Housepets!

No....
Why statistics is still torturing me T^T

Sleet wrote:...Does the numerical part of languages still count as on-topic, or should we either shut up or make a new thread?

*cough* Make a new thread, or I will. *cough*
Wait, arising the same question, do computer languages go here, too?

I speak Spanish (I can barely understand French and I quite understand Italian because of the similarities, but I can't speak those languages), English (I learned English when I was around 5 years old by watching TV), ans some basics of Russian (Also, I can read other Eastern European languages because of the similarities).
I am a native Northern West Mexican Spanish speaker, I just say this because every place where Spanish is spoken people talk it in many different ways (Words have different meanings in different regions).

Only spanish, 40% english and 0.5% german.

JAJAJA

American English
Queens English
Very Little Russain
Very Little French
and a grasp of Japanese and Korean.

I speak English and, while not particularly proficient, some French.

Hungarian(native)
English(It became a bit rusty recently, i'm here to refresh my knowledge a bit.)
German(Very little, though it was always considered a good choice here.)

I want to learn Russian. It's relatively easy to learn, good for business (Recently it became more recommended than German), and i like Russia.

Um, and French isn't considered important if you live to the east from Germany.

Retinq wrote: Um, and French isn't considered important if you live to the east from Germany.

Knowing French isn't terribly helpful anywhere. Outside of Africa, I don't think there are many French speakers that don't also know at least a bit of English. At least not as many as other languages, like Spanish or Japanese.

Ya' know what's funny? That there is more countries that speak Spanish, but English is still something like "the universal language".

English is spoken in more "big" countries. That's why it's considered as such.

And Sleet got the gold!

Russiarules1 wrote:And Sleet got the gold!

You just made me laugh :3
You are now my friend



.....weather you like it or not >:D

Dont wory, Im not that evil <3

Korean and English (and some Konglish, Engrish whatever you want to call)
I kinda grew up in both countries so my skill on both languages are half and half :/

Hey, I'm bringing this topic back to life again
I like it, so shush.

So, I want to hear from people that learned English as a foreign language as to what the hardest thing about it is.
Oh, and if you learned it in school, what sort of English was it? (As in, British English, American English, Canadian, Australian, and so on)

Feel free to post the same regarding other languages, I'm just curious about English because, it being my first language, it's hard for me to look at it very objectively.

Hardest part of French I'd say is the prepositions, it feels like they were chosen at random, and many of them are similar and easy to mix up.
Accents are sort of difficult to catch up on, but once you know how they alter vowels (which is, for some reason, not part of the French curriculum, what) it's not that hard to guess where they might be. Same goes for spelling and pronunciations, which, while complicated, follow rather consistent rules.

CaptainPea wrote:
So, I want to hear from people that learned English as a foreign language as to what the hardest thing about it is.
Oh, and if you learned it in school, what sort of English was it? (As in, British English, American English, Canadian, Australian, and so on)

Hardest thing? I honestly don't know. XD I think swedish is harder than english sometimes. :c

And brittish english here in sweden!

CaptainPea wrote: So, I want to hear from people that learned English as a foreign language as to what the hardest thing about it is.
Oh, and if you learned it in school, what sort of English was it? (As in, British English, American English, Canadian, Australian, and so on)

Feel free to post the same regarding other languages, I'm just curious about English because, it being my first language, it's hard for me to look at it very objectively.

Well, I learned English as a second language, and I initially learned the British English at school, but somehow, as time goes on, the American English spelling and pronunciation is being accepted more, so you could say that now it's a mixture of both.

The hardest thing about English is actually speaking it correctly. I was never taught on diction and stresses extensively, so I tend to pronounce English words as I would for Malay, like "fad-duh" for father. And as I mentioned in another thread, although I think I can write English without any hiccups, I adopted the Manglish accent due to me speaking English only when I'm talking to my Chinese and Indian friends.

Here's the wiki entry about it. It shows quite a thorough general overview on how I speak English.

So, in conclusion, I write English better than I can speak it properly, and the opposite is true for Malay.

I learned American English as 2nd language and learned a little bit of British accent through the years.
As many of you people know, I still have mistakes when I talk and write, so my English is not "muy bueno"... (So my English is not very good).
I didn't have many complications while learning English, just because I some family that lives in America, I used to watch TV in English with my sister, and I live very close to America (If there wasn't a big wall guarding the border, I could take about 20 minutes, walking, to get to California).
I think I learned English when I was about 4 or 6 years old.
Recently, I had some complications with my accent for English, just because I didn't talk English for about a month, and I talked with... maybe with a Scottish accent, or like that guy called Antonio Banderas, heh. Luckily, I can talk English without that Mexican or, like some people say, "Russian" accent of mine. Also, when I talk English, sometimes I sound British, maybe because I used to talk a lot with British people on XBox.

People on XBox didn't believe me that I was Mexican, all of them said that I was Russian -.-"

The hardest thing about English to me is probably speaking it, I have no way of knowing if I pronounced anything correctly.

I learned it first at Singapore, and they use British English there. But since I moved to Indonesia, it is a bit of a mix now with American being dominant.

Aquablast wrote:The hardest thing about English to me is probably speaking it, I have no way of knowing if I pronounced anything correctly.

I learned it first at Singapore, and they use British English there. But since I moved to Indonesia, it is a bit of a mix now with American being dominant.

Watch lots of movies and TV. That's really the only way to do it short of living in an English-speaking country.

Well, there's also being really good with pronunciation guides, but most people aren't that good with linguistics or they don't think that way.

Sleet wrote:Watch lots of movies and TV. That's really the only way to do it short of living in an English-speaking country.

Good idea! I actually watched movies/cartoons/animes quite regularly. But there are some words that nobody ever use in movies or shows! ... And bunch of words nobody would ever use outside of movies/cartoons/animes!

Sleet wrote:Well, there's also being really good with pronunciation guides, but most people aren't that good with linguistics or they don't think that way.

Yup, I am definitely not one of these who are good with pronunciation guides!

Usually I give informal pronunciation guides when asked, but that only works if you already know how to speak the accept correctly! "Ear-REP-ur-uh-bull" is not very useful for learning how to say "irreparable," for instance, if you aren't familiar enough. But very few people know how to correctly interpret the virtually unambiguous symbols that I don't know what they're called.

You mean the IPA symbols?
Yeah, I'm still working on a lot of those.

There was one time when I had this weird hobby of reading a thick English dictionary, pronouncing every word with help from the guideline. So, I know how to use the guideline =3

Sleet wrote:Watch lots of movies and TV. That's really the only way to do it short of living in an English-speaking country.

True that, though I rarely get to watch TV now, and I have a very weird aversion to movies for some unknown reason...
This trick definitely help with me learning Japanese though, I can sorta understand spoken colloquial Japanese from all the animes I've been watching until now, though I can't write or read it well....

Ingles, Sefaradit and Hebrew.

English said in Spanish, Spanish said in hebrew and Hebrew said in English.

Alex M. wrote:As far the biggest problem I have with English is the pronunciation of some words and some gramatical rules.
I learned American English at school, but British English is taught in some schools. Honestly I have no idea how good is my pronunciation since I only spoke English at school and nowhere else. >.>

You get to talk English at school? Man, you are very lucky! 97% of my classmates are idiots, they have been taking English since 1st grade of Kinder and they can't talk for crap! At school, I am surrounded by idiots -.-"

Alex M. wrote:As far the biggest problem I have with English is the pronunciation of some words and some gramatical rules.
I learned American English at school, but British English is taught in some schools. Honestly I have no idea how good is my pronunciation since I only spoke English at school and nowhere else. >.>

They're pretty mutually intelligible. Plus a lot of Americans think British accents are hot. I do.

My Spanish accent is mostly Mexican, but there's probably bits of Spanish in there too.

Sleet wrote:Plus a lot of Americans think British accents are hot. I do.

I kind of do too. but some British accents are harder to understand. like Cockney.

British accent is nice! I talked to many British and I can understand them almost perfectly... except when they say "ain't it" or "In it". I just don't know that word that they use!

British accents are hilarious. Southern US accents get on my nerves. Especially people with absurdly large drawls.

Ebly wrote:I really can't stand how North America pronounces their vowels, so any stronger and it grates madly on me.

All of us? There's a bit of a range there.

Ebly wrote:Russiarules: "in it" = "innit" = "isn't it"!

Yup, I'm pretty sure it's just a verbal tic. Those wacky hip youngsters over here use "like" to fill empty space while they step all over my lawn, ignoring all my signs.

CaptainPea wrote:

Ebly wrote:I really can't stand how North America pronounces their vowels, so any stronger and it grates madly on me.

All of us? There's a bit of a range there.

Wait, did he, like, mean the continent or region of the country America?

Psykeout wrote:

CaptainPea wrote:

Ebly wrote:I really can't stand how North America pronounces their vowels, so any stronger and it grates madly on me.

All of us? There's a bit of a range there.

Wait, did he, like, mean the continent or region of the country America?

Well you see, the North is capitalized, so it's a proper noun, showing clearly that Ebly was referring specifically to the continent of North America.

:B

Ebly wrote:In the US, to ensure I didn't get the regions wrong, I watched way more videos than I had to. Instead of finding a regional pattern, I found a series of general things. Every last one of you has one or more of the following:

- replacing every single vowel with a
- 80% of the word is made up of vowel
- the weird regional 'oi' thing (joisey stereotype)
- that nasally, pitch-alternating melody (california stereotype)
- deep south (needs no more explanation, this is just death)

Actually I don't really have any of those as part of my speech. I've got a pretty standard General American accent

Midwestern accent here, though Chicagoan accent (where I live) is pretty different from say Indiana or the rural midwest area.

I'm thinking of learning Japanese and one other language. I've been entertaining the idea of working expatriate, but I'm not sure where exactly.