Language galore - The 'European' culture of subtitles and dubbing - Part 1:How do we navigate so many languages?

Europe as a continent is a melting pot of countries and one distinctive trait about it is that it has an extremely big variety of languages. Very few European countries share a language, only two or three at the most and many European languages are limited to one country. So in order for us to be able to communicate and interact with each other, we simply have to study other languages. It is near impossible therefore for Europeans, not to know other languages. And in some cases, Europeans need to know several languages.

I for instance am armed with my native language, near-fluent speaker of another Scandinavian language and am comfortable with the rest of them, fluent in English,  good Spanish skills and French. My knowledge of those languages has given me access to cultures, countries and languages that would otherwise have been harder for me to access. I am comfortable with Scandinavian languages and English and am able to understand both Italian and Portuguese. Yet, beside those language skills I very little experience with Southern-European, Eastern-European, Slavic, Balkan or Slavic languages. The reverse would be true for any person from that area.

This video explains it pretty well. We simply have to go bilingual or multilingual. And I love the jab at the English one-language speakers :)

But instead of trying to learn all the European languages as that is impossible, us Europeans have had to get creative when it comes to accessing culture and material from countries whose language we do not speak. And therein enters the culture of subtitles and dubbing.

We have figured out a genius way to be able to watch shows from other countries. Here in Northern-Europe we use subtitles. We use subtitles in our native language with every single show that is not produced in our own country and does not involve our language. We use subtitles on anything and everything involving a foreign language on TV, no matter what it is. And this is something everyone is used to and no one questions. Every single person learns to read and gets comfortable with subtitles very easily and early. I was young   when I got used to reading subtitles and it has not stopped since. If given the choice, I prefer having subtitles, even if I understand perfectly the language that is being spoken. It is just more comfortable and it is what I am used to. Being used to reading subtitles has given me the chance to be able to watch TV and film material  from all over the world and I love that. It has given me access and the chance to enjoy material I otherwise couldn't have enjoyed. I personally prefer watching TV shows and films in the language they were produced and find it preferable to dubbing.

In the rest of Europe the tables are turned. They are all over dubbing material which is otherwise known as "the best thing ever to make fun of and laugh over" and "the nightmare of every language student". And that will be covered next.