Culture Non-Native Anglophones, How Did You Learn English?

[Zyobot]

Despite being an inconsistent hodgepodge of words, rules, and arbitrary holdovers from Anglo-Saxon times, the English language has become the world’s most widespread lingua franca. Thanks to British empire-building and American adventurism bringing it far and wide, English has gone from one of various Germanic languages to the world language of business, science, and international relations. Moreover, in addition to boasting the third-largest number of native speakers, it’s also picked up hundreds of millions of foreign multi-linguists who live everywhere from the nearby Netherlands to distant South Korea. All of whom have a unique perspective on, reasons for, and story behind how they mastered it.

So, for those of you who speak English as a foreign language, why did you learn and what did the road to mastery look like? As a native Anglophone who speaks no other languages (other than having taken three semesters of Latin, anyway), I’m curious as to what other peoples’ experiences have been with it, again considering how much of a gigantic, confusing mishmash of lexical and orthographical influences English is.

Thank you in advance,
Zyobot

 

[WolfBear]

From my ESL (English Second Language) class in elementary school as well as from my various other classes and interactions with students, teachers, and other people.

 

[Zyobot]

From my ESL (English Second Language) class in elementary school as well as from my various other classes and interactions with students, teachers, and other people.

Thanks.

Curious as to whether English was a difficult language, whether for the reasons I listed above or others unique to your experience?

 

[WolfBear]

Thanks.

Curious as to whether English was a difficult language, whether for the reasons I listed above or others unique to your experience?

I don't think that English was particularly difficult for me, No, though my verbal skills in English have still been a bit weaker relative to my skills in certain other things, such as math, science, et cetera. But I can understand written materials that I am very passionate about, such as those involving history, politics, and/or demographics, really well.

I've lived in the US for 20 years by now, for what it's worth.

 

[Zyobot]

I don't think that English was particularly difficult for me, No, though my verbal skills in English have still been a bit weaker relative to my skills in certain other things, such as math, science, et cetera. But I can understand written materials that I am very passionate about, such as those involving history, politics, and/or demographics, really well.

I've lived in the US for 20 years by now, for what it's worth.

Coolio.

 

[WolfBear]

Yeah, even as I was getting A's in other subjects, I often found myself getting B's in English.

 

[Zyobot]

Yeah, even as I was getting A's in other subjects, I often found myself getting B's in English.

I see.

What other languages do you speak, if it's all right for me to ask?

 

[gral]

English language school(as in a school that teaches English), from 6 to 17 years old - but much of that time could have been shortened; I could very well have started learning at the age of 11 and reached the same results. Playing pen and paper RPGs when I was a teenager also helped a lot with learning vocabulary.

Hardest thing for Brazilians, IMO, is pronunciation - Portuguese phonemes are quite different than English ones(Japanese and German, to mention two languages I have some familiarity with, are closer to Portuguese in that aspect than English).

 

[WolfBear]

I see.

What other languages do you speak, if it's all right for me to ask?

Russian. I used to speak Hebrew fluently, but I literally forgot almost all of it after I moved to the US since I used Russian at home and English at school.

 

[TheRejectionist]

Irish teacher tutor Who taught English in England.

I am C1 Level ( second highest score )

But I had the advantage of knowing Portuguese and Italian.

It was easier to learn Spanish.

Also English has wonderful insults : cunt, fuckface,fuckboy, cunthead, wanker, whoreson, degenerate, cretin.

 

[TheRejectionist]

Russian. I used to speak Hebrew fluently, but I literally forgot almost all of it after I moved to the US since I used Russian at home and English at school.

Russian Is a language I want/wanted to learn for pleasure/passion and business reasons.

Despite the last 8 years (due to Crimea) we still get plenty of Russian businessmen and "businessmen".

 

[JasonSanjo]

I learned English partly through school (English being one of the four primary subjects in the Swedish education system alongside Math, Social Studies and Swedish), but mostly through watching British and American TV shows and movies and reading English literature from all over the world. I am fairly fluent in English, though I never did take the time to completely get rid of my accent (It's nowhere near as bad as the ones you get from Swedish politicians trying to speak English on TV, though).

Initially, the biggest hurdles I had with English involved the grammatical forms and spelling, because there wasn't a uniform system of rules associated with it. Or rather, there were some basic rules, but there were so many exceptions that the rules were almost completely useless for actually learning the language beyond the most basic of levels. Memorization through direct exposure in the form of various media proved to be the way to overcome the hurdles.

Setting aside the inconsistent grammar and spelling rules, though, I can't say I had any particular struggles learning English. It's certainly been easier than any other language I've tried, though that could just be down to the much greater prevalence and easy availability of English media.

 

[PsihoKekec]

I learned some in school, but I reckon the biggest factor was watching TV (movies and shows are subtitled here), playing games and later also reading books. Internet also helped.

 

[Zyobot]

Just to keep an interesting thread going, I don't suppose @Skallagrim has any thoughts here? Considering how the Dutch are surrounded by English, I'm curious about any comparing and contrasting they're prone to doing with their native language (which is more true to its Germanic roots).

