Thread: English as a second language

Well, my parents are both English teachers as a second language, so it's always kinda been pushed into me. I've always been learning English at the same time as Spanish and now I'm having to learn German. It's become normal for me to be learning languages.
Well, it at least will give me a better chance at finding a job

Students in Indian are usually though 4 different languages in schools.. The languages theself depend on the geographic location... They are the national language, the language spoken in that individual state, English and another language whichc an be choosen out of the given choice...


The language of communication for all other subjects, maths, science etc etc is in English.. SO makes not big difference. We learn English from a young age..


I can read/write/speak English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Sanskrit and Understand Telegu and Malayalam...

I was just wondering... for those of you who don't live in a country where English is the first language, how do you feel about having to learn it to communicate with the rest of the business world? As a US Citizen, I would find it hard having to adapt to a "world" language.... but most would say that's just American arrogance.

First, the "business world" in our places isn't overly keen to speak any other language than our own if it isn't neccessary. So english is only for international affairs, which aren't that common

In Germany, people with a higher education level had to take at least two foreign languages in school. The first from class 5 all to the end (13), the second from class 7 to 11+. While there are people who took Latin and Ancient Greek, the majority ( 95% ) takes english as a first and latin or french ( 50/50 ) as second, so every university student had at least 9 years of english education. Which doesn't mean they have to be particularly good at it

English is seen not as a skill to communicate with native english speakers, but rather to be able to communicate with anyone. And if you listen to a talk between Fritz Meier, database administrator in Germany and Ms. Mbutu, Oracle Support Zimbabwe, it's hilarious. But it works, that counts.

they need to push more learning of foreign languages in American schools, becuase as Americans we very rarely learn foreign languages.

In most American schools, the minimum foreign language requirement is 2 years of a language of your choice (many schools dont require foreign language at all).

I personally think that us Americans would benefit a huge amount if foreign languages were stressed more in our schools.

yeah, I wish I had been taugh foreign languages from when I was a kid, so that they wouldn't exactly be foreign to me... there are so many languages I'd like to know, but learning a new language at this age is, well, like learning a new language...

Originally Posted by viaxd

English isn't that hard to learn. After studying it for some time I can understand it perfectly, but still there are some words I've never heard. The best practise for me is simply reading something in English and then trying to figure out the unknown words.
Here we are used to learning languages, at any school there are at least 2 foreign languages and English is almost always one of them.

The difficulty of learning a particular foreign language depends on a learner's native language and other languages they might have already learned. English is an easier language to learn for native speakers of Brit, Ozzie, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish than for native speakers of Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, or Russian. Ideally, everyone would learn English because that would simplify international communication; and, anyway, English is a poetic, aesthetic tongue, particularly as eloquated by President George W. Bush.

English is my first language. Lately, I've been learning Russian by myself - not taking any classes on it. Anyone here speak Russian? For English speakers such as myself, it is much harder than Spanish or similar languages, due to the different alphabet. I can read Russian (slowly), write it to some extent, and sound out most words. Listening, however, is much harder. Can't really understand any real conversations .