How can I improve my english to a native level?

Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by Thorwriter, Jun 22, 2018.

  1. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Nah. Most foreigners say English is pretty easy to learn. Compared to a lot of more technical languages, English is easy (no genders, basically no cases. Most words remain the same with the exception to verbs but even then there're really only 3 forms to each verb). I agree with something I once heard: English is easy to learn to speak, but it is difficult to learn to speak well.

    Spanish isn't really easy to learn as it has many irregularities, or so I've heard, and many complications with tenses, I seem to think? @Wreybies can probably comment much more on this as Spanish is the one language from the big ones that I actually have never had any education on.

    I've otherwise taken lessons in French, German, Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, as well as of course Czech. Ashamed to say I don't actually speak any of them haha - though by now I have rudimentary Czech. And obviously I speak English and Cantonese.

    Anyway, generally speaking, people tend to think their own mother tongue is always the hardest to learn. Almost without fail. Ask a French person and they will tell you French is very difficult and English is easy. Ask a Czech person and they will say Czech is difficult and English is easy. As a German person... You get the idea :) English people, likewise, tend to think of English as difficult for foreigners. The truth is, every language is difficult and every language is easy - it just depends on your background, some natural aptitude you might have that happens to be important in the language, and level of motivation.

    You don't have to be immersed in the language to learn. I recently saw a video of a pure English guy speaking decent Cantonese for a good 10 minutes after only one year and three months of learning the language. Cantonese, seriously. I guess I shall confirm my own theory of native speakers finding their own language difficult because - Cantonese is damn difficult lol, esp when it has no relationship with English whatsoever, so no reference points, on top of being tonal. Just goes to show, you can do anything if you're motivated enough!

    And many members of this forum defy the idea that you must be immersed to speak well. @KaTrian often corrects my English and she's Finnish living in Finland and I'm supposed to be the native speaker!

    As for how to learn to speak like a native speaker - I should imagine a high attention to detail where you insist on speaking correctly every time, no matter how minor the mistake. You'd have to balance that between free speaking and times when you focus on getting corrected. Another thing is, passive and active knowledge can be quite different and it is often people have a higher passive knowledge compared to their active one. If writing is the main goal, then getting writing corrected should probably be the main aim. You might not speak perfectly but you could write perfectly :p and since your goal is to publish, that's all that really matters. Your speaking will obviously improve with your level of writing but they will not necessarily be of the same level. So don't mistake speaking well with writing well. Tonnes of native English speakers can't write grammatically correctly to save their lives!
     
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  2. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    My word, I don't think you need to read Shakespeare to sound native. No one speaks like Shakespeare, for one! Knowledge of these authors and popular media will make you appear culturally English - but that has nothing to do with sounding native as far as level of English is concerned.

    I dunno about your point with YouTube. Using @KaTrian as an example again (yes I'm incredibly impressed by her English, honestly), when I asked her how on earth does she know so many idioms to the point that even the native speakers had to ask her what it means, her answer was (and she can correct me): I watch a lot of YouTube videos...

    So I dunno. Seems like it just depends on how it's used. I'd never encourage anyone to use YouTube as their only source of learning. But as one of many sources, seems all right to me.

    What matters, in the end, is finding content that interests and engages you. You'll naturally concentrate and consume the material and remember all the better because you're genuinely interested. And variety of content - so like you say, Shakespeare to Monty Python to YouTube to novels - consume them all.

    But for the quickest way forward, study primarily the material that is most relevant to you. Foreigners will often have better vocab than native speakers when it comes to talking about their own professions - because often they've studied it intensely and deliberately sought out vocab related to it. Move away from their professions and suddenly their English level drops. Variety of source material will help prevent this. At the same time, what's your goal? If the OP's goal is simply to write fiction like a native speaker, then it doesn't matter if his spoken English is low or if his command of English in relation to chit-chatting is low, as long as he could write in the genre of his choice. For that, read books related to the genre you wish to write in. That is the quickest way to get to where the OP wants. All the rest of the advice relates to getting to a well-rounded knowledge of English, which the OP might not need.
     
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  3. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Aren't sounding like a native Englishman and sounding like a cultural Englishman one and the same? I think what you mean is that it makes you sound like a scholar of English culture, to which I say: if you can't become a member of that culture, that's the best you can be to sound as if you had. The point is not to casually chat like Shakespeare, it's to, for instance, turn a slip of the tongue into a smooth Shakespearean, to wield wit. Familiarity and understanding are key.

