You folks really amaze me. Seriously, if English wasn't your first language and you're even treading water here, well done.
I constantly marvel at our Euro-Mods (I hope they think that's cute and not condescending) because I engage them, in English, with a transparency that belies the fact that English is a foreign language to them. I know full well the difficulty, frustration, and exhaustion that comes with having to engage in a language that's stored on one's "hard drive", so to speak, rather than being organic to one's operating system, having to forever spin up that platter to access the data rather than the data simply expressing the need. I know how hard it is, and I am amazed, day after day, at simple deployments of completely unintuitive English idioms that are actually anything but simple to know the right moment, the right nuance, the right context into which they best fit, and these guys do it all the time, and with aplomb.
I am an elementary school ESL teacher, and I work with these students year after year. Many come to us not speaking or understanding a word of English. I can only imagine the terror and stress of not just going to a new school, but a new language and culture that may be totally foreign. To their credit, most work hard and learn quickly. It's fun and interesting to get these kids to talk about their home country and culture. Sometimes, the smartest person in the room is the student who speaks no English at all. When they learn that we don't think they're stupid because they're not yet fluent in English, they begin to shine.
I think they're a distraction. I've known a lot of Swedes & Finns showing off speaking English, it's not clever particularly. They are just the leftovers from raiding parties millennia ago, same goes for the Spanish, the Americans really, all Puritans or Catholics, we don't need them coming back. It's all well & good for a Basshunter number but they can't truly read my heart in English, or in Sussex dialect even. I think I'm Sussex if I had to choose, although born in the Midlands to my shame :/
I had a roommate in college from Norway, and his English was flawless after two years, but he let me into a secret. Here's a hint. Take a short paragraph you have written and use Google Translate to translate to Norwegian. Jeg hadde en romkamerat på college fra Norge, og hans engelsk var feilfri etter to år, men han la meg inn i en hemmelighet. Her er et hint. Ta et kort avsnitt du har skrevet og bruk Google Translate til å oversette til norsk. Dang Vikings!
@Vince Higgins That's a surprisingly clean translation, considering it's Google, except for this: Not only does it mean something substantially different from what you wrote ("han la meg inn" means "he laid/put me in") , but nobody would say that, ever. Most people would say "han fortalte meg en hemmelighet", word for word "he told me a secret". But yeah, the two languages map out very well in general, which makes it pretty easy for us to learn English.
English/American movies and series on TV. No dubbing, because I come from a civilized country Honestly, I think I've learned more English from pop culture than school. While I had a few years where I mainly read and wrote in English - I'm rather happy I went back to my native language. While my English is good enough for a forum, it's not really book-friendly. Though I do want to post something up for critique here at least once, if only for just the sake of it. I will then translate it to the best of my ability.
Yeah, I know that GT often gets things wrong, and that there would be errors. " 'han fortalte meg en hemmelighet', word for word 'he told me a secret' " actually makes the point better than the GT version. This guy, Stein, had an older brother Dag, and younger named Harald.
Don't let the Italians hear you say that. They'll be furious. Yep, checks out. Those are all names. No, I don't know them Fun fact: Stein means Stone, and Dag means Day. I'm not sure about the etymology of Harald, but it's popular with kings. All this got me thinking: wouldn't it be neat to have a "foreign language" subforum? Might be more trouble than it's worth, I don't know anything about web design.
And I truly hate Moondag. I have made several attempts to learn Spanish and still suck at it. Still to be a writer requires a knowledge of some foreign vocabulary. Many words from Yiddish are so common that English spell checkers recognize them. Cultural context is important. I struggle with Spanish in spite of the fact that my parents, born in the Southwest US in the 1920's spoke nothing else until they entered school. (Vince is a pen name). At least my accent for what I do know is flawless, and I often feel the need to correct near strangers who call me "compadre" because I have the cultural context to know that is a word you only use on your closest friends. (Comadre if it is a woman).
Do you have a different personality depending on the language you’re speaking? I’m a bit of a loser in France, all mumbling, my eyes on shoes, cowardly really. I miss my Dutch, can’t remember a word, ‘cept for the word for bum, or shit. Only legacy from my Nederland education is the incorrect spelling of my name. Thanks for nothing, Holland.
This reminded of something that happened to a friend: She was on the phone with a customer, trying to ask her if she had a printer so she could print out a bunch of documents. The customer, a non-native speaker of Finnish, was utterly confused, until my friend said printteri instead of the more common word for 'a printer' tulostin and dokumentit instead of the more common word for 'documents', asiakirjat. I never really thought about how much easier I could make communication with people who're just learning Finnish if I just used the loan word instead of the translated word. It's just that we tend to reject loan words and coin new words... like call fidget spinners sormihyrrä - which I absolutely love! But I understand it can be a huge drag for learners as they have no prior vocabulary to draw from, unless they're Estonian, so it's literally like learning a brand new language. And it works both ways. I struggled with English at first, but after I had practiced it for two years, starting to learn our compulsory second language Swedish wasn't as difficult (granted, we don't learn Sweden's Swedish here. It's muminsvenska, so even easier!).
