Danes no longer the world’s top non-native English speakers

Sweden and the Netherlands both finished above Denmark

Nov 3, 2015

Denmark takes on Sweden later this month to qualify for Euro 2016, but the Swedes are already 1-0 up … at least in terms of speaking English.

The Swedes have dethroned the Danes as the best non-native English speakers in the world, according to Education First (EF).

And as if being pipped by the Swedes isn’t bad enough, the Danes have been surpassed by the Dutch as well and find themselves in third on this year’s English Proficiency Index report by EF.

The fifth edition of the annually-published report (here in English) revealed that the Danes have actually improved in English compared to last year, but the Swedes and Dutch have improved even more.

Tight at the top
The Danes can at least rest assured that it was a close race. Sweden scored 70.94 points, followed by the Netherlands (70.58) and Denmark (70.05), while Norway (67.83) and Finland (65.32) completed the top five.

Slovenia (64.97), Estonia (63.73), Luxembourg (63.45), Poland (62.95) and Austria (61.97) completed the top 10.

Other notables included Germany (ranked 11), India (20), South Korea (27), Japan (30), France (37), Russia (39), Brazil (41) and China (47).

The report ranked 70 countries and territories based on test data from more than 910,000 adults who took EF’s online English tests in 2014.

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