# What's it like learning English as a second language?



## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

I've always spoken English so I've never found it weird or that hard to grasp but I know that in some places you're required to learn English and I've heard from some people that English is really weird to learn.
For those of you with English as your second language, what was it like learning it? Was it by choice or did you learn it in school?


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## DarkFlare69 (Jun 14, 2017)

I know someone who is French and she started learning English 4 years ago and now is pretty fluent in it. She said she likes it better than French and it wasn't that difficult to learn.


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## Hayleia (Jun 14, 2017)

Learnt it in school. The only weird thing is the pronounciation. Just see how even you (not you you, but native English-speaking people) confuse then/than, compatible/compatable, kernel/kernal, etc. That's because you could even write krnl and it would be pronounced the same way as kernel/kernal/whatever. Which is really annoying for people which native language has precise rules to tell how to pronounce stuff. Well ok, we have a lot of rules (like the fact that a "o" isn't pronounced the same if followed by a "n", or if followed by a "u"), but we still have rules. And the second hard thing in pronounciation is long vowels. Coming from a language with no long vowels, it's hard to pronounce "slip" and "sleep" differently without feeling like a retard.


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## Shady Guy Jose (Jun 14, 2017)

Here in Portugal, it's learned by everyone in school from the age of 6, and for at least 9 years, with most people having 11 years of lessons. However, due to the general population's poor level of English, learning goals are kept quite low in the official public-school curriculum. Nonetheless, since we get most entertainment media (movies, TV shows, video games, etc) subbed, as opposed to Spain, France and Italy, where most of it is dubbed, the younger generation has a pretty good level of proficiency in informal American English, and thus tourists find it mostly easy to communicate around here, despite typical grammatical errors and mispronounciations. As for myself, it doesn't sound weird to me at all because of the aforementioned reasons (maybe even mostly due to the fact that I was a Pokémaniac - games were in English, I repeat - from the age of 5) and the Advanced English program in my school, which meant that we graduated high school with a C2 level certificate in English (it's the maximum level, if you're not familiar with the grading system). For me, what's *actually *weird is the (understandable) fact that English-speaking people may very well go through life without having to learn a second language to any significant level unless they live abroad or their line of work requires it. Whereas people from European countries are usually fairly proficient in 3-5 languages, as long as they come from a fairly high, or at least educated social background.


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## Olmectron (Jun 14, 2017)

I speak English as my second language. 

It's been easy, but I'm no expert so far. 

However, I always hate when others (even native speakers) confuse "it's" and "its" all the time. 

It hurts.

I've seen that typo even in articles on sites like Nintendolife, for example.


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## VinsCool (Jun 14, 2017)

It's not that hard, in my opinion.
Hardest part is getting used to it.


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Spoiler


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## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> View attachment 90080


delet this


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Seliph said:


> delet this


Hahahha why?


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)




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## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> View attachment 90081


Don't speak to me ever again


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## darkseekerliu (Jun 14, 2017)

I am from Brazil. Here, in regular public school, the english classes begin on 5th grade and goes until you finish the high school. Unfortunately the quality is not great, so if you really want to learn you have to go to a private english course. For me, it was not that hard because I always wanted to understand what was written on the games (specially megaman X2 in SNES). I can speak, write and understand very well, but always make some confusion/mistakes regarding the use of (IN, ON, AT) - there's some logic, but only native speakers use these prepositions 100% correctly. I also studied spanish (very close to portuguese) and italian, and I can say they are much harder to learn than english. But in a global world, to know how to speak english is mandatory just like to know math. The hardest part is always the listening, due to several different accents. But this is normal, every language has this problem. The northern brazilians use some words that only they use, so they sound weird for us in the southern part of Brazil. That's it.


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Seliph said:


> Don't speak to me ever again


Ok :'(  i just wabted to ahow why I love English language


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## _v3 (Jun 14, 2017)

I had no problem learning English growing up, mostly because my grandma had a couple of books that were in english (textbooks from my mother I think) and I used to play with those as a kid (plus, she helped me out a lot in the early stages of learning ).
 After I got over the textbook stuff I started playing ps1 and since no croatian option was available i preferred using English (my mom would sometimes force me to play games in Italian since I know that as well but I would always secretly reset the game and start it in english xD ).

All in all not hard, everyone always told us while we were kids that English is used worldwide and we might as well learn it so we went with it.


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## Deleted User (Jun 14, 2017)

Meh, PC games did their thing.
As you can guess, we are forced here to learn English and then either Deutsch or Russian.
Ugh...

Overally, I don't have problems with Englando but grammar sometimes is just wanky.


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Felek666 said:


> Meh, PC games did their thing.
> As you can guess, we are forced here to learn English and then either Deutsch or Russian.
> Ugh...
> 
> Overally, I don't have problems with Englando but grammar sometimes is just wanky.


