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Is english your native language?
- Thread starter Kwigo
- Start date
No, it's French - English lessons/teachers at school were usually terrible.
I learned English with movies, series, online chatting mostly, and games of course.
"Loading", "time up", "game over", "press any key" were probably the very first english words I came across as a kid.
I learned English with movies, series, online chatting mostly, and games of course.
"Loading", "time up", "game over", "press any key" were probably the very first english words I came across as a kid.
Nope, it's Dutch.
I learned English at an early age from cartoons, movies and video games which allowed me to excel at English in school as well. Unfortunately I feel that my English has regressed in recent years, despite still consuming pretty