English Speaking People

Personally, I am amazed at how well people from non-English speaking countries speak English. I applaud your efforts to learn english because I could never imagine speaking other languages as well as most here speak English. I wanted to do this because I don't think anyone ever has.

Very often people that didn't learn english when they were small speak better english than some of the people that have been speaking english since childhood. I think that often the problem is this "slang" that they use that sounds bad and it makes them look bad, but hey whatever rocks their boat.







-elchulo2002 (too lazy to sign in front school)

Well thanks, I am really struggling with my English. I've been learning for a few years now but without being surrounded by people who speak the language I feel I am never gonna get it quite right.

Anyway, must get back to Eastenders I heard the was a famous english proverb being used tonight

I second golfinguy4's applause. I am especially impressed with
guys like Kyoto Oshiro (who's posts are always clear and well-
written). I lived in Germany for 3 years and tried to learn as much
as I could while I was there. Still I only speak a little. If I tried to
have a conversation with nvoigt I'd probably screw-up enough
simple sentence structure to have him slap me.

Originally posted by Unregistered
often the problem is this "slang" that they use that sounds bad

nah dood slang rox all of joo it owns.

>surrounded by people who speak the language I feel I am never gonna get it quite right.

y'know i agree... the same goes for my spanish, which is why i want to travel to spain one day... i was going to this summer but it looks like i won't be a ble to... ... we'll see... plus my spanish teacher for my first two years of high school was like, one of my favorite if not the favorite teachers i'd had... she really got me interested in learning about other cultures and i'm actually surprised at how much spanish i know [and moreso how much i'm comfortable with speaking. ] isn't that great?

Personally, I am amazed at how well people from non-English speaking countries speak English.

language is a front loaded learning process, very difficult in the beginning, but expediently easier as you progress. the reason being, the rules are the most difficult, or whelming perhaps, asspect. thanks to the decaying importance of formal education in the usa, we will soon rely on foreign speakers to preserve our own language simply because they know the rules and we don't. how many of you have learned english grammer in spanish class?

for all you young'ns out there, if you really want a lot of bang for your buck in college, take a classical language; you'll be leaps and bounds ahead of your peers (and elders i'm affraid) in writing and speaking.

how come everytime i post on this board i end up writing my congressmen again . . .

It's probably true that most non-native speakers you meet on the internet read/write english better than they speak it.

>>>>language is a front loaded learning process, very difficult in the beginning, but expediently easier as you progress. the reason being, the rules are the most difficult, or whelming perhaps, asspect. thanks to the decaying importance of formal education in the usa, we will soon rely on foreign speakers to preserve our own language simply because they know the rules and we don't. how many of you have learned english grammer in spanish class?

do you think Spanish will replace English one day as the first language of the USA ????? i think i read somewhere it could/will happen.

i was wondering also, is English one of the hardest languages to learn ?????

I would have to agree with SilentStrike, but that might be explained away by the fact that they do not 'try' to speak proper English in the first place. More often then not I speak some version of my own "English" rather then the proper grammar/pronunciation/etc. I'm sure you have all noticed by now that English is not my native language, I'm originally from the other side of the ocean [Ukraine, to be exact =], I've been here some 5-6 years now though... All that considered, I normally make spelling mistakes because of my faulty keyboard, not inability to spell (great excuse, I tell you =)

Oh well, what was my point again?

I enjoy speaking the spanish language as much as i do the angle-ysh [sand]lang(which?). And i give mad props (i.e. my respect) to those who are learning angle-ysh and are doing such a good job of typing its ludricrous concotion of syllabic nonsense on these boards for us all to salivate over (or at least pee on).

>I lived in Germany for 3 years and tried to learn
>as much as I could while I was there. Still I only
>speak a little. If I tried to have a conversation
>with nvoigt I'd probably screw-up enough
>simple sentence structure to have him slap me.

*g* Don't sweat it, 3 years in Germany is not enough to
learn a language, especially if you were in the army,
where they speak english all day I assume.
After 3 years of english classes, I doubt I would have
understood what this thread is about. It took me at
least 6 years to form almost correct english sentences
and it took me 10 years of formal education and about
5 years of reading english books and watching english
films to post such mindless stuff as the 'xxx sucks'
posts ;-)


>It's probably true that most non-native speakers
>you meet on the internet read/write english better
>than they speak it.

Definetly. I notice frequently that when I am actually
forced to speak english, that my vocabulary count
drops dramatically and I repeat myself, using the same
sentence structures over and over. That is because when
I write a post like this, I am at ease. If I don't find
a word, I will think about it. If I don't like a sentence,
I will delete it and rewrite it. But I cannot wait to
ponder about a word for a minute or just say 'Uh, wait, that
sentence sounded horrible, I'll retry...' in spoken conversation.
I will use the first word or expression that crosses my mind.
And if there are four or five that can be used instead, I will
still use only the first one, but four or five times. I know
we had exercises in grammar school to prevent this with german
verbs, and I hate it when I notice me using the same word
over and over in english conversations.

>i was wondering also, is English one of the hardest languages to learn ?????

No. I only know a few languages, but English seems easy to me.
I wouldn't even want to start explaining German to anyone.
In German, each noun has a gender. And each gender has a different article.
( probably the same with French, Spanish and Italian )
But the gender of a noun doesn't follow any rules.
Pen is male. Letter is male. Ink is female. Mailbox is neutral.
CD is female, tape is neutral, data storage in general is male.
No rules. You simply have to one one more fact for every noun you know.


Edit:

I just remembered this from my time at school... have fun

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/tough.html

yeah, right

the reasons being- Ross,Chandler... + Pamela Anderson

though personally, i think i still have to improve my english, i cant understand 80% of what DA says. and as a matter of fact even what Prelude says [its scary]

>It's probably true that most non-native speakers
>you meet on the internet read/write english better
>than they speak it.

Yes, that's true. Well, in my case. But not only English. When reading or writing, I can take time to think and perhaps take a dictionary. But I notice that when I have to talk in English or German, it's sometimes quite hard to find the right words and make correct sentences.

>i was wondering also, is English one of the hardest languages
>to learn ?????

I think it's a quite easy language to learn. Ask 100 kids in the Netherlands if they want to learn French, German or English, they all will tell you they want to learn English. Because

1. French differs very much from Dutch
2. German is close to Dutch but has a quite difficult grammar
3. English is quite close, has more easy grammar and kids meet the English language on TV, radio, Internet etc

But sadly for the children in the Netherlands have to learn at least two foreign languages. Most of them choose English and German, mostly girls choose also French.

I think that the ease of learning a new language depends for a big part on the relation with your own language. So perhaps for someone from Algeria or Japan, English might be harder to learn.

English is easier to learn than most other languages because u don't need to say much for people to understand u.

It's grammer can be completely ignored and it still makes sense - u don't need to spell the words correctly, and u have a chose of which spelling best suits u (e.g. tonite or tonight).

I was brought up as a trilingual (English, Welsh, and Danish - its a long story!) and i think the main thing I learnt was the only point for languages is to communicate ideas to each others.

Welsh is the oldest living language in Europe and although its easy to learn suffers from not having space for change - English is evolving all the time - mainly because if you like a word from another Language, u use it with English, and soon enough, everybody else is using it!