January the 15th, 2022 - Croatian English fluency is often very impressive to most foreigners when they first come here, likely expecting that as a country with a Slavic language with vastly different rules, the situation would be quite the opposite despite tourism reliance. Croatia has been ranked very high on the list when it comes to speaking English, the world's most widely spoken language.

As Srednja.hr/Matej Markovinovic writes, speaking, understanding and writing English might be a pain in the nether regions for some, but for others, they quickly get acquainted with it and fluent in it without many issues. In any case, there is no doubt that English surrounds us in everyday life, both on TV and in films, and on the Internet where we spend an increasing amount of time.

An international education company that is not ashamed to boast that it is a leader in the field of language, EF Education First, has published a report for the year 2021 on the knowledge of the English language among the countries of the world. Namely, the results were divided into five groups, and Croatia was in the first and best, next to countries such as Finland, Sweden, Portugal and Belgium.

This particular study was conducted on two million people across 112 countries, and the median age of the respondents was 26 years. The crown for the best knowledge of English was again (unsurprisingly) won by the Netherlands this year, followed by Austria and then by Denmark.

In a previous survey, Croatian English fluency impressed once again, taking 13th place in the entire world, but in 2021 it climbed to 10th place, thus entering the ''Very High Proficiency'' list. When it comes to Europe alone, Croatia is in ninth place overall.

In addition, the data show that English is best known to non British Europeans between the ages of 26 and 40, while the age group between 18 and 20 isn't quite as ''famous'' for the same skill. According to the research, countries with more knowledge of English are also more developed and have higher GDP and economic growth.

Croatia's neighbours should also be pointed out, Serbia took a respectable 14th place and almost found itself on the aforementioned ''High Proficiency'' list, while Italy is in a rather unimpressive 35th place. Data for Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are not available, so we can't be sure how they stand. In last place is Yemen.

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