    Absolutely.
     
  4. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    What Spanish has is a very sensible, logical, law-abiding orthography. Once you know the sounds that each of the letters make, you're set. We don't do historical spellings and when we borrow a word from another language, we may pronounce it as in the original, but we spell it according to the orthographic rules of Spanish.

    But once you've got that down, the free ride is over.

    Gender in Spanish is nonsensical. If you encounter a bare noun, alone, out of context, there's nothing about its spelling that tells you what gender it should be. People will say, "Well, there's a tendency for words that end in an a to be feminine." Bullshit. That tendency only arises when you include the nouns that have two forms because they refer to things that have actual biological gender. Remove those and the tendency disappears. The only ones you can count on are the nouns that end in -ción. Those are always feminine. Other than that, luck of the draw.

    And then there are Spanish verb tenses. Hahahahaha. :rofl: Keep the weed handy. You'll need it. And we DO NOT allow for the sloppiness of verb tense inherent in idiomatic English. No. People will stop the entire conversation to point out that you have clearly had a T.I.A. mid-conversation because your verb tenses are jacked.

    And we're unforgiving as regards pronunciation of vowels. Unlike English, each vowel in Spanish has one and only one sound that it makes. For a diphthong to happen in Spanish, it has to be written as a diphthong.

    For example:

    The word damelo means "give me that". It's pronounced dah-meh-loh. If you say dah-may-low (as English speakers are wont to do) you'll be given twelve Hail Mary's and ten Our Father's to do. Immediately.

    The Spanish that is typically engaged in the North American educational system is about as representative of actual, living Spanish as Taco Bell tacos are representative of Mexican culinary arts. Just in the New World there are speaking regions of Spanish as diverse and branched away from one another as the English of a Georgia Southern Belle is from a Newcastle Geordie.
     
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  5. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Yeah, YouTube hosts millions of videos in English, and not all of them are by vapid bloggers, so I think as a language learning source it's just as viable as a book. Heck, there are plenty of educational videos on English - grammar, pronunciation, spelling, everything. YT might just be woefully underutilized by teachers (granted, at least in my country you actually aren't allowed to show YT vids on class because reasons :bigmeh:).

    I tend to watch videos on topics that interest me, and 99.9% of the time they're made by native English speakers from all over the Anglophone world, really. Dressage videos by an Australian, gaming videos by a New Yorker, science stuff by a Londoner, and so on. When I hear an interesting phrase or idiom, I usually jot it down so I can use it in my writing. I've probably lifted a dozen turns of phrase from one specific American content creator (though of course I have to take into account where he's geographically 'cause vernaculars tend to be area/culture specific).

    Having said that, I do hold a Master's Degree in English Philology (which basically means literature + linguistics + translation all combined), so there's been plenty of formal learning as well.

    Aaand I still make mistakes. All the time. Especially when I'm in a hurry or tired. Granted, I also make mistakes in my native tongue... Probably even more. :D
     
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  6. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Not at all. Possessing a native level of English is entirely different from being familiar enough with English culture and engaging in those topics. I've been around plenty of multicultural people by now and have come across many foreigners with native level English (my own husband has a near native level of English and he's Czech), but certainly they are not culturally English. But they certainly sound English.

    It really depends on what you're talking about. Do you mean language fluency, or do you mean fitting in? Or more subtly still, the feeling of fitting in, regardless of how others see you? Because there're distinctions between these. I guess I'm similar to you - sorta first/second generation immigrant, but perhaps unlike you, judging from the little you've shared in your previous post, I've adopted English as my mother tongue. I speak it as a native speaker. I certainly fit in - English people I meet regard me as entirely English and not foreign at all, despite the fact that I look Chinese. But feeling like I fit in? I never quite got there, mostly because I've realised that my bicultural identity is actually quite important to me and completing ignoring a whole other side to me does not make me feel accepted, even though 99% of the time there's no active rejection on anyone's part. Part of the feeling, yes, is to do with English popular culture - I'm just not into Monty Python or Eastenders or Little Britain. I'm not into quizzes. Honestly, I'm not into TV period, which means I'm often in the dark about celebrities and comedians. I think by itself, it wouldn't have mattered, but coupled with the fact that I am at least partly foreign (foreign by blood, not so foreign anymore by mindset or language, but foreign by some expectations since I have comparisons and therefore different preferences than my monocultural peers) - coupled with this, my lack of interest in TV suddenly becomes... a big deal. To me. But I've come to realise this lack of belonging has more to do with my inner world than it has to do with anyone actually actively rejecting me.