Don't forget Japanese or Spanish, or french or Swahili


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## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

Felek666 said:


> Meh, PC games did their thing.
> As you can guess, we are forced here to learn English and then either Deutsch or Russian.
> Ugh...
> 
> Overally, I don't have problems with Englando but grammar sometimes is just wanky.


Oof


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

_v3 said:


> I had no problem learning English growing up, mostly because my grandma had a couple of books that were in english (textbooks from my mother I think) and I used to play with those as a kid (plus, she helped me out a lot in the early stages of learning ).
> After I got over the textbook stuff I started playing ps1 and since no croatian option was available i preferred using English (my mom would sometimes force me to play games in Italian since I know that as well but I would always secretly reset the game and start it in english xD ).
> 
> All in all not hard, everyone always told us while we were kids that English is used worldwide and we might as well learn it so we went with it.


Oh hello my western neighbour :-)


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## Deleted User (Jun 14, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> Don't forget Japanese or Spanish, or french or Swahili


I wish we were forced to learn Japanese. lel.


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## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

Felek666 said:


> I wish we were forced to learn Japanese. lel.


I'd be down to learn Japanese just so I can read the physical copies of Jojo manga past part 4. The only options I have to learn in my school are Spanish and Mandarin.


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Felek666 said:


> I wish we were forced to learn Japanese. lel.


I took it as a second language in college :-) 
I had fun, the third language for me was Croatian, had no intention studying Serbian in college(basically same language), 12 years was enough


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## CallmeBerto (Jun 14, 2017)

I learned English when I was very young (originally spoke Spanish) so I never found it hard per say. The biggest issue I have with it is all the pronouns that all mean the same thing while in Spanish one one can mean many thing based on context.


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## sarkwalvein (Jun 14, 2017)

I learnt it a little in school, a little on my own.
English is a very easy language to learn if your mother tongue is a Romance language, and considering that you will carry some errors based on your mother tongue, like using wrong words here and there, etc.
But it is easy to reach a level when you can write and read good enough in less than a year.
The most complicated thing to learn is pronunciation, because you need partners to speak, and it is always better to have native partners.
But if you go to study or exchange, or whatever to a country where it is spoken natively you will probably get the pronunciation and speak fluently also in a couple of months.
But still you will have some errors here and there.

It is way, way, over 9000 times easier than German, for example.

PS: And one typical mistake is e.g. mixing British and American English all the time while I write.


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## enarky (Jun 14, 2017)

Don't really remember, TBH, has been around 30 years ago that I started learning english. What I remember is, that it was incredibly hard for the first two years, till I started playing games in english. My english skills improved a lot, since I wanted to understand what's going on in e.g. the Monkey Island games, which were particularly text heavy for their time.

What still weirds me out are mistakes that phonetic learners make, like would of/should of instead of would've/should've. Come on, learning your language was hard for me, at least give us non-native speakers the courtesy of not trying to make that simple to prevent mistake.


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## dudephanith (Jun 14, 2017)

The hardest part is having no one to practice with. Plus, there is no native people to speak with; therefore, pronunciation is also a big challenge.


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## Cyan (Jun 14, 2017)

English is a forced 2nd language in France.
the difficulty is maybe the teachers themselves !

I know a lot of people who never understood anything at english, and they just wasted their time at school trying to learn it.
it can feel weird, difficult, and unuseful for a lot of people, but I think it's a French issue.
France is very conservative and very few people knows more than French language.

Some Scandinavia countries have english in movies, at tv, etc. it's very easy for them to speak english, most people are fluent in both their native and english.
But french people are barely fluent in another language. if not even at French ! ahaha



To me now :
english was a boring and repetitive learning experience.
learn that words for tomorrow, learn that grammatical lesson for tomorrow, repeat.
it was "not useful" in the sense that you never used what you learned, there were no situation where you'd have to use that (travels, oral exchange with english speaking students, etc.)

I did that for 4 years, until one day, (magically ?), I could understand what I read without translating word per word, one by one, to decipher the sentence. my brain just switched to english.

That's when I started playing video games in english (FF6, chrono trigger, and the likes) which were available ONLY in imported state and didn't have a French (nor any european language) translation available.
video game translation became common at FF7 release.

Video game was the trigger which made me read and WANT to understand english even more.
I think I'm now fluent "at writing", but not at speaking. I learned english mostly by myself by reading a lot, video games, internet, and immersing myself in english communities like this forum !
but I lack speaking skill and I wish I could train that now. It's very hard to me to speak english, I'm searching my words and it's painful to communicate correctly.


