What is English like to learn as a second language?

[squareyes 153]

I started learning Japanese a few weeks ago and as I've been learning it, I've been comparing English to Japanese and how easy it is to learn English. I know that many of you are learning English as a second language to adjust to how most of the web is and I was wondering what it is like to learn.

[Armchair Adventurer 211]

For a long time it was really difficult for me. It is very different from my language in a lot of ways (then again a lot of people say that Hungarian is one of the weirdest existing languages XD). But I like to think I am pretty good at it now. My life would be very different if I never learned to speak English. I would be a really different person for sure. Now most of the movies I watch, books I read (and audiobooks I listen to) etc. are in English. It has helped me to see and experience a lot of the world and things out there that I wouldn't have been able to because they are not available in my original language or because they are very badly translated. I'm really glad to be able to understand and speak English !

Edited November 2, 2013 by Armchair Adventurer

[MelancholicMemory 2,025]

Well, English is my first language, but I often work with ESL students (I work as a writing tutor). From what I've seen and heard, English is challenging because our sentence structure differs greatly from other languages. It is particularly hard for people from China or other distant nations to learn English as a second language later in life. ESL students from there tend to write in a way in which the words are correct, but the phrasing is awkward or even resembling an old poem. Also, English has a lot of words for very similar ideas and far more exceptions to our grammatical rules than other languages. I would say learning English is about as hard to learn as German, though for different reasons. It can be a rather difficult language because it doesn't always make sense. Fortunately, a lot of production of media is done in the English-speaking world, so people can hear a lot of English and gather some elements of the language from that in daily life.

 

Of course, my experiences are all second hand, so I would love to hear from an actual ESL person about this. I've mostly worked with people from western and central Europe, as well as the far East. People from other areas may have entirely different experiences.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Ryuuguu Rena

[Fluttershyfan94 5,742]

Compared to my language it's as easy as it gets, not to mention with all the tv shows, movies and etc. Are in English, so it's something that just comes with time. Then it's video games as well, through video games you learn a lot of English, then the internet. I can speak four languages, English is a fun language to learn.

 

So for me, learning English as a second language is fun. I'm surrounded with the English language, because of how isolated I am. I'm almost more used to English then my own native language, I often even think in English. So yeah, I love English and there is a good reason why.. Video games, movies, tv shows and..

 

 

Muscle cars.. <3

Edited November 2, 2013 by Fluttershyfan94

[GhostPony750 959]

Well, I grew up with pokemon, so I learned english pretty early. What seems the most special is when you look back when you didn't understand at all what was said/written. It feels weird lol. But well, a second language is always harsh to learn, but english wasn't that hard I guess. It's quite simple.

 

 

Muscle cars.. <3

Edited November 2, 2013 by GhostPony750

[Jokuc 8,173]

Well I've always though that english is pretty easy since I've always had some knowledge about it.. You know.. You get free english lessons when you're a computer nerd When I were younger I spent a lot of time with playing online games where I talked to random people so yeah.. It has not been that hard

[FoxyCryptid 4,330]

I've heard it's actually pretty difficult for a non-native speaker because it's such a mess. From what I hear we have far more words that mean the same things, or have multiple uses in different context than many other languages, and the language also has many nonsensical rules that seem to serves no rational purpose and are just there "because". 

[*Rarity 123]

I've heard it's actually pretty difficult for a non-native speaker because it's such a mess. From what I hear we have far more words that mean the same things, or have multiple uses in different context than many other languages, and the language also has many nonsensical rules that seem to serves no rational purpose and are just there "because". 

Nah, to me it's very easy, and my native language is VERY different from english... Well, we tend to steal words from all languages, and some are english,I think... Kids like to speak swenglish anyway (like, mixing Swedish with English in the same sentence, it's really weird but.... it happens)

 

Jag gillar att äta äppelpaj, speciellt när jag sitter i en rosa helikopter som har en hel del gröna elefanter flygande runt om kring sig.

