How do you know how to speak English?

[Killian Jones 2,655]

fascinating by the sound of this thread, non-English speakers pick up English faster than English-speakers pick up other languages.

 

America must be lazy or not teaching other languages right lol. Probably because there's not a real big need to learn another language since most internet/video games/TV are English anyways.

 

When I went through my giant anime phase, I tried picking up Japanese but it wasn't working out. Plus the need was fleeting lol.

 

American culture saturates the world while the more localized cultures stay where they are. US Citizens just don't become exposed nearly as often to foreign culture as a majority of Europeans. Most games released don't have localized versions and thus learning English is a requirement. There are many countries where subbing is used for many TV programmes a opposed to dubbing them. So at the very least a lot of people in the EU are subjected to a lot of English language. What if there was a major shift towards Chinese culture? It would stand to reason a lot of people will learn Chinese because of that.

 

Also I remember seeing the whole of Star Trek Voyager on BBC One.

[WildCard 1,037]

I learned a lot of English in school and even in elementary school there is a lot of focus on that language. I really didn't like English much until I was about 15 years old. But then there came a monent I began to love it nad nowadays I watch almost every movie/show in English and almost every book I read is English as well(I even plan to become an english teacher). I like how the language sounds and how you can express yourself in it and I also like it's simplicity

PS: My mother-tongue is German btw. so don't be afraid to ask when you need something that has to do with my language

Edited January 19, 2012 by PonyPunk

[Starshine 16,334]

I learned English mostly from subtitled Sunday morning cartoons. While my school taught me English since the first grade, all I learned from my teachers was how to make myself look stupid in front of the tourists around my place. When I got to high school I started buying some untranslated comics (X-Men and Batman sound terrible in my native language).

 

Even after all those years reading English materials, I couldn't really grasp some of the basic grammars. Huh...

[One 498]

I'm from America, so I speak American English. I've learned some British English from this:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences

 

 

It's still English, just a different form of English, but I'm counting it anyways.

[khaine21x3 789]

I educate myself on most languages and I use soviet learning techniques to get the accents down perfectly.Using an accent to blend with locals of a country is the most important part of learning a language.

[Sugarcube 213]

Actually, English is extremely complicated and hard to learn. I know this from having a mother who has been exposed to it for years, and still isn't completely proficient. She complains all the time about how the words are not spelled as they are pronounced a lot and it doesn't make sense.

 

In Spanish, most words are spelled as they are pronounced. The accents, whilst I still haven't grasped them quite yet, aren't a complicated concept. Neither is ñ which is just another letter in the alphabet to them. Also, question marks are easy - whenever you ask a question, you put the upside down one in the front as well as the normal one in the back. It's not that hard. It just LOOKS complicated because it's foreign and new, but in actuality, it's not really.

 

I think the reason the people here have picked it up so fast is because they were exposed at a young age, which makes it super easy to learn another language. If you had picked it up at my mom's age, it would be quite a bit of work.

 

Anyways, technically, English is my second language. Technicalities. I learned Spanish first, but my ability in Spanish became quickly displaced due to being born in the US and surrounded by English. Schooling, peers, and it everywhere pretty much made my proficiency in English much higher than Spanish.

 

 

Yep Yep and Yep! This makes my linguist heart soar in happiness!

 

English is extremely hard to learn due to our number of irregulars and crazy rule breakers

 

Exposure at a young age is also super important, when you are young you are still acquiring language accquistion and you can easily take on mulitple languages with no damage to any of the languages being learn. Studies have shown by the age of 3 a child has the syntax of their language down with almost no error and by ages 5-7 we have complete and perfect knowledge of our language and it's grammar (by grammar I don't mean periods and colons I mean the actual way a person's language works and is used, such as plurals and how sentences fit together)

 

Another big thing that affects how a language is learned is how closely related a language is to another. English speakers would have an easier time learning German than Japanese because English is related to German in the language family tree. A Spanish speaker would have an easier time learning French because those languages are closely related on the language tree

[khaine21x3 789]

 

What if there was a major shift towards Chinese culture? It would stand to reason a lot of people will learn Chinese because of that.

 

There is already a major shift towards Chinese culture as they're a rising superpower with economy predicted to overtake the US and they've been making foreign military bases like the US does.

 

 

Exposure at a young age is also super important, when you are young you are still acquiring language accquistion and you can easily take on mulitple languages with no damage to any of the languages being learn. Studies have shown by the age of 3 a child has the syntax of their language down with almost no error and by ages 5-7 we have complete and perfect knowledge of our language and it's grammar (by grammar I don't mean periods and colons I mean the actual way a person's language works and is used, such as plurals and how sentences fit together)

 

Another big thing that affects how a language is learned is how closely related a language is to another. English speakers would have an easier time learning German than Japanese because English is related to German in the language family tree. A Spanish speaker would have an easier time learning French because those languages are closely related on the language tree

 

I'm skeptical about that part because I've noticed that it's generally easy for people of superior genetic stock to learn languages even in their 20-30s, perfect pronunciation of words or mimicking accents perfectly would highly depend on the education system but most places that has no intention of training people to be spies do not educate them to have perfect accents and the students themselves have no desire to achieve that level.

 

I don't think the second part is accurate either from what I seen in former colonies.

[Sugarcube 213]

There is already a major shift towards Chinese culture as they're a rising superpower with economy predicted to overtake the US and they've been making foreign military bases like the US does.