I now  feel comfortable with English and like it a lot. It's my language of choice for a lot of things, even when available in French I pick english. (games, movies, internet)

I even had comments here to tell me my english was even better than native english users, but I think that's mainly due (thanks to?) the intensive grammar lessons I got in school.
A foreigner is "learning" while a native just "repeat from his environment". that's the same with learning French, really. strangers are talking grammatically better french than French people.


I consider I only learned the base and very strict grammar in school. (some vocabulary, verbs, irregular verbs)
I learned almost all by myself, I would say 10/90 ratio, after 8 years of english at school.

4 years in high school (French collège)
2 years and 2 years in followed years (like college, french Lycée and Fac, but specialized in electronics and informatics english terms)


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## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

Cyan said:


> English is a forced 2nd language in France.
> the difficulty is maybe the teachers themselves !
> 
> I know a lot of people who never understood anything at english, and they just wasted their time at school trying to learn it.
> ...


That's really interesting to hear. I'm learning Spanish right now and I'm replaying games in Spanish to help me learn more and it is really helpful


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## Cyan (Jun 14, 2017)

I think that's the secret in learning something : having a goal.
practicing elsewhere, not only in learning books.

video games and books are a very good medium, you read new words and remember them without even noticing.
instead of learning words one by one without meaning, you see new words in a sentence and you know what it means by understanding the sentence's meaning itself (it works even like that in your native language, I'm sure you still learn and hear new words regularly, and you just "know" what it means because of theme and subject of the conversation).
 lot of words in english had multiple meaning that you never learn at school. Some are familiar, or slang, etc.
some words are even used in expressions that you can't translate in another language. it's all part of the learning curve.


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## Luglige (Jun 14, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> View attachment 90081


I actually enjoyed reading that.


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## VinsCool (Jun 14, 2017)

Cyan said:


> English is a forced 2nd language in France.
> the difficulty is maybe the teachers themselves !
> 
> I know a lot of people who never understood anything at english, and they just wasted their time at school trying to learn it.
> ...


I feel you. Forced English classes sucked. Not joking, I learnt more in 4 years out of school (my current level), compared to all that wasted time in classes. I even failed my English classes dammit


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## AmandaRose (Jun 14, 2017)

I was born and raised in France so obviously French is my main language as has been said before we are forced in school to learn English and by the time I left school I still had no understanding of the language I could barely read it or write it never mind trying to speak it. A few years ago due to my job I had to move to Scotland and in my first hour in the country just listening to people I learnt more English than all my years at School lol. Here we are two years later and I think I now understand it better than French lol


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## Minox (Jun 14, 2017)

It's not a big deal to be honest. You just need to be given a chance to use what you learn in school. Personally I got that chance through games, movies and chatting online.


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Minox said:


> It's not a big deal to be honest. You just need to be given a chance to use what you learn in school. Personally I got that chance through games, movies and chatting online.


I read cheating online, was like HUH?


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## Oleboy555 (Jun 14, 2017)

well, i dunno.. XD

i just learned english by playing video games and watching youtube, i find dutch youtube extremely boring so if i want to watch something interesting i have to be able to understand english


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## AmandaRose (Jun 14, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> I read cheating online, was like HUH?


Lol I did the same thing. I blame the fact that I was watching something on the TV at the same time as reading it lol


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## Maou666 (Jun 14, 2017)

Well as an Asian American born, I don't remember much. All I know is that it seemed easy even though English is my second language, but I'm American born so I guess that pretty much answers it?


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## erman1337 (Jun 14, 2017)

English is my third language (my other languages are Turkish & French), and it's my favourite language, since it's quite easy to learn and use (at least compared to the languages that I already know), and the fact that English is the de facto international language made me love it even more. I learnt it by choice. My pronunciation is bad, since I don't really get to talk with other English speaking people


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## MrCatFace (Jun 14, 2017)

I am a native speaker and I suck at English. I don't blame anyone for struggling with it. I am glad its my native language because I would struggle with out it. I have taken Spanish for 5 years, and Spanish is nicer than English in many ways.


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## RMZK (Jun 14, 2017)

For me, it was really easy to learn. some people say even Spanish, my native language is harder to learn.
I personally feel more comfortable speaking English due to the simplicity of its grammar.
The great advantage over other languages is that there is more English content on the internet. BTW I also speak japanese and there's even more content to japanese speaking people, it is like a mini deep web just for them.


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## Pacheko17 (Jun 14, 2017)

The language itself is pretty easy, I got to a point where I was conversationally fluent when I was 12.

But the pronunciation is really weird, I learned Portuguese and Japanese before so it felt totally different.
I'm 16 now and have improved a lot, but I still struggle with pronouncing things sometimes. I'll eventually get the full hang of it, but meh, at least I can understand everything and talk to people just fine.
And it's sure as heck more useful than Portuguese.


