In my opinion you are pushing this a bit too hard.
Even if this may sound rude (but is not supposed to) I don‘t care how important the influence and role of english in estonia or norway is.
Your impression (that everyone speaks english) is very subjective, and also wrong!
Smaller countries like Estonia are limited in their own possibilities and therefore rely on others. They are dependent on others that much, that the own language does not always make sense here. Because again, they are also too small to be always considered internationally.
Estonia have a population of around 1.2 Million People. Even if you count the finish-spoken countries in, it will be a minority.
On the Other hand, German is spoken in Germany, Austria, and huge parts of Switzerland 66%).
In Summary, there are 97.6 Million People who are native German speaker.
So, because german is very common. people never got in need to rely on a other language, because books, articles, products and whatsoever where always produced in the german language too. in the past, english was not teached in schools - people over the age of 45 often have very little to none english experience!
Have you ever been in countries like Spain, and tried to communicate in english there? you are lost! Even in a metropolis like barcelona, you are not able to speak to a cab driver at the international airport! They are
proud of their language, and simply not in the need to use other languages for whatsoever reasons, like explained before, there is a huge variety of spanish tv productions, products and on and on, or at least the product got translated to spanish - so it the same as with german, only with the fact that we absolutely have no chance to unterstand everything that’s in spanish, and vice versa.
That’s all regarding to popularity. The other important role here, is the Market.
Especially germans are highly addicted to the simulator genre, like Train/Bus/Truck/flight simulation. Language does not count here - it’s just about what people like, and what people buy. And here, this country is an important factor. The UK are into it as well. That’s also why you have some Big Vendors like Aerosoft, or all the relevant Game Studios in the genre in the german or uk area. Here, the People are interested in that stuff! even the big webshops like simmarket (if you are into flightsim) are german.
Combine these two keyfactors, the popularity of the Language, and the interest in the Market, and you will see why it’s a big factor to speak german, or why on the other hand it is not a factor (for the majority) to speak english.
As i said before, your impression of the importance to use an international language is not correct.
But, you will always get help here (in english), if you create a topic or reply to one. Also the official content (which also is very incomplete in german due to the fact that it’s still in its creation) is available in english. But please do not force people to only communicate in english. For a lot of users, this is simply not possible, and they would not participate in this. It’s not a practical way, nor the right solution. I think i made clear why.
Marvin