I like eating apple pie, especially when I'm sitting in a pink helicopter that has a lot of green elephants flying around it.

 

If there is a language that is a pain in the arse to learn, then it's swedish. it's just... so messed up. swedish and arabic, I can imagine be on a top list of "hardest languages to learn". It's also a very useless language to know unless you live here.

[MelancholicMemory 2,025]

Nah, to me it's very easy, and my native language is VERY different from english... Well, we tend to steal words from all languages, and some are english,I think... Kids like to speak swenglish anyway (like, mixing Swedish with English in the same sentence, it's really weird but.... it happens)

 

Jag gillar att äta äppelpaj, speciellt när jag sitter i en rosa helikopter som har en hel del gröna elefanter flygande runt om kring sig.

I like eating apple pie, especially when I'm sitting in a pink helicopter that has a lot of green elephants flying around it.

 

If there is a language that is a pain in the arse to learn, then it's swedish. it's just... so messed up. swedish and arabic, I can imagine be on a top list of "hardest languages to learn". It's also a very useless language to know unless you live here.

Indeed. Arabic is one of the most difficult languages to learn, especially if you were not raised with the kind of cultural background that would make the language familiar. Some of my most difficult jobs have been with native speakers of Arabic. Swedish is also rather hard, probably just above German, which is also very difficult to speak fluently for complicated reasons (I actually speak that language ). English is probably a bit below there as well. The difficulty of learning it though would probably depend on one's native tongue. Sweden is largely connected to the English speaking world, and the languages have similar Germanic backgrounds so the languages are kind of similar.

[*Rarity 123]

Indeed. Arabic is one of the most difficult languages to learn, especially if you were not raised with the kind of cultural background that would make the language familiar. Some of my most difficult jobs have been with native speakers of Arabic. Swedish is also rather hard, probably just above German, which is also very difficult to speak fluently for complicated reasons (I actually speak that language ). English is probably a bit below there as well. The difficulty of learning it though would probably depend on one's native tongue. Sweden is largely connected to the English speaking world, and the languages have similar Germanic backgrounds so the languages are kind of similar.

Yeah... German was pretty darn easy for me to learn, I was very good at it when I studied it for the past 3 years, but now that i'm on senior high, and I have to pick it as a individual class (we get to pick 200 points/estimate of 200 hours for individually selected classes, SHITLOADS of classes to select from) and I'd rather have philosophy and stuff instead of more german classes, even if I would totally rock in the german class it's just... Naah! The grammar though... Dayumn. It's fun but still just messed up like crazy.

IT HAS TO BE DEM WHEN IT*S A OBJECT WHEN YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT A SUBJECTIVE bllblblalblablalbal I don't remember how it is.

[~Chaotic Eddie~ 479]

As a native English speaker, I think I can safely say that it isn't a very good first language. It's the most widely-spoken language in the world today, so it's easier to immerse yourself in it, and thus it is easier to learn. Thus, learning other languages is made harder.

Edited November 2, 2013 by ~Chaotic Eddy~

[Frith is Magick 1,471]

English is my first language, but when I started Japanese, I realized how much of a pain it must be to learn English. Even with kanji, Japanese is easier by far. German is easy, Mandarin is insanely easy, but English is a complete pain. Heck, after speaking it my whole life, I still think it is difficult at times. In some cases there are multiple words with one general meaning, other times it takes a few sentences to describe one word in another language. One of the worst things is how English, while primarily Germanic, draws heavily from various languages.

[Misty Rose 3,216]

Well English IS actually my second language It was actually quite easy to learn Now for others it may seem harder but I learned the easy way.