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## Elveman (Jun 14, 2017)

Well, I'm learning it since 3rd school grade (and even at university) for 12 years. Changing schools and attending university created some difficulty spikes and falls so I had to adapt. My English was not that horrible but not decent either. That was until 2 years ago when I started playing Ace Attorney series, completing one game after another. That has actually buffed my English skills. Then I've realized that I actually enjoy speaking this language, reading it, hearing it. Nowadays, it seems kinda intuitive to me: I read English books, play English games without subtitles, watch English videos perfectly understanding what's going on. The only problem is that these skills need to be supplied almost constantly and that's kinda problematic because we have English lessons only once every two weeks now, and that's clearly not enough to keep skills of speaking on constant level at least.

Main problems for me:
Articles. I don't really know how to use them, relying on my intuition for that.
Present perfect/Past perfect. Russian language has 3 tenses: past, present and future. As present perfect describes a completed action, past is used for that in Russian. That's why it's really hard to distinguish past simple and past perfect/present perfect.
British/American English. Not that big of a problem, actually, but this inconsistency still bothers me as I don't really understand whether I'm using British one, American one or mixing it up.

Anyway, English is a beautiful language and I really enjoy it


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## Windowlicker (Jun 14, 2017)

Way easier than some people make it out to be.


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## osm70 (Jun 14, 2017)

Honestly, English is easier than my language (Czech).


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## StarTrekVoyager (Jun 14, 2017)

English is certainly the easiest language out there in the world. No gender for nouns, almost no conjugation thingies, few irregular verbs compared to French, where 95% of the verbs you use daily have their own rules, etc. Compared to other languages like Spanish, and of course French and Arabic (which I consider being the two most difficult languages to learn out there), English is really a piece of cake.


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## Plushie (Jun 14, 2017)

I was forced to learn english when I was 7 because Pokemon wasn't available in Dutch (still isn't), my mother tongue. I can't remember how hard/easy it was, but I do know it took me a good 10 years of slacking in mmo's and games/movies/forums to get a good grasp, on top of school.


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## Omegadrien (Jun 14, 2017)

StarTrekVoyager said:


> English is certainly the easiest language out there in the world. No gender for nouns, almost no conjugation thingies, few irregular verbs compared to French, where 95% of the verbs you use daily have their own rules, etc. Compared to other languages like Spanish, and of course French and Arabic (which I consider being the two most difficult languages to learn out there), English is really a piece of cake.


Not really...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto


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## linkenski (Jun 14, 2017)

Easy as hell. I Just played a lot of Runescape when I was 8 and by the time we started taking english lessons in primary school I could already do everything we had to learn over the following year. The final year my teacher told me to stop when I started doing the tasks as he was introducing them lol. I learned by doing and it made it extremely boring to go through the mechanical and trivial ways of learning it. On the flipside I didn't get good grades in grammar and congruency fixing in high school because I tended to skip past it because I was only interested in learning the practical use of the language and not minutiae of how language is put together.


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## Reyn_the_Insane (Jun 14, 2017)

Hayleia said:


> Learnt it in school. The only weird thing is the pronounciation. Just see how even you (not you you, but native English-speaking people) confuse then/than, compatible/compatable, kernel/kernal, etc. That's because you could even write krnl and it would be pronounced the same way as kernel/kernal/whatever. Which is really annoying for people which native language has precise rules to tell how to pronounce stuff. Well ok, we have a lot of rules (like the fact that a "o" isn't pronounced the same if followed by a "n", or if followed by a "u"), but we still have rules. And the second hard thing in pronounciation is long vowels. Coming from a language with no long vowels, it's hard to pronounce "slip" and "sleep" differently without feeling like a retard.


English is the strangest language on this planet. "Colonel" is pronounced kernel.


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## Xen0 (Jun 14, 2017)

I´m from Germany and have english classes since second grade I think. Nowadays I have english advance courses in school and I can read/understand it pretty good. My writing and structure might not be the best, but I think I could talk with a native speaker without problems. The only thing I really such in is the pronaunciation of "r". E.g. speedrun sounds like speedhuan, Resident = Wähsident, read = weed... It really sucks and I don´t know how to fix it.


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## Procyon (Jun 14, 2017)

As a Dutch person I wasn't always fluent in English, but I wrote in Engrish. Back then I wrote a lot in English and learnt to improve my grammar on the go (that was also when I was 14), I then wrote better in English. Now I'm almost as good as a native English writing person. Fun fact: Dutch & English are kinda related, so I learnt English easily. My English skills are almost all self-taught, but I don't speak it perfectly yet, and my English is kind of a mix between American English & the British variant.


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## Cyan (Jun 14, 2017)

Elveman said:


> Russian language has 3 tenses: past, present and future.


