The Great English Infiltration
I’ve stopped being surprised by how well Danes speak English. I’ve even stopped comparing them to my former Russian countrymen, who can hardly speak any. (It’s so bad, it was apparently impossible to cast a real Russian in the new mafia flick Eastern Promises. It required speaking both Russian (fluently) and English (with an accent) - and such an actor was nowhere to be found.)
But I digress. What DOES surprise me is that, according to Dansk Industri, every fourth Danish company has English as its operating language. That is truly astounding - and impressive. I get the feeling that the world has much to learn from Denmark, which manages to gracefully blend its strong traditions (we can especially see them now, at Christmas time) with such openness to foreign things. The philosophy seems to be: If it’s good for Denmark in general, then let’s do it - without following any archaic, arbitrary rules.
How the Danes feel about this trend is another question. What do YOU think?
December 9th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
It’s an interesting phenomenon. At least such companies can attract foreign talent to meet their staffing needs.
I often wonder why the healthcare sector can’t do the same, I mean it is populated by educated people who can communicate in English. To overcome the shortage of doctors and nurses it may be easier to attract English-speaking foreign staff. However, I often hear that it’s not a good idea because you need to communicate with the public. I don’t buy that argument, if I need quicuk treatment I may find myself travelling to another country, and then I will have to speak English anyway!
December 11th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I have to say, I agree with you Robin. Living in Norway as a non-Norwegian speaker, I always communicate with my doctor and dentist in English - which isn’t there first language. There’s the ocassional linguistic issue (my dentist didn’t know the English phrase to ‘grind your teeth’) but it never takes long to get the meaning across.