中国人的英语水平在全球属于什么段位？丨Albert书房

最近《经济学人》发表了一篇有意思的文章，介绍了一项关于世界各国非母语者英文流利度的调查。尽管测试对象样本面临或多或少的各类限制，但调查的结果比较符合我个人的经历和判断。

在我十年同声传译经历里所接触的成百上千的外国人中，北欧人的确脱颖而出，是所有非英语为母语国家中英文说得最好的一群。至少我接触的瑞典人、挪威人、芬兰人、荷兰人、丹麦人、德国人、瑞士人、德国人能用英语侃侃而谈的比例非常高。拿我最熟悉的瑞士举例，街上、店里随便找一个路人问路、攀谈，几乎没有遇到过不会说英文的。当然偏远小镇的服务员、超市里的理货员中还是有相当一部分几乎说不了几句英文。

毫无疑问这些都是高收入国家，中产家庭中有实力送小孩去英国、美国等英语国家留学的比例不低，更不要说这些国家本身就有很多优秀的大学以英文授课。但是，就像我在课程里多次提到过的，北欧国家英文相对流利的最重要原因是：北欧人学英文要更容易。

尽管英文是“大杂烩”语言，吸收了世界各地各种语言的词汇、表达，尽管曾经被罗马人占领、被法国人统治的英格兰往英文里注入了大量的拉丁词和法语词，英语的核心还是Germanic/日耳曼语系的。撇开发音不说，英语里各种让其它地区的人感觉别扭的表达习惯，北欧国家这些说着日耳曼语系语言的人要更容易适应。

流利度仅次于这些北欧国家的是那些曾被英语国家殖民过的地区或者国家，比如南非、菲律宾、马来西亚。非常有意思的是，这篇文章也提到了新加坡。尽管英文是新加坡四种官方语言中最重要、最受重视的语言，但看来还不能称得上是native language.

那中国排在哪里呢？你觉得评估准确吗？看完这篇文章你就明白了。

  听Albert朗读全文：

*英文文本和图表来自《经济学人》官网

Where are the world’s best English-speakers?

ENGLISH IS THE most widely spoken language in the world. And of the roughly 1.5bn speakers globally, the vast majority speak it as a second language. So where are the world’s best non-native English speakers? 

the most widely spoken language/使用范围最广的语言，这是对英语非常准确的描述；non-native English speakers/非以英语为母语者；

 

According to a new report by EF Education First, an English-teaching company, Northern Europeans are the most fluent (the Netherlands tops the rankings, followed by Sweden, Norway and Denmark). Middle Easterners are the least proficient (Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia all rank near the bottom).

果然北欧人英文是最流利的，排在第一名的是荷兰人，其次是瑞典、挪威以及丹麦；另外一方面，中东人最不流利。括号里列举了伊拉克、科威特、阿曼以及沙特阿拉伯；

 

These results are not comprehensive, however. Nor are they representative. EF’s index is based on the results of a free online test taken by 2.3m volunteers in 100 countries. Only people with an internet connection and time and willingness to take a test are included in the sample, which means the results are biased towards richer countries interested in English. As a result, many African countries do not have enough test-takers—at least 400—to be included in the index.

调查结果：1. 不够全面/not comprehensive；2. Nor are they representative/也不具代表性；为什么呢？原来这项调查吸引了来自100个国家的230万人参加，但是这是在线调查，需要测试对象有电脑并且能上网，而且要能“入围”，一个国家必须至少有400人参加这个调查；

 

Such biases aside, the EF’s index produces results that are interesting, if not entirely scientific. Nearly six in ten of this year’s test-takers were female. Women have always fared better than men, but this year men closed the gap somewhat. 

尽管有偏差/biases，尽管不一定完全科学/ not entirely scientific，调查的结果还是很有意思的。作者说到60%的测试对象是女性。当然男同学不要悲观，跟以往相比，已经是进步了（掩面而泣）。

重点词：fare，介于do和perform之间，表达相似的意思；

 

Some countries saw their proficiency scores decline. This is probably not because their English got worse; more likely, a big increase in the number of test-takers brought in more people with weak English.

有些国家在proficiency/熟练程度方面的得分今年出现了下降。原因是？这次参加测试的人数比往常大幅上升，而较多的低水平的人一下子拉低了平均分；

 

In Europe, the powerhouse economies fare surprisingly badly: only Germany makes the top tier of “very high proficiency” countries. France is next, while Spain and Italy are persistent laggards. A study by a Spanish research institute confirmed the bad news: 60% of adults say they speak no English at all. 

powerhouse，听上去就像发电的房子，充满了力量，那powerhouse economies/充满力量的经济体，当然指的就是欧洲工业大国，欧洲列强的味道扑面而来。问题是除了德国，其它三个英文不太行。最差的总是西班牙和意大利（Albert表示完全同意）。

laggard/落后者；

 

The fact that Spanish is a global language in its own right (the language boasts 400m native speakers) is probably the culprit. If you speak Danish, you need another language to take part in global culture; speaking French or Spanish (or Arabic) means hundreds of millions of people to talk to without English.

各个国家的国情是不一样滴。西班牙毕竟也是老牌的帝国主义国家，好歹当年和教皇商量说要和葡萄牙平分天下，所以西班牙语至今也还是全球性语言，不然我们怎么会看到球场上拉美国家的球员和西班牙球员流畅沟通。

不过英文说不好不是罪，英国人写文章说culprit/罪魁祸首，我感觉不够大气；

 

Asia is the region of greatest diversity. Only Singapore makes the top tier, but the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and India are not far behind. China is further back but still in the second tier, a few slots ahead of Japan. 

终于说到亚洲。新加坡排名最靠前，后面跟着被殖民过的大小兄弟们：菲律宾、马来西亚、香港、印度。注意，China来了，作者提到“further back”也就是和往年排名相比，这次“更靠后了”（请问是谁拉低了大家的平均分？！）；

但是，貌似作者要安慰下我们，说到中国还是处在“第二梯队”/the second tier，并且a few slots ahead of Japan/领先日本几个身位；

 

Languishing in the bottom slots are a clutch of South-East and Central Asian countries like Cambodia and Kyrgyzstan. This correlates with another factor: EF repeatedly finds that English skills are highly correlated with connections and openness to the rest of the world. 

最后提到了柬埔寨和吉尔吉斯斯坦这样的内陆国家；最后的最后，点睛之笔来了：English skills are highly correlated with connections and openness to the rest of the world./英语能力和一个国家与世界的联系和开放度紧密相关；

 

中国正在前所未有地继续扩大开放，需不需要学好英语，需不需要使用高效正确的方法学好英语，你自行脑补。

Albert强烈暗示