I didn't know.
You would have a lot of problem learning french, we have TOO MANY tenses. event French people are not using them.
But I think Russian people are good at learning French. at least, russian people I meet in my town are speaking a good enough French to communicate with us, better than other nationalities.
There are common habits with strangers. some are doing efforts and speak French very fast (poland, romania, portugal, they are the fastest to adapt)
And on the other side, there are lazy people who live in France for more than 30 years and still NEVER do the effort to speak french (people from magreb in general (Tunisia/maroc/algeria)), but France is to blame too, French are lazy and don't speak any other language even when traveling. not even a little effort of speaking english. no doubt France is not well seen by other countries...  


edit:
Russian people used to learn French in 19th century, so maybe it's a long time practice and habit?
A lot of russian aristocrat came to South of France for holidays and retirement, we have a lot of Russian house style in Mediterranean border. 

I met another Russian girl yesterday and asked her how easy/hard it was to learn french, she said it was hard. But she understood and spoke very well in my opinion. She can communicate without issue.
I'm curious about Russian and would like to learn a little about it.




Omegadrien said:


> Not really...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto


I would have love to learn that language.
for years, there are rumors that it will be teach taught at European school to become the main European language. but it stays an exotic language.


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

Cyan said:


> I didn't know.
> You would have a lot of problem learning french, we have TOO MANY tenses. event French people are not using them.
> But I think Russian people are good at learning French. at least, russian people I meet in my touwn are speaking good enough, better than other nationalities.
> There are common habits with strangers. some are doing efforts and speak French very fast (poland, romania, portugal, they are the fastest to adapt)
> ...


*it will be taught :-P 
Btw Serbian has 4 past tenses and 2 future ones :-P 
Also has 7 Cases of Nouns while English has none(well Saxon genitive)


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## Cyan (Jun 14, 2017)

damn, I felt something was bad but couldn't find my error


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## SG854 (Jun 14, 2017)

sarkwalvein said:


> It is way, way, over 9000 times easier than German, for example.


Making a Dragon Ball Z reference subconsciously.

Im trying to learn Bill Cosby as my third language. Its a branch off of the English language.
It comes from the Germanic languages with origins in Anglo Saxon.
Its a difficult dialect to learn and understand.


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## AmandaRose (Jun 14, 2017)

Mi volas lerni esperanto. I want to learn esperanto. I think I will make it my next challenge in life lol


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## VinsCool (Jun 14, 2017)

StarTrekVoyager said:


> English is certainly the easiest language out there in the world. No gender for nouns, almost no conjugation thingies, few irregular verbs compared to French, where 95% of the verbs you use daily have their own rules, etc. Compared to other languages like Spanish, and of course French and Arabic (which I consider being the two most difficult languages to learn out there), English is really a piece of cake.


I agree with you there. French is also my first language, and I do feel that English was a fart to learn. I did learn very late though, blame terrible teachers for this. As of now, it's indeed a lot easier to learn, read, write and also speak, once you get used to it.

I won't lie, even though my French is excellent (always scored very good grades), I have the feeling that my English has become better than my French, and that, remember, is my native language


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## spotanjo3 (Jun 14, 2017)

Seliph said:


> I've always spoken English so I've never found it weird or that hard to grasp but I know that in some places you're required to learn English and I've heard from some people that English is really weird to learn.
> For those of you with English as your second language, what was it like learning it? Was it by choice or did you learn it in school?



The same for you if you are in our Europe. We never found it weird or that hard to grasp but know that in some place you're required to learn our language and we also have heard from some people that our country is really weird to learn. No difference. LOL! Really no difference! 



Seliph said:


> The only options I have to learn in my school are Spanish and Mandarin.



Really ? Is "Have to" learn in your school are Spanish and Mandarin? They said you have to ? A must ? Really ?


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## fatsquirrel (Jun 14, 2017)

Seliph said:


> I'd be down to learn Japanese just so I can read the physical copies of Jojo manga past part 4. The only options I have to learn in my school are Spanish and Mandarin.


Well, you can take Mandarin. It will have some (emphasis on SOME) similar looking kanji which can later make your learning of written Japanese much easier.
Also, you don't need school to learn a language. I learned all my secondary languages via games/movies/music.


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## The Real Jdbye (Jun 14, 2017)

It came naturally to me. I actually started learning it before I even began school, because my dad was married to an American at the time and she taught me a little. 
The pronunciation of some words still catches me off guard, because I learn a lot of words from chatting and posting on forums, but that doesn't teach me how to pronounce them, and it's not always obvious from reading the words either.


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## DavidRO99 (Jun 14, 2017)

Seliph said:


> I've always spoken English so I've never found it weird or that hard to grasp but I know that in some places you're required to learn English and I've heard from some people that English is really weird to learn.
> For those of you with English as your second language, what was it like learning it? Was it by choice or did you learn it in school?