 

Believe it or not, I learned the basics of English solely from watching TV I went to the US when I was about 3 and I watched Dora and Blue's Clues all the time. I picked up the strange unknown language and since Dora is bilingual that made things easier. She may teach Spanish but it worked quite the opposite for me

 

Eventually when I finally went to school, all I had to learn were the days of the week, numbers and stuff like that, I went to a bilingual class for Pre-K but after that pure English. I'm now totally fluent in both languages. English and Spanish

 

So learning it was easy, since I didn't go to a boring class or anything like that, or took any courses, I learned the basics right from my living room by watching children's cartoons Eeyup, so anyways THANK YOU DORA AND BLUE FOR TEACHING ME ENGLISH!!

Edited November 3, 2013 by Pink Mist

[squareyes 153]

English is my first language, but when I started Japanese, I realized how much of a pain it must be to learn English. Even with kanji, Japanese is easier by far. German is easy, Mandarin is insanely easy, but English is a complete pain. Heck, after speaking it my whole life, I still think it is difficult at times. In some cases there are multiple words with one general meaning, other times it takes a few sentences to describe one word in another language. One of the worst things is how English, while primarily Germanic, draws heavily from various languages.

Well it could be better or it could be worse. I mean in Japanese, you don't need to worry about I am, You are, She is, etc. You just say the same verb.

 

Whereas in, for example, French. You have to remember either if very noun is either masculine or feminine. EVERY NOUN!

[Le Kvlt Dawn 2,364]

I was thought both English and Spanish when I was little, and I always stuck with English. My parents are immigrants, I was born in the US. I was thought Spanish first, then English. It's hard to tell because I never developed an accent, but yes English is technically my second language. I found English a lot easier than Spanish. Once I learned English I enjoyed reading full length books, writing, etc. and I used it A LOT more than Spanish. The only time I used Spanish was around older relatives, and that's still the case today. People go on about how English is weird, well I think Spanish is weird. In Spanish, questions are written with two question marks. ¿Like, what the heck is this? I don't understand how to use accents either, the only three I'm familiar with are "é", "ñ", and "ü". In Spanish using double negatives is correct, that drives me BONKERS. Romantic languages tend to be similar, and Spanish seems to be really similar to Italian. They're not exactly the same but they are very similar. French and Spanish tend to have a few differences though.

 

 

 

Nah, to me it's very easy, and my native language is VERY different from english... Well, we tend to steal words from all languages, and some are english,I think... Kids like to speak swenglish anyway (like, mixing Swedish with English in the same sentence, it's really weird but.... it happens)

Ha, people here in the US use Spanglish at times. I never used, I just thought it was really weird. Plus, my parents hated Spanglish. xD

Btw, I listen to a bunch of Swedish music, and a lot of times the song titles and lyrics are in English. Not always, but that's usually the case.

 

Whereas in, for example, French. You have to remember either if very noun is either masculine or feminine. EVERY NOUN!

It's the same crap in Spanish. Masculine nouns end with "o", and feminine nouns end with "a". Damn, Spanish is weird. To make things worse, in Spanish the letter "í" makes the long e sound. So instead of "me" they use "mí". Also, the "j" makes the "h" sound, the "h" is silent, and the "w" is almost useless. 

 

 

 

Edited November 3, 2013 by Mirai Kuriyama

[Frith is Magick 1,471]

 

 

Whereas in, for example, French. You have to remember either if very noun is either masculine or feminine. EVERY NOUN!

German has masculine, feminine, and neutral nouns. It doesn't affect how verbs are conjugated, but it does affect articles and the cases. Fortunately, there are some general rules. I find English tp be the worst: Proper grammar has multiple rules that, at times, can be a hindrance. I can't speak for other languages, but I know that the use of cases in German and particles in Japanese allow flexibility in the sentence structure, allowing for emphasis or natural flow. English Grammar is much more rigid because it lacks the means to retain meaning when word order changes.

 

Don't even get me started on spelling. Having a phonetic alphabet, in general, is simpler than having a character for each thing or idea, but English wastes this advantage. Simple words are not a problem, but because English borrows so heavily from other languages, not all words follow the rules. We have a phonetic system, but don't always use it phonetically, making it a challenge to learn as a second language.

