Everyone seems so good at English so I wondered how many people learned it to such proficiency and how many are just natives
I’m German. Back in my day, we had 9 years of English classes in school and from what I’ve heard it’s even more now. I was lucky to have a teacher who had spent a couple of years in the UK so he had much less of a German accent than most other teachers at our school and was also able to give us a lot of insight into how people actually speak, compared to the rather formal and stilted examples in our textbooks.
Between social media, movies, shows and a job in software engineering, I would say that on most days I read and listen to more English than German.
Not a native speaker. I learned mostly from American TV and reading Internet discussions. I have also absorbed a lot of more technical language through the native speakers at work. I made sure my coworkers know that I want them to correct my English, and working with a bunch of pedantic nerds, I sure get a lot of helpful corrections!
I’m a non-native English speaker, learned it by watching cartoons without subtitles when I was a wee little squirt
I also learned from TV, mainly Friends, Scrubs, Family Guy, and similar, with and without subtitles. Then had a gf/wife for twelve years who was native English speaking from across the pond.
I’m good with math and music, and such people tend to also pick up languages easily, or so I’ve understood. I would say I speak and write at a native level though thanks to being with that woman for so many years and communicating with her in English, and doing daily communication online in English for decades now.
Also having a curiosity where I look up words I don’t know, or when I see new words. And I’m interested in a lot of fields where there’s a lot of advanced lingo which also helps. People I listen to are well spoken and good with words, which inspires me.
So I guess all these things combined made me quite proficient. 🤷♂️
English is my third language, but I read a lot of English books as a kid and spent a lot of time in English-speaking circles. I don’t feel disadvantaged compared to a native speaker as I’m fluent and have been speaking English for a long time.
Hungarian here, learned in school and through games/videos
I feel like non native users are often better at both formulating themselves and spelling, compared to many native speakers
Especially the part where people replace ‘have’ with ‘of’. (Would of instead of would have / would’ve)
Non native speaker here too btw
“i did it on accident” blows my mind. It’s by accident, not on accident.
Oh boy, I got so confused when I was a beginner and some American kid told me “would of” is an alternative to “would have”
I think the “proper” way to simplify it is would’ve, which is pronounced the same as ‘would of’
A lot of mistakes have just become incorporated into the language in the past. Maybe ‘would of’ is just too blatantly wrong for that to ever happen though
Maybe not really a ‘mistake’, more of a normal shortening but my personal favorite english-ism is “bye” being descended directly from “god be with you”. People just kept collapsing it more and more over time.
Edit: also “a pease” -> “peas” -> “a pea”
Also literally… If can both mean exactly something or be used for emphasis
There are a lot of regional things as well as slang that aren’t universal between native english speakers. Your confusion is kinda like how some new drivers can be better than veteran drivers because the information is still fresh and they haven’t developed bad habits yet. Even as a native speaker, you’ll sometimes be confused with terminology from other areas.
Examples would be stuff like “fanny” meaning something different in north America compared to Britain. “Cunt” is a lot less offensive in Australia than America. “Bless your heart” is slightly more insulting in the south than the rest of the states. Calling someone “buddy” is friendlier in Canada than the states etc.
I’m a non native speaker. First learned it while playing Minecraft, and since I’ve spend multiple hours a day writing and speaking English.
Dutch, we don’t dub our movies (luckily) and prefer easy trading over valueing our own language. My biggest problem is finding an accent that fits me. Should I go for posh British, 'Murican, or Dutch “steenkolen Engels”?
I always cringe when I see native speakers confuse “it’s” and “its”, “their”, “they’re” and “there” and all the other subtleties of their language. But then again, I’m a pedantic German and maybe Americans are so anti-education already that they’re cool with that.
although its incorrect, i’d say their are better things to worry about
I’m Indian, specifically Sourh Indian.
We learn English in our schools and it is he main medium for school and college education.I’m from germany. I watch a lot of YouTube. Also I work as software developer, so I need to read many english manuals. Wich don’t means, that my english is great. But it could also be worse.
I had to learn English from a young age because it was the primary language used from kindergarten to high school, and even in college.
I improved my comprehension by reading articles and online discussion forums, as well as by watching movies, series, broadcasts, and YouTube videos.
I learnt it since I was 3. I was literally forced to do it instead of playing outside with my friends. And always out was hard…
Then I found the language Esperanto, that is supposed to be 10x easier to learn and use. I tried it and I can conform that to be true 😊
But I needed English for my (volunteer) work in a social movement, so I slowly learn it. But still had big problems to understand spoken English. Then I found English videos about topic that was very investing for me. I was trying hard to understand and finally I did.
Long story short, I still prefer to speak Esperanto, and much more people should, IMO.
Oh wow, it’s so cool you speak Esperanto! Can you share your experience with it? Where do you use it? What good Esperanto communities are there? Do you find it actually useful? In what ways did it enrich your life?
I’m also in the process of learning Esperanto (there’s actually a decent amount of us on Lemmy)
I don’t foresee it ever being particularly useful on its own, but it is a really easy language to learn, and I think it’s a great way to learn how to learn languages. I feel like after casually teaching myself it for a few years I’m a lot better prepared to learn another language somewhere down the road
There’s a few Esperanto clubs and such out there, I’m not a part of any of them so I can’t really comment on the community all that much.
One thing that does kind of interest me is Pasporta Servo, which is sort of a free Airbnb/couchsurfing thing for esperantists. Seems like that could be a cool way to travel around on the cheap and probably a good way to get more involved in the Esperanto community. Unfortunately most of my traveling is done with my wife and I haven’t been able to convince her to learn Esperanto with me so I doubt she’s gonna want to go hang out with me chatting with someone in a made up language in a foreign land.
Mostly I talk to my dog in it. She knows most of her basic commands in both English and Esperanto.
in a made up language
Aren’t all languages made up?
Constructed vs evolved.
BTW a lot of open source programs have Esperanto translations (including Lemmy). Facebook does also for some reason.
For spoken English, I greatly recommend audiobooks and podcasts. They typically have better narrators, so are easier to understand. As a bonus, one can listen to them while doing household chores and such — for me, consumption of books greatly increased with audiobooks compared to snatches of books here and there.
Absolutely! The videos that helped me to understand English was podcast-like. I am a big fan of audiobooks and podcasts. Mostly to give some rest to my eyes, and to consume them while I am walking outside to protect my physical health.
I just spend too much time on the internet
Yup same here
I learned the basics from Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage. Ready… Start! Time up! Game over! Marble zone! All useful phrases when abroad.
For me it was honestly Minecraft since the translations weren’t a thing for a while after its first release (in combination with school)