I learned english by watching youtube videos at around 10.


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## DarkGabbz (Jun 14, 2017)

It's really easy if you speak alot of english alongside the english lessons in school.


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## DKB (Jun 14, 2017)

People may not agree with me, but I feel as if English is one another language that speaking it is a lot harder then writing it. Lots of people claim that English is easy by writing it down. However, they can't _speak_ English good even if their lives depended on it.


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## BlueFox gui (Jun 14, 2017)

well, learn it is like learn any other language
i don't have it on school, so i'm learning by myself, and if you want to learn a new language i will give you an advice from self experience and experience from some others, if you really want to learn it, practice and with practice i mean talk to people who have english as their native language, write, talk and listen to them, when i joined gbatemp last year my english was horrible its still very bad but much better than before, after 2 months talking to people i improved a lot my english
but i still have a lot to learn


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## MoonUsotsuki (Jun 14, 2017)

I learn it because I wanted to, I played a lot of games when I was young and back then the localization efforts were few, so i started to learn word by word and sentence by sentence. By the time I was on middle school I was already the most advanced student of my classroom in english. Currently I'm about to finish my bachelor's degree in psychology and they did ask for a certain english level to graduate, but is so basic that I just left it to the end. and even so many of my classmates did had problems approving it.
My first language is spanish and I think is as hard as english, or as easy, depending on how you see it.


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## Seliph (Jun 14, 2017)

azoreseuropa said:


> Really ? Is "Have to" learn in your school are Spanish and Mandarin? They said you have to ? A must ? Really ?


Yes, we have to learn one of the two languages.


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## drenal (Jun 14, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> View attachment 90080


Oh shit, is that a memedroid watermark I see? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


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## spotanjo3 (Jun 14, 2017)

Seliph said:


> Yes, we have to learn one of the two languages.



Wow. I will refuse to learn those languages. America is English and not Spanish! I understand what you mean. They can't force people like that. What's wrong with many languages in school to learn ? No, America prefer Spanish over foreign languages thanks to too many Spanish people in America. Sighing


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## Byokugen (Jun 14, 2017)

drenal said:


> Oh shit, is that a memedroid watermark I see? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


You are correct my good sir


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## drenal (Jun 15, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> You are correct my good sir


What's your username on memedroid, mines drenal


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## Byokugen (Jun 15, 2017)

drenal said:


> What's your username on memedroid, mines drenal


Same as here :-)


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## drenal (Jun 15, 2017)

Byokugen said:


> Same as here :-)


cool


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## Flirkyn (Jun 15, 2017)

I don't find english easy by default to learn. For me every language can be hard to learn depending of your native language or your motivation and method. But english is easiest to learn than a lot of language.

As a french guy, I had choose at primary school between english and german. Then it was a forced language since middle school.

I sucked at it. A lot. And I was always angry that a lot of game I wanted was only in english because of the lack of full localisation (and I'm still bothered by that tbh, even if it doesn't affect me directly). Or stopped me of playing some game I wanted.

Then, during my last year on middle school, my family gifted me PSP and Tales of Eternia for my birthday. The game was english only and I planned to hack my psp to make a patched iso in french. Unfortunately I never succed to install the patch. My only choice was to play on english, with a dictionary.
My english improved drastically :3
I had many trouble at first, like missunderstanding some word for a long time (like the word "both" that I understand "bof", wich is the equivalent of..."meh" on french ^^ change the meaning of some cutscene in some game xD). But I continue to play game and watch anime and today I have a pretty good level I think. At least at reading it.

I still have trouble with writing it (I make some grammar and spelling error, but I have the same issue with my native language), and I don't have the best accent. Also I have some trouble with oral english (especially fast one) and I don't like it when there isn't subtitle.

I still love my native language (and use it primaly when it's available, except for anime because it's easier to find it in english) but I have no problem using english as much and I like it almost as much as French. I still have trouble with the fact that a lot of japanese game are still english only in France (and other country), though I can understand for little compagny because it can be really expensive to translate. But I don't have any trouble playing it (except for western rpg strangely where it's bothering me a lot, or when it's old english). I can understand when poeple are having an hard time learning it.

Btw, I tried to learn japanese and economical english at university. Failled a lot at first one and and had also trouble at th second hehe


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## kublai (Jun 15, 2017)

English is my first language and I still have trouble with it!


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## anhminh (Jun 15, 2017)

Well, it not like almost half of Internet written in English or something.

That and 50% cable channels in my country are in English, including Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, HBO, Star Movie... it not that hard for an autism kid that spend all day watching TV and surfing Internet to learn English naturally.


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## Quantumcat (Jun 15, 2017)

Any language is easy enough once you are immersed in it. School language hardly teaches you anything. I learned French at school and that's why I went to France on exchange but when I got there I quickly learned I knew absolutely nothing, despite having studied it for four years. I wished I'd gone to a Spanish-speaking country so I could talk to my grandmother and second cousins! But I learned pretty fast and was reasonably fluent in about three months. That seems to be the common story for English - learn very little at school but as soon as you move to an English-speaking country, BAM you're fluent in no time. If course, it helps to do it when you're younger and your brain is more malleable.


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## nxwing (Jun 15, 2017)

I learnt it when I was really young because I moved to Makaysia for a year so I pretty much was good at speaking and writing in Englsih since then. Only main problem I had was with the syllabication and only realized it just a week ago but made lots of rpogress since then on fixing it.


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## Hanafuda (Jun 15, 2017)

All depends on what the native language is. If you're starting from French or a Nordic language it's less difficult than if your native language is Chinese.



Seliph said:


> I'd be down to learn Japanese just so I can read the physical copies of Jojo manga past part 4. The only options I have to learn in my school are Spanish and Mandarin.



I wouldn't say I've been working fulltime at it or anything, but I've been exposed to Japanese daily for most of the last 32 years and I'm still a functional illiterate. Decent on the spoken language - I can watch television, get my point across in general conversations. But I can't read for shit. Maybe 2nd grade level. Gaining literacy in Japanese (or Chinese) takes religious-level dedication if you don't start from age 3-4 like they do.


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## hiten (Jun 15, 2017)

I watched a lot of Sesame Street when I was a kid, it included Indonesian subtitles when it was aired in my country.

I think it kinda helped me later when I started studying English in elementary school, I found it easier to understand the grammar.


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## Lucifer666 (Jun 15, 2017)

StarTrekVoyager said:


> Compared to other languages like Spanish, and of course French and Arabic (which I consider being the two most difficult languages to learn out there), English is really a piece of cake.


I grew up as a trilingual kid (English, Arabic, French) and can concur – English is by far the easiest of the three.  I find that, for the most part (with the exception of Finnish, Polish and the like), European languages tend to be quite formulaic in that once you've nailed one, the rest should be easy to grasp. French is one such case.


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## gamefan5 (Jun 15, 2017)

French speaker.
Learned English at an early age. It was ridiculously easy compared to french haha.


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## leon315 (Jun 15, 2017)

honestly i've never ever thought about this question, i live in pizzalandia, where people never speak English, so for me is very hard to find someone to get some exercises about pronunciation, i learn from youtube, and i usually talk through mic to my teammates when i play overwatch DDDD


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## Cyan (Jun 15, 2017)

leon315 said:


> i live in pizzalandia,


ahaha !

I live at pizzalandia's border, and always had difficulty to learn pizzaland.
now I can understand it when someone talk to me (being a Latin language, FR and IT have very similar sounds), but still can't speak it, even less write it (it's not natural to write, really).

So, it's funny because we usually talk our own language, but can communicate with each others.
I speak french to Italians, and they answer in Italian and so on 

Italians are usually learning French at school (at least in north-west Italy, I don't know in other areas) so we don't have difficulty to understand each others. and therefore, French are not doing any effort (let's wait for Italians to learn French !)


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## sarkwalvein (Jun 15, 2017)

Cyan said:


> I speak french to Italians, and they answer in Italian and so on


That is my description of each trip I've had to Italy.
Me speaking Argentinian Spanish, they replying in Italian, and... profit? I guess.
It is weird to me how well that usually works.

PS: Also regarding the weird French pride of not wanting to speak English, I remember I was visiting Paris in 2001, and people will even pull out some weird version of Spanish to talk with me, but they would refuse speaking English. (I think it is not like that anymore)


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## sp3off (Jun 15, 2017)

nvm.


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## Uumas (Jun 15, 2017)

I'm a 15-year-old boy from Finland (Going to 9th grade after this summer) and we started English on the 3rd grade, but nowadays they start it on 2nd. For me it's been quite easy. Maybe because we're going through the same things we did 3 years ago and basically just expanding our knowledge and learning words. Also you use English everywhere in the internet so it's kinda a necessity so you have pretty good motivation for learning it. For example Swedish and German feel a lot harder because you never hear or have to use them. I personally find English quite simple compared to Swedish or German.

Pronouncing English is a bit different than Finnish but not difficult. In Finnish there are basically no rules of how to pronounce things. You pronounce every letter like it's written. (Expect for ng and nk they are pronounced [ŋ])


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## Cyan (Jun 15, 2017)

sarkwalvein said:


> I think it is not like that anymore


it probably depends on each individual.
some people will gladly help and talk english if they can (I would), some are afraid of their own skills and/or accent, others really don't know enough or at all to speak or help someone in another language.


generally speaking, I think older people are not multilingual (50+ years old barely learned english in their youth).
you'll get more chance to get help in english with younger people (40 and less). that's also the age people should have if they are from the internet and informatics expansion (around 2000).

internet allows access to the rest of the world, and help meeting people from all horizons. Also, a lot of programs, games, internet website are in english, so it's a generation which should be more at ease with english.

but that's only my own view, maybe I'm wrong?


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## HaloEliteLegend (Jun 16, 2017)

English IS my "second language," I was born in India, after all, BUT I moved to the US when I was 4 and have been speaking English ever since, so it's like it's my first language. While I used to speak Hindi/Marathi first, now English is my most fluent language and I'm a better English speaker than probably the vast majority of people. As evidence, I get near-consistent 770-800s on the SAT Reading + Writing/Language sections (out of 800 total), my worst essay grade in all college so far is 46/50, and I'm pretty persuasive + eloquent in arguments (or so my friends tell me). Sorry, wanted to brag. Ignore me ego .3.

But let me tell ya one thing. I still have some weird English "hiccups" where I'm unable to adequately formulate sentences of what I'm thinking quickly or recall certain (usually high-level) words and phrases. I dunno why this happens, but I suspect it's because of the Hindi/Marathi still floating around somewhere in my head. My parents speak Marathi to me at home so I have near-constant exposure to it. I'm really really good in English, but it's weird that this happens sometimes.


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## leon315 (Jun 16, 2017)

Cyan said:


> ahaha !
> 
> I live at pizzalandia's border, and always had difficulty to learn pizzaland.
> now I can understand it when someone talk to me (being a Latin language, FR and IT have very similar sounds), but still can't speak it, even less write it (it's not natural to write, really).
> ...


the place where i live produce the italian's most famous prosciutto DOP, and its inhabitants would like speak french rather than english, dunno...

are u from swiss?


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## nolimits59 (Jun 16, 2017)

French here, "had" to learn some basic young because of video games that where n
ot translated back in the days (streets of rage, Goldeneye 64, mario kart 64, stuff like that), and later because internet and online gaming around 2000's (im born in 1990),
i've nerver learned anything in class because i was ahead  everytime because of, as i said before, i had to know it.
Constructions are quite logical compared to french, it make sens to compare both languages to understand it so it's not hard to understand the basics.

But i have to admit, France is not known for it understanding of english x), people see you as a god even if you just can introduce yourself, sort of ah ah.


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## DinohScene (Jun 16, 2017)

BBC and games I guess.


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## Youkai (Jun 16, 2017)

Dunno about most other languages but for Germans the problem might be how you construct sentences in English.

Thats the reason why you can not do a 1:1 tanslation from German to English or vice versa.

As an example in Germany you would say "Ich gehe heute abend schwimmen" 1:1 it would be "I go today evening swimming" but I guess in English you would say "I will go swimming this evening" or could you even say "this evening, I will go swimming" ? not sure XD


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## sarkwalvein (Jun 16, 2017)

And yet, every time I say something like Ich kann nicht schwimmen heute Abend people look me weird and say ok.
I am sure I got the word ordering wrong, it is the same both ways I guess.


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## Vieela (Jun 16, 2017)

For a brazillian person like me, it wasn't hard. But here, you definetly need to study on somewhere that has people to properly teach english, because english lessons on school aren't that good. The only thing i think is funny is that english in comparation to portuguese has a lot of tongue movement, so that change a lot of things. Also, when i pronounce english words, my voice tone is deeper and my accent is mostly american english, even though sometimes i pronounce british english without noticing.


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## Cyan (Jun 16, 2017)

leon315 said:


> are u from swiss?


From south/east France.



Youkai said:


> the problem might be how you construct sentences in English.


languages are constructed differently, some have subject before the verb, other have verb at the end of the sentense (japanese)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

it says German is SVO, like french and english (I eat bread), but can sometime be SOV (I bread eat). [quote: German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar.]

English and french are using the same order, except for adjectives, and possessions.
English : a red car, house's door
French : a car red, door of the house

other than that, it's quite easy to translate word by word, the sentence is keeping its sense in both languages.


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## gnmmarechal (Jun 16, 2017)

Frankly, English is a fairly easy language to learn in comparison to my own, in my own opinion. Not that I've had any issues while learning my own (well, other than the theory, which is something I can't remember all that well, but while it might be useful to understand a language and make assumptions on how to use words you're not completely certain how to use, or to get different words from a root while making sense, after you understand just that, you needn't remember the theory as theory anymore, as it'll be natural, logical then). 

Sent from my cave of despair where I don't stalk Seriel


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