Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
And the folks who really suffer are small language market publishers. I'd guess most folks in the Netherlands are reasonably fluent in English. What market is there for books written in Dutch?
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Books that were originally in Dutch, obviously; the only people *I* know who read fantasy in Dutch are people who are close to or over 50, and started in the 70's; the people for whom English is not a second language. (I've read a few paragraphs of Fantasy in Dutch today, and it's utterly atrocious. It reads as if a 12 year old is trying to make a writing assignment look good. Dutch isn't suitable for writing fantasy in, but that's maybe only my skewed opinion...)
I don't know if it's still the case, but when I was in high-school in the 90's, English was a *required* subject to be passed in final exam, along with Dutch. It was impossible to graduate if you didn't pass English.
Therefore everybody in my generation speaks, writes and understands at least basic English (if they kept it up at least a little bit). With people one generation older or younger, English can be quite sketchy sometimes.