[HungryTroll 137]

Well, easy.

I haven't learned English specially. I know it just from games, TV shows and books, that why my English is pretty crude and I know that I should spend some time and shape it, but I see no difficult moments in it. My native language is Russian, and I don't think that it's hard language as well (You just have to remember a lot in Russian, thats all), but still it harder for me then English.

[notdog1996 315]

Being from Quebec, I was drowned in English since the beginning.  You want to play video games?  Sorry, only available in English.  You want to watch that cool show?  Sorry, no one took the time to dub it in French.  Try to imagine how hard it is to play Zelda when you can't read, and even when you finally do, you still can't understand a thing.  For me, I had a lot of motivation to do it so I could finally understand what exactly was going on.  It's not too bad since you ditch so many concepts.  You don't accord adjectives, there is no gendering, there aren't super complicated verb tenses and you hardly conjugate anything.  The only problem with English is that by removing so many rules, the messages don't get across too well.  ''You'' can be translated as plural or singular, formal or informal, personal or impersonal and even feminine or masculine.  So, it can be translated to three different pronouns in French and the gender of the target person must be known for adjectives afterwards.  I also forgot to say that about 60% of English words come from French, so guessing vocabulary is easy.  Now though, we have video games in French, but English is still super present and it's one of the necessary subjects to be able to graduate along with French and Maths.  

Edited November 18, 2013 by notdog1996

[Scootalove 10,689]

It takes a while to get used to learning English, but you will get used to learning English as your second language other than your original native language.

[Erza 581]

Well, for some reason.
I prefer English more than my Native language, Arabic.
However, I find this language useful because it will help me to immigrate to better place in future.

[Arkane 270]

Engrish is like the second used language here in the philippines. So it wasnt hard for me learning it. I can speak well. But I cant write that well.

 

But what's it like? irrelevant.

[Derpaholic 1,155]

I never really *learned* English as a second language, per se, it's just something that I've always been involved with in a weird way.
I grew up surrounded by a lot of English language multimedia, such as cartoons, video games, literature, and films, and I guess I just sort of naturally picked it up, just like I did my first language, Finnish.
Now, both of my parents are Finnish, and I never recall us speaking anything else but Finnish inside the household, but what I do remember, is us traveling a lot.
My parents loved to travel, even when they couldn't afford it, and they were always dragging my sister and me with them.
I hated it at the time, but I didn't have much of a choice, being a little kid and all.

Nowadays, I use the English language in every day affairs more than I do my own native Finnish.
The only real time I make use of Finnish is when I'm with family, at a bank, doing grocery shopping, or something similar.
When I'm at my place, I usually think, talk, and type in English, my operation system is in English, every single book I have on my bookshelf at the moment is in English, and whenever I chat/meet up with close friends, we usually communicate in English.
It's all rather weird, really.

So yeah, there's your answer.
Never actually went out of my way to learn English.
 

Edited November 19, 2013 by Bron-Yr-Aur

[Zekromic 1,054]

My first experience learning the language was my first time going to the US, Columbus, Georgia, because of my dad's work. We spent almost a year there. At the time, I was against it, but I had a knack of learning words easily. Later, after returning to my country, my parents inscribed me to an extra scholar english school, which I still had my touch, but I wasn't so motivated for it until I had to deal with this guy

seriously, I got stuck in this part like forever, but after actually paying attention to the dialogues, I finally got forward. Afterwards, I started getting motivated in dominating the language, and because of that I'm so good at English. Of course, I can make my grammar errors, problems with pronunciation, etc etc etc, but hell, I proved myself with English, I passed the GED exam in my last trip to the US, I passed the sufficiency in english at my college (which is a requirement anyways), I could hold conversations in the US, and I have problems translating to spanish because I got used to reading and hearing english  as my own language, thanks to the above green bastard 

[Doc. Volt 2,561]

i'm italian... english is very easy to learn.. the only difficult things are verbs at different periods.. i just love the american slang