    I'm still not sure I get your point about Shakespeare though...

    When did you move to the UK, out of interest? I was 8 when I moved.

    ETA: Trying too hard to belong when you know you don't can be... heartbreaking. I think it's ok to embrace some parts of the culture as yours, and accept that some parts of the culture will never be yours. It's part of you, part of the mix of having moved and adopted a new way of life and thinking. It doesn't mean you gotta let go of all that you've known and loved, and it doesn't mean you gotta pretend to be English. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick and if I have, I apologise. But seriously, I spent a good 10 years of my life - all my adolescence - wishing so fucking hard I wasn't different. I didn't realise what it did to me, how much I resented myself because of it. Now I'm in the Czech Republic and no longer feel the need to be English, and I no longer feel quite so much like an imposter. I'm still a little English - and England will always be home, will always have a fond place in my heart. But I'm not completely English, and that's ok. I'm me, and I love that I have more than one perspective and more than one language. I guess I'm just assuming some things here, but the way you said, "if you can't become a member of that culture, that's the best you can be to sound as if you had" got me worried. Please don't ever feel like you have to be English just because you may have adopted England as your home. There's no need to go through the sort of heartache I went through.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2018
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  7. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Considering all this, do you have a theory on how on earth Spanish gained the reputation of being an "easy" language to learn?

    Mind you, I've never understood people's love of boasting that their language is supposedly the most difficult. Easy languages (if such a thing exists) are a good thing. If your language is easy, people are gonna be more encouraged to learn it. More people learning it means more speakers of the language. More speakers of the language means it becomes more useful, and therefore more valuable.
     
  8. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    No idea, really. I have some answers that enter into realms of sociopolitical engagement, and I'm frankly not in the mood to go into any of that. What I can tell you is that Spanish, like English, is spoken over a very large geographic area of the globe, with all the inherent variation and regionalism that comes with that dynamic. There are flavors of Spanish (Chilean) that leave me baffled, and I don't pretend to understand all the rules for when to use vos vs in those areas of Rioplatense Spanish where both are in play. I know how to conjugate them, but I wouldn't know the right time to use one over the other because I come from a region where only is used.
     
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  9. Alan Aspie

    Alan Aspie Banned Contributor

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    Eihän se mitään haittaa jos kotonaan höpäjää sekavia kunhan kylillä vaikuttaa tolkulliselta.

    Ja nälkäsenähän ei jaksa ku murista ja kirskutella hampaita.

    But I really must pay attention to your tips!
     
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  10. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Grammatically flawless. Bravo!

    They also sound like lines from a novel. Where are they from?
     
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  11. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    It does not matter if the homemade can be confusing as long as the villages seem to be dead.

    And the hungry guy does not have the chance to rub and shake teeth.

    I can see it's truly poetic. Yes, that's from Google translate :D I was even more amused by the option of "Suggest an edit".
     
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  12. Alan Aspie

    Alan Aspie Banned Contributor

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    From my head of course.

    I just wanted to take "rural old time down to the ground" stance and hint that you are not the only Finn here.

    (Jos pörräät Kirjailijanloput -turpatapettisivustolla, niin voi olla että ollaan virtuaalikohdattu aiemminkin. Tai jos olit heinäkuun 16. Korjaamon Dekkarilauantaissa niin on saatettu kävellä toistemme ohi.)

    It does not matter if you talk disorderly at home as long as you make false impression of sanity when you are among other peoples.

    And when you are hungry you don't have energy to do anything else than growl and gritt your teeth.

    (Sorry! My English is nowhere near KaTrians.)
     
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  13. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    This isn't wrong, but it's also not remotely a unique situation. All of the major world languages can make a similar claim.

    Spanish... actually, let's make a correction here.

    What the entire world calls "Spanish" is actually called Castellano. Why? Because there are several other recognized languages that are native to Spain. Castellano, Catalá, Galego, Valenciano, Occitano, Aragonés, Asturiano, Leonés, and various other dialects of the aforementioned. These are all native to the area, not imports. They developed, in situ, from Vulgar Latin.

    But it was the language spoken in Castile that set sail for lands beyond the horizon during the Age of Exploration, so it is that language that we think of today as "Spanish". Even native speakers of Spanish tend to make this gross oversimplification, calling what they speak Español, and shifting the meaning of the word Castellano to mean Castellano as it is still spoken in Castile, not in the New World, where it has undergone further change and derivation, though they are taught in school that this is not correct, so I don't blame anyone for calling the language Spanish rather than Castellano since we ourselves have hashed it.

    With that out of the way... Spanish (Castellano) is a mixed stew no different than English. There is a base broth of Latinate stock, but into this stock there is a very hearty amount of Arabic meat, Celtic veggies (one of the largest batteries of Celtic word roots outside the extant Celtic Languages), and spiced liberally with Goth and Visigoth herbs.

    The reason that maybe English feels like the hodgepodge it often claims as its singular and most prominent uniqueness is because when the idea of standardized spelling came around (thank you printing press) English chose Spelling for Etymology™ rather than Spelling for Phonology™, the latter being the choice that Castellano and many other I.E. languages made. And, insult to injury, the spelling system that was set down by the printing press for English is a spelling system that represented pronunciations in one part of the country, which was not the pronunciation scheme that ended up being the one to spread its wings around the world.
     
  14. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    I didn't get that. Could you expand? (for some reason I feel like my post reads like it's being sarcastic. I'm not being sarcastic lol)
     
  15. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    The easiest examples to see are all the words that contain -ough, -augh, and -eigh. The printing press stamped into paper a pronunciation scheme of the time where these words were pronounced with a back-of-the-throat guttural, not glossed over as silent. Sadly, this pronunciation was a) regional, and b) did not survive to the present day. Still, since English is a language that abhors spelling reform, where the very idea of addressing some of the more idiosyncratic spellings is engaged with disdain, politicized and attacked as "dumbing down the language", we're stuck with these monstrosities.
     
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  16. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    That's true of other languages, too. My father's parents were Italian, and he and his siblings spoke nothing else until they started going to school.

    Years later, when he was attending Syracuse University, he found that he could get college credit for any course simply by passing the final examination. Looking for an easy credit, he took the exam for Italian. And he flunked it.

    It was then that he realized that the language of his childhood was not Italian but Barisi ... a variant spoken only in the south-east corner of Italy, very different in vocabulary, grammar, and syntax from the Roman dialect that eventually became classic Italian.

    Even more years later, when our family lived in Europe, we traveled from Germany to Italy. He found that the northern Italian dialects were hard to understand, but the farther south he got, the better he was understood. By the time we reached the middle of Italy's Adriatic coast, he had no problems with the language, and people just assumed that he'd come up from the south.

    And I once worked for a Frenchman who owned a hang glider factory in California. We got a lot of business from Quebec, since they knew they could reach a French speaker at the other end of the line when they called. I asked Jean-Michel about the communication, and he said that the French spoken in Quebec almost sounded like medieval French to him, full of archaic words and grammar.
     
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  17. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I heard that about French spoken in Quebec too when we had a Québécoise exchange student in our class. I understood her better than our Parisian teacher though. :D I guess she spoke more slowly on purpose.

    Estonian sounds somewhat archaic to me, or as though it was a language spoken by some elves in a medieval fantasy. I don’t really understand it though. We had an Estonian muay thai coach who spoke a mishmash of Finnish and Estonian which was sorta understandable, but full Estonian? Nope.
     
  18. eidolo

    eidolo Member

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    I love the flexibility of English. You can splice sentences together with any kind of word form and it will make sense. I don't know much about Finnish, but with its case system, I can't see you being easily able to do that as you could with English.

    And you can learn English in a non-English speaking country. You just have to brute force it. Immerse yourself. (Otherwise known as AJATT it, if you want to be hip.) You have to read widely, and read intensively. You have to do the same with listening. All four skills influence each other. I'd suggest going over the basics first and then really ingraining the grammar patterns by writing after you read them. That's what I do with Spanish. But every one learns differently, especially when it comes to languages. Speak first, be passive. You choose.
     

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