MikeH wrote on 11/26/19 at 08:44:51:English proficiency is, depending on your definition of proficiency, between 90 and 98%.
But basically 100% in stores and shops, since those who don't speak English are mostly elderly people, illiterates or migrants who are yet to learn other languages but their own.
Growing up in the mostly monolingual USA, I always found it amazing that nearly every Dutch person is at least bilingual. I studied French for a year and a half in high school and still can't understand spoken French (if French can actually qualify as my second language; I can speak and write it fairly well for someone Mississippi-born-and-raised, I suppose, and can read it okay if the vocabulary is simple... but I couldn't understand the spoken language if my life depended on it! I actually post on our French-language forum occasionally, but don't actively participate in it as I would this English forum as I'm still not fully confident in my abilities in the language)
Nobody in my family has demonstrated any ability to converse in a foreign tongue. Indeed I might be the closest thing to being bilingual on either side of my family. The only multilingual people I seem to deal with around here are immigrants, mostly from Mexico/Central America (with whom I can speak very limited Spanish-- which I never formally studied) or East Asia (usually China or Vietnam). I should probably give these folks a little more credit for being able to speak to me in English so well, since they had to learn it as a second language just as I had to with French. If anyone from the Francosphere is coming to Monroe next March,
je voudrais practiquer mon français avec vous!
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