 

 

 

I'm skeptical about that part because I've noticed that it's generally easy for people of superior genetic stock to learn languages even in their 20-30s, perfect pronunciation of words or mimicking accents perfectly would highly depend on the education system but most places that has no intention of training people to be spies do not educate them to have perfect accents and the students themselves have no desire to achieve that level.

 

I don't think the second part is accurate either from what I seen in former colonies.

Well you can argue with the mounds of studies done by linguists and psychologists.

 

yes some people are gifted with an ability to learn languages quickly and easily and can even learn to mimic the regionalisms and accents but it is not that common and takes years and years of study.

 

As for language trees and languages being related yes that is also a fact, I couldn't expand on language families outside of the languages that share a common ancestry with Indo-European.  I am not saying it is true in every case, but if languages are branched together generally they share enough common traits it makes learning the language related to yours much easier because there is a point of contact and reference for that language to connect with thus making it an easier to become fluent in such a language.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

[Colt 555]

Basics came from skool and then I LvL up my english with an overdose of videogames, cartoons and movies, videogames for the most part.

 

Also got some US friends at college and made some travels to their places helping me to develop it. Its funny but my spelling is much better on English than on Spanish.

[SrFrog 927]

Its funny but my spelling is much better on English than on Spanish.

Y'know, for all of the time I spent on a Mexican school. I never did learn how to properly spell properly and punctuate correctly in Spanish, but English? that stuff is easy.

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

well, i grew up playing video-games, and watched several cartoons, movies, etc., all which mostly were in english, either text or speech-wise. thanks to those things combined, i'm able to understand and use english rather skillfully.

oh yeah, i forgot to mention (way back then), that i had English class as well. thanks to what i said in this previous quote, combined with the English class at school, it melded into my brain very quickly. hell, i even speak to myself, think, and write in English because it sounds a lot better to me than my native language Swedish does.

 

the only thing that's left is me having a strong English accent or something, but friends have told me my accent is very Swedish still.

[Ink 191]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Edited August 21, 2018 by Ink

[Mortimer 332]

I learned english when i was young, i always played my PSX and that's where i learnt english, not cartoon because here in Uruguay every cartoon is dubbed into spaninsh. Of course, after that i pursued english lessons and now i have my Proficiency degree.

[碇 シンジン 27,433]

mostly games and from other media I would say my english is these days as good if not better than my original language

[dead account 2,713]

In school I learned only the very basics, such as the the basic structure, names of the colors and some other vocabularies. But it's by far really, really not enough to do anything with it. I wonder what we even did in those 6 years. But I teached myself as an adult, I started with some english-only games. I often used the google translator. It felt so nice to become better! I was able to understand most of it eventually! Even when some of the words were unknown to me, the rest of the sentences would still make sense.
Then I did english commentary (let's play videos) and played through two games like this. It was cringe, I noticed my strong accent, so I removed it from YouTube. But then a good website was recommended to me, I can type in every word and listen to native people and others. I use this website to learn how to talk correctly! I quickly got rid of most of my accent, but I still have one and I'm totally fine with that. Only new words are problematic. English is often contradictory, which makes it harder to learn, I have to look up every single word if I want to pronounce them correctly. I love english and my native language german, I enjoy it immensely to learn more. The more words I learn, the more fun it becomes! I love to play around with words. Though, I'm not aware if I generally make mistakes when I write, save for the typos.

[Tom Gallagher 33,595]

I was just born that way. 

[The Kaeya Simp 13,989]

My mum and dad only speak English and I was brought up in a English speaking country 

[Silly Druid 7,179]

I had English at school, but mostly I learned it because I wanted to be able to play games in their original versions (the localizations were very bad or non-existent these times), and to interact with the rest of the world through the Internet.

[daviddaviddavid 776]

I was born and raised in England. My mother was also an English teacher for about 25 years, so that probably also contributed significantly.

 

9 hours ago, Heasol said:

Though, I'm not aware if I generally make mistakes when I write, save for the typos.

Your English is great, I'd never have known that you perceived yourself to have issues with it. And yeah, the fact that English is not phonetic is something I definitely don't envy people having to contend with when learning it for the first time

[Astralshy 27,303]

Honestly, I don’t know and just hope for the best xD

I started to learn English as a first foreign language in school starting from the 5^th grade up to 13^th grade. After school I continued practicing it using in job and private communications, texts, books etc. I also learned a lot by movies, music, games and the holy internet etc

[TBD 17,256]

Back in K school. English is my second language so I remember hearing gibbish from my teacher. The school put me into a separate class to learn English, but what they didn't teach me was helping me with grammar or sounding out the words to help me with spelling. I remember hating to go there but they keep forcing me to go till 5 grade. My grammar and spelling is  all screwed because of it. But at least now, I improved. (In most parts).

[ExplosionMare 18,085]

My parents probably taught me.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,732]

Tis my native tongue. The most boring first language possible. Matches my entirely uninteresting existence. 

[Yakamaru 3,127]

Didn't learn that much in school to be honest due to having several teachers who were more interested in telling fun and/or interesting life stories, so I had to learn all the English I currently know and understand over the internet through day-to-day usage. 

I use a mixture of British and American English and is something I've grown accustomed to. 

[Dreambiscuit 10,094]

On 2022-04-27 at 5:08 PM, Sven Glimmer said:

But then a good website was recommended to me, I can type in every word and listen to native people and others. I use this website to learn how to talk correctly! I quickly got rid of most of my accent, but I still have one and I'm totally fine with that.  

What was the website that allowed you to type in words and hear native speakers? Is it available in other languages as well as English? It sounds like a great resource.