 

[Skallagrim]

Just to keep an interesting thread going, I don't suppose @Skallagrim has any thoughts here? Considering how the Dutch are surrounded by English, I'm curious about any comparing and contrasting they're prone to doing with their native language (which is more true to its Germanic roots).

I've gone on holiday in England very frequently since early childhood. My parents' honeymoon involved a journey across Europe, and my mother in particular fell in love with England. We've all been frequent visitors ever since. While my English is certainly not perfect (any foreigner will always get some details wrong), I've never actually had to consciously learn English. I don't even know the rules of the language, really. It's all 'by ear', from experience.

Reading a lot helps, too.

As for contrasting: I do that a lot, but that's not exactly typical behaviour. I just like to observe how things are expressed very differently in different languages. (Transliterating Dutch to Englih, for instance, sometimes sounds almost the exact same... and then suddenly veers off into crazy loony-speak.)

 

[Zyobot]

I've gone on holiday in England very frequently since early childhood. My parents' honeymoon involved a journey across Europe, and my mother in particular fell in love with England. We've all been frequent visitors ever since. While my English is certainly not perfect (any foreigner will always get some details wrong), I've never actually had to consciously learn English. I don't even know the rules of the language, really. It's all 'by ear', from experience.

Reading a lot helps, too.

As for contrasting: I do that a lot, but that's not exactly typical behaviour. I just like to observe how things are expressed very differently in different languages. (Transliterating Dutch to Englih, for instance, sometimes sounds almost the exact same... and then suddenly veers off into crazy loony-speak.)

Thanks for sharing. I can certainly relate to observing how the same basic ideas are expressed differently in different languages, especially with syntactical rules and vocabulary not always matching up one-to-one.

Contrasting came easily to me in my three semesters of collegiate Latin, specifically regarding idiomatic differences and expressions that'd sound "odd" when translated into the other language (and vice-versa). At times, I also found it hard to pick up on the semantic nuances of words that lacked straightforward equivalents in English, such as certain Greco-Roman events, rites, and paraphernalia that needed a sentence or two of explanation for non-native speakers to understand, rather than being easily distilled into a nice, one-word shorthand that already existed in English.

 

[Skallagrim]

Thanks for sharing. I can certainly relate to observing how the same basic ideas are expressed differently in different languages, especially with syntactical rules and vocabulary not always matching up one-to-one.

Contrasting came easily to me in my three semesters of collegiate Latin, specifically regarding idiomatic differences and expressions that'd sound "odd" when translated into the other language (and vice-versa). At times, I also found it hard to pick up on the semantic nuances of words that lacked straightforward equivalents in English, such as certain Greco-Roman events, rites, and paraphernalia that needed a sentence or two of explanation for non-native speakers to understand, rather than being easily distilled into a nice, one-word shorthand that already existed in English.

Even simple things can be tricky. Dutch has om for instance, which is extremely hard to translate into English. It basically means "(a)round", but not really, because "round" is just rond and "around" is... rondom. The world om is basically the "a" in "around". But it's also the "sur" in "surrounding", for instance.

 

[Zyobot]

Even simple things can be tricky. Dutch has om for instance, which is extremely hard to translate into English. It basically means "(a)round", but not really, because "round" is just rond and "around" is... rondom. The world om is basically the "a" in "around". But it's also the "sur" in "surrounding", for instance.

Well, that sure sounds tough to express!

Seriously, though, I've actually become curious to learn Dutch lately. No real plans or commitments yet, but since it’s a fellow Germanic language and is mostly spoken in a den of English fluency, I think it’d provide the right blend of similarities and challenging temptations for me, if I ever had an extended stay in the Netherlands.

 

[JasonSanjo]

Even simple things can be tricky. Dutch has om for instance, which is extremely hard to translate into English. It basically means "(a)round", but not really, because "round" is just rond and "around" is... rondom. The world om is basically the "a" in "around". But it's also the "sur" in "surrounding", for instance.

It's exactly the same in Swedish. The Swedish "om" is basically identical to the Dutch; Using your examples, "round" is "rund/runt", "around" is "omkring". There is also "runtomkring" which basically means "all around", and "omringa" which is "surround".

 

[Zyobot]

It's exactly the same in Swedish. The Swedish "om" is basically identical to the Dutch; Using your examples, "round" is "rund/runt", "around" is "omkring". There is also "runtomkring" which basically means "all around", and "omringa" which is "surround".

Huh. Interesting similarities, though given Scandinavia’s proximity to the Central Europe and centuries of cross-cultural interaction therefrom, I suppose that’s not too surprising.

I know English fluency is big where you live, too, but I don’t suppose Swedish (and its cousins, if you speak them) are at least semi-easy for native Anglophones to learn? Best I can do is repeat some English words that I believe were imported from the Nordic languages, and even then, I don’t exactly recall where smorgasbord came from.