The Dutch are the best non-native English speakers in the world (again!)

How about that? The USA didn’t even make the top 100..

> Which city is home to the best English-speakers in Holland?

Too bad you left out cities like Utrecht, Arnhem, Groningen and Maastricht that are in different provinces.

For me it’s clear that duch people have never heard Swedish or Norwegian people speak in English.

this is not true because dutch people dont like to speak english and + for normal work you must speak dutch or else you cant get a job.

There is no way, I am from South Africa, living in the Netherlands for 5 years now, from the south to the north , the English in this country is honestly sub par, compared to South Africa , (btw studying to become an English teacher ) and you got SA as never 11 ? ??? Excuse me ? Non-native, a place South Africa is leagues and leagues higher than what I have encountered in the Netherlands ( also working as a professional IT programmers!!! Show me the non-native english speakers that are better than the people from Denmark ( where I have also lived and I do not agree with this assessment at all, and South Africa is way way way way higher in standard when it comes to English as a language compared to denmark, let alone the Netherlands.

Interesting but I don’t agree. I am also from South Africa and the English spoken there is of a much higher grade than the Netherlands.
But yay for the Dutch – they do speak English well. My comment would also be that most Dutch people speak a decent grade of English but they don’t make any effort to overcome the heavy Dutch accent – in contrast to, say, the Norwegians

The Dutch speak ”Dutchlish”, they just use Dutch grammar rules with English words. It is fluent but hardly accurate.

I’m dutch and my English is close to native. This article completely wrong about the reasons our English is so well. Nobody learns a language from class. We learn English because we speak English almost every day. We watch television in English and even cartoons used to be in English. Amsterdam specifically has 70% expats in the city center. Just 30% is local. And we do a lot of business. Big international companies like to setup headquarters in The Netherlands because of tax benefits. Bringing lots of expats and international students in. We got great international schools and Universities too.

And it isn’t hard to be the best English speaking non native country if French and German don’t speak English at all. Also, our language is very similar to English and German. Naturaly English is picked up quick. School is not the reason!

Because the article is about non-native countries…

I would expect that having an accent is not a big factor here. I would expect the survey to pay attention to grammar and vocabulary and the amount of people that speak it well. And to be honest, not every South-African is well-spoken in English. I think this is about averages, not just a select community.
Also I remember an article saying that around 10% of South-Africans can speak English (understanding it is a much bigger group). Perhaps that also weighs in, because in the Netherlands I expect that way more than 10% people speak English (be it with an accent).

Fluency in English does not mean that all of the Dutch citizens have the phonetic ability to synthesize accents that one would associate with either an American, British, or any other accent you would find in a country where English is the native tongue.

I do happen to have a natural affinity for the finer nuances of languages. As such, I can confirm that while most of us can express ourselves with some degree of fluency, the sometimes thick accent that my countrymen display, is easy to pick out and to me personally, a little cringe-worthy at times.

All of the South Africans I’ve met so far (all of them here in the Netherlands) spoke amazing English and I personally have never met people from Denmark, Sweden, Finland or Norway that don’t express themselves well in English.

With Germans and Austrians I don’t really know, I typically speak German when I’m there. The French in Paris at least seemed to do just fine, although my basic level of French came in handy at multiple occasions.

Having said that, I think that the responses here are primarily based on anecdotal evidence and that the individual variety allows for impressions that are inconsistent with this ranking. Also, with scores this close, I would venture to say that the result is going to vary with different samples and should not be deemed statistically accurate. Just take them with a grain of salt.