A few days ago, all Croatian media outlets excitedly brought the latest EF report by the educational company Education First, a huge international network with more than fifty thousand employees, which, based on the specialized EF test, publishes the annually English Proficiency Index, a ranking of the world's nations according to their knowledge of the English language. Not counting, of course, Anglophone countries, according to the report for 2025. the best English speakers are still, traditionally, the Dutch, and as of this year, right behind the Netherlands - better than Austria, Germany and all Scandinavian nations, significantly better even than the Republic of South Africa, where English has been one of the official languages for more than a hundred years - is little Croatia, the second in the whole world in terms of knowledge of the English language.
If you understood the previous paragraph, it only confirms what it says: according to the latest English Proficiency Index report, published annually by the international educational institution Education First, among all non-English speaking nations, Croatians are the second best English speakers in the entire world, right behind the traditionally best non-English speaking English people, the Dutch.
In short, this means that you live in a world where only the British, Americans and Dutch speak English better than Croatians, a world where the Dinamo defender is Scottish, the Hajduk coach is Uruguayan, the head of Croatian football referees is Spanish, the general manager of Zagreb Airport is Turkish, the owner of half of Kvarner is German, the hotel chain Bluesun is Arab, and the retail chain Studenac is Polish, while the saleswoman in the local Studenac is Filipino and the warehouseman is Nepalese. And in which everyone communicates perfectly well in English.
If you didn't understand anything in the opening paragraph except the word "Croatia", it means that you live in the real world, the one beyond TikTok, Instagram, Croatian tourist destinations and the reach of the English Proficiency Index, in which - in addition to Uber drivers, excursion boat leaders, apartment renters, waiters, chefs, baristas, influencers and gamers - there are also people who don't know English: unfortunate people who don't live in Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Rijeka or Split, don't play professional football, don't negotiate the purchase of a hotel or the introduction of a Zagreb - New York airline, but live, I have no idea, in Čavoglave.
And they just want to, say, see a doctor in Drniš.
From that, well, real world, just a few days after the exalted domestic media announced that, according to the latest English Proficiency Index rankings, Croatia is the world's second nation in terms of English language proficiency, RTL published a shocking story from Drniš, where the local population revolted over an emergency room doctor, an Iranian who only speaks English.
"I translate all the interventions! A man brought our son for inhalation, he works at a school and he realized that the doctor was stuttering Croatian. He told him, 'we can communicate in English', which he didn't expect. Then he turned on ChatGPT so he wouldn't be completely embarrassed," a worker at the Drniš Emergency Department told RTL, angry at his new colleague, an Iranian doctor who graduated from the University of Split in English ten years ago, after which he got a job in Šibenik: due to complaints from colleagues and patients, with whom he insisted on speaking in English, the Iranian doctor was soon transferred to Primošten, only to arrive in Drniš a month ago for the same reasons.
"Imagine coming to a village where one or two ninety-year-olds live, and you ask them something in English!" RTL's interlocutor vividly described the absurdity of a situation in which not only does the local doctor not speak Croatian, but the local doctor at the emergency room does not speak Croatian, in a place where good and fast communication literally saves lives.
And suddenly, the superior Oxford Croatian, the runner-up of the English Proficiency Index, who speaks English as if William Shakespeare himself had written "Romeo and Judith" for her, found herself in a clinic in Drniš, where she communicated with the doctor with her hands and feet, pointing with one hand at a delirious guy who was gurgling indistinctly, and with the other showing two fingers and saying "two words", then interpreting the first word by pointing to her forehead, and the second by banging that same forehead on the waiting room wall, powerlessly shouting in front of the confused Iranian, "stroke fucking stroke!".
The rest of the story, as you can already guess, is about the real Croatia being outraged by the outrageous Arab, or whatever it is - yes, an Iranian - who has lived and worked in Croatia for ten years and has not deigned to learn the twenty or so words sufficient for everyday Croatian communication, and is angrily wondering what the Government is doing, what the Ministry of Health is doing when it lets people like that work in the Emergency Room, what the Ministry of the Interior, Foreign Affairs or whatever, is doing when it gives people like that work permits.
"No one can say that he didn't have time to learn Croatian. In the meantime, he married a Croatian doctor who works at the Šibenik-Knin Institute. In Šibenik, nurses often did his work instead of him because he refuses to speak Croatian. People protested, so he was transferred to Primošten," a source who wished to remain anonymous told RTL. "I'm just interested in whether he has a diploma and a Croatian language exam. If he does, then it was probably given to him." And the nurse from Šibenik adds that "she communicates with the Iranian doctor in English to reduce tension, because he can barely compose two or three simple sentences in Croatian": "When you come to a traffic accident or some major accident, it's uncomfortable for the patient to see that the doctor doesn't know the language. I think we should have doctors who know Croatian, and not have the nurse be a translator, a nurse, and a doctor in most cases."
We should have doctors who know Croatian?! Really?
Good Morning, Croatia, how did you sleep?
In Croatian, you don't say, "I think we should have doctors who know Croatian," but rather, in Croatian, you correctly say - "I think we should have doctors": according to the latest data from the Croatian Medical Chamber, more than one thousand two hundred of these, as you said, "doctors who know Croatian" have left Croatia in the last ten years alone!
And we didn't have enough of them before: according to the number of overtime hours - and Croatian doctors work three million of them a year! - Croatian public healthcare is currently short of as many as a thousand and a half hospital doctors. The President of the Croatian Medical Chamber, Dr. sc. Krešimir Luetić, recently stated that there is a total shortage of as many as two thousand - in addition to these thousand and a half hospital doctors, we need at least five hundred family doctors!
I repeat, two thousand. Not "doctors who know Croatian," but "doctors." Any kind. Any kind. Give me what you can.
Looking for a doctor who, in addition to a medical degree, also knows Croatian is a luxury that Croatia simply cannot afford. At this moment, I don't know how else to explain it, the Drniš Emergency Department needs a man who knows the procedure for ischemic stroke more than a man who knows when in Croatian croaking the consonants "k", "g" and "h" before "i" or "e" change to "č", "ž" and "š". An Iranian doctor who doesn't know Croatian?! We could use one who doesn't even know English right now.
Admittedly, with Scottish full-backs, Uruguayan coaches, Spanish referees, Turkish managers, German landowners, Arab hoteliers, Polish shopkeepers, Filipino saleswomen, Nepalese warehouse workers and Iranian doctors who have no idea of Croatian and therefore communicate in impeccable English, Croatia may not be the happiest homeland for Croatians who speak Croatian, but it is precisely thanks to them - and never forget this - that it is the second nation in the world in terms of knowledge of the English language on the English Proficiency Index.
As they say in fluent Croatian - silver with a golden sheen.
Bonus video:
