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The European Union’s remarkable growth performance relative to the United States (www.bruegel.org)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The article chooses to take a metric that you usually do not see much: GDP per employee and per hours worked, at purchasing power standards

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

We will not get people who are past their 40s to learn a new language en-masse. Meanwhile many of the young generations are quite proficient with English.

In the business context in particular it is important that language is precise, so contracts can be negotiated. This often enough is an issue even if all parties are of the same native language. There exists a lot of legal interpretation for each language as to how specific terms are to be understood, as well as standard formulations and references for specific industries.

All of this established practice would have to be re-established with a constructed language. This process takes decades, if not centuries. In the current situation it seems much easier to teach proper English in school and encourage usage of English, so people are proficient in it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe in Western Europe, but years of online gaming have taught me that Eastern Europeans have dreadful English skills. Your perspective is probably skewed, since we Germans are comparatively fluent.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Your perspective is probably skewed, since we Germans are comparatively fluent.

It's even worse. Germany has still some generational divide here but high proficiency on average on a level comparable to countries without that generational gap. So in reality Germans are not comparably fluent, but very proficient... or not at all. Which skews perception even more.