Scandinavia, I was impressed by how many Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Icelanders spoke nearly perfect English. I found out that in Norway, at least, they start in first grade, and what they learn is reinforced by the fact that these countries are too small to make more than a few TV programs of their own each year, so they import most of their TV and subtitle it instead of dubbing it. Nearly everything is that way except for news, live sporting events (I watched the U.S.-Japan women's soccer final in Swedish, but of course, it was easy to tell what was going on), and programming for preschool children.

The result is that kids who are old enough to read subtitles get a language lesson each time they turn on the TV.

Japan, on the other hand, imports very little foreign TV and dubs the few things it does import.