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LEARNING

Germany slips out of global top ten in English

Germany has dropped out of the top ten in an annual study of English proficiency levels worldwide despite improving its performance, a study published on Tuesday showed.

Published: 3 November 2015 13:14 CET
Germany slips out of global top ten in English
A Bavarian child practices English sentences at school. File photo: DPA

Along with Austria and Switzerland, Germany had done a good job of improving English teaching in recent years, the study from language training company Education First (EF) found.

“I don't think it's a bad sign that we've dropped out of the top ten,” EF country manager for Germany Niklas Kukat told The Local.

“We have improved our score compared with last year, but other countries managed to slip in front of us.”

Nevertheless, Kukat thought that Germany should be aiming as high as the top five worldwide to boost the value that English adds to the country's reputation and economy.

But a drop in the number of German school pupils and students going to English-speaking countries on exchanges in recent years threatened to undermine language skills, he said.

Good English, strong economy

“The correlation between income and English knowledge is there. For the German economy, as an exporting nation, it's very important that we have a high level so that we can work with partners and companies in other nations,” Kukat said.

For the first time the study has revealed the connection between countries' English levels and their achievements in innovation, by looking at metrics such as technology exports and spending on research and development.

“Countries with higher English proficiency have more researchers and technicians per capita,” said the report.

“The ability to learn from the research of others, participate in international conferences, publish in leading journals, and collaborate with multinational research teams is dependent upon excellent English,” it concluded.

The report also found that correlations between countries' English ability and Gross National Income per capita, quality of life and internet connectivity remained strong and stable.

Slow improvement

The good news was that EF was seeing demand for their English classes increase day-by-day and year-by-year, as well as noticing improvement in the public education sector, Kukat said.

“The English skills of recent graduates in Austria, Germany and Switzerland indicate that English instruction in these countries has recently become more effective,” EF authors wrote in the study, adding that “strength in the youngest adults is a positive indicator for the future.”

Germany boosted its standing further above the European average, with an increase on EF's English Proficiency Index (EPI) of 0.94 points to 61.83 (European average: 55.65).

Among EU neighbours, it was far outshone by Scandinavia, with Sweden leaping into first place and pushing Denmark back down to third.

Austria took 10th place and Switzerland trailed behind in 19th.

But France was not even in the top half of the 70 countries tested worldwide, coming in at just 37th place.

Inside Germany, Hamburgers were the best English-speakers, with the northern port city achieving a near-Scandinavian score of 66.34.

Image: English First

Closely following were Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, while Berlin wasn't much better than the national average at 62.88.

Meanwhile, German women's English was slightly better than men's, with an average score of 62.20 compared with 61.57 – repeating a pattern seen across Europe and the world.

SEE ALSO: Seven ways Germans get English totally wrong

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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