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

[Byokugen]

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

 

[CallmeBerto]

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.

 

[sarkwalvein]

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.

 

[enarky]

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.

 

[dudephanith]

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.

 

[Cyan]

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)

 

[Seliph]

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. don't even talk about accent ! 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.

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.

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

 

[Cyan]

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.

 

[Luglige]

View attachment 90081

I actually enjoyed reading that.

 

[VinsCool]

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 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

 

[AmandaRose]

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

 

[Minox]

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.

 

[Byokugen]

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?

 

[Oleboy555]

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

 

[AmandaRose]

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

 

[Maou666]

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?

 

[erman1337]

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

 

[MrCatFace]

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.

 

[RMZK]

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.

 

[Pacheko17]

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.