Antirez is spot on describing the problems of English as a foreign language in Europe (although I don't think it has much to do with PG's remarks and I wouldn't draw any conclusions from it).
My favourite example is the pronunciation of the math symbol Pi in a European meeting in which everyone and their dog would be tempted to say something like "pih" except a native speaker. Or try asking for the nearest Ikea.
To be fair (ish) Ikea is a Swedish brand, so the pronunciation was always likely to be a bit odd.
Pi is pronounced the way it is because a bunch of people in the C16th decided to reconstruct classical Greek pronunciation & teach that to students in England. Mix with the great vowel shift (some of which was later reversed for Greek letters in the C19th, but in different ways in the US and the UK) and you end up with the odd mix of pronunciations we have today, with UK and US English disagreeing. At least according to this stackexchange post anyway: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/why-are-gre...
> Antirez is spot on describing the problems of English as a foreign language in Europe
Only in those european countries that dub foreign language movies. In the countries where they subtitle them instead, the exposure to spoken English comes much sooner without the need for formal lessons.
My favourite example is the pronunciation of the math symbol Pi in a European meeting in which everyone and their dog would be tempted to say something like "pih" except a native speaker. Or try asking for the nearest Ikea.