I wonder why Polish people speak good English.

[CarloSsS]

Hi CarloSsS!
It's not surprising about Germans since English is a germanic language too, so they are similliar in many aspects.

It is as far as the dubbing aspect is concerned.

I speak some German. I admit my German is a bit rusty, but still I think that it is a bold statement to claim that the languages are similar because they're both Germanic. They might have been similar a few centuries ago (I wouldn't know, I'm not a history linguist) but I don't think have much in common nowadays. One huge difference is that the English grammar does not have grammatical cases, while in German there are 4 of them. The pronunciation is also very different, not to mention the vocabulary. The word order isn't as strict as it is in English and also there's the fact that there are only 4 grammatical tenses in German. I could dive deeper into this matter, but I guess I've made my point.

 

[bhtr88]

It is as far as the dubbing aspect is concerned.

I speak some German. I admit my German is a bit rusty, but still I think that it is a bold statement to claim that the languages are similar because they're both Germanic. They might have been similar a few centuries ago (I wouldn't know, I'm not a history linguist) but I don't think have much in common nowadays. One huge difference is that the English grammar does not have grammatical cases, while in German there are 4 of them. The pronunciation is also very different, not to mention the vocabulary. The word order isn't as strict as it is in English and also there's the fact that there are only 4 grammatical tenses in German. I could dive deeper into this matter, but I guess I've made my point.

But they have a lot of words with common roots and word order is often the same. First example from google: "Unter dem Wasser" and "Under the water" or (Drink, drank, drunk) and (Trinken, trank, getrunken). Germans would easily guess the meaning of many English words even without knowing the language. I'll still keep my opinion...

 

[alenjones23]

Polish is a very different language than English. But might be you met with good educated polish guys, as you said one of them was an engineer and speech of Polish minister, I think it's not a big deal to speak good english at that level.

 

[Nakuru]

I've noticed that generally people in the North speak better English that in Southern Europe