General DiscussionWho speaks better English ? Brazilian / Chinese / Russian / Mexican

I'm brazilian and I can say most people here know at least the basics of english... the problem is when they go to other servers in parties they tend to speak among themselves always in portuguese and this ends up annoying local players.

There's not really any way to tell what nationality someone is if they are non English speaking, since they don't respond to anything you ask. They could be a deaf person who doesn't read chat for all I know.

South American players are hit or miss, but they know enough to get by. A lot of times they chat with each other in game in Spanish/Portuguese and know some English, enough to say where to go or whatever. It's usually not an issue at all. Their gameplay often is, but there's plenty of English speaking noobs too.

It really doesn't matter to me what language a person speaks. As long as they make some effort to get across an idea. I'm a spoiled american who only knows one language but I try to pick up as many small phrases as I can.

Ok, you haven't asked about which country speaks the most English - it is 100% about if someone speaks English as a 2nd language, which ones do it the easiest and best.

Try the invert test: How easy is it for you to speak their language? If you find their language "easy" to learn, they probably find yours "easy" to learn too. With this strategy, we find:
1.) Brazilians and Mexicans (Spanish/Portuguese)
2.) Russians (Russian)
3.) Chinese (Mandarin)

Now, cross-reference this list with people who speak English as a 2nd language. From my experience, at a university speaking English, the ranking is about the same. I find that "romantic languages" such as Spanish and Italian can learn English to a pretty coherent level that sounds good to native ears. I find that Russians get stuck often with omitting words (articles, for example) and sound a bit rough on the ears to native speakers. And I find that Chinese speakers often speak in such a way that native speakers have to ask for clarification. I even had a Chinese professor who has been in America for the last 40 years - she STILL speaks broken English despite speaking English with her husband and kids this entire duration.

So that list seems pretty valid to me. I can only imagine I'd never quite speak Chinese correctly, that my Russian would be a bit weak, and that MAYBE one day, I could speak some good Spanish or Portuguese.

My Korean TA for one graduate level math course was so hard to understand I didn't even get any tests back because he said my name so badly I never knew he was calling me. I doubt I understood a word he said the entire course, but its math so it didn't matter much. The language is equations.

I find Chinese speakers far more difficult to understand. Russians are not too bad, but their grammar is nearly always wrong. I suspect someone must have taught Russian teachers bad grammar and now they have taught everyone because its so consistently wrong in the same phrases for every Russian I meet. Chinese, however use correct grammar but pronounce the words so strangely its hard to figure out what words they are saying. Spanish/Portuguese speakers are easy to understand if they learned English well.

Apparently very few Japanese play dota yet. Their English is usually far better than Korean or Chinese speakers.

Germans/French...most of Europe really there is no problem understanding them at all. Many speak English better than Americans.

"I never played with Russian on US east"

i played with russians in ALL servers how you manage not to?

Vandal's right
All the languages that stem from latin, or the romantic languages, English, Spanish, Italian etc. are all very similar Chinese/Japanese are the farthest from English thus they are harder to learn/speak
That said certain cultures have higher IQ's, but I don't want to offend anyone XD

Wait it doesnt matter that they talk english or not
they are just retarded

As an spanish speaker myself, I can say that ironically, a lot of us "romantic languages" speakers have more trouble learning another language in this category than english, despite the supposed similiarities between them :/

As far as I know, chinese grammar is somewhat similar to english, so, they can get by if they at least learn how to read and write in english. Speaking it is another matter altogether.

I'm pretty sure Russian is very different in both grammar and pronunciation to english. I think they are able, like germans, to create gigantic words by combining some.

So it depends on how different some language is compared to english to say which has more trouble communicating with an english speaker, but in the end, all that matters is, like Darkness said, that your teammates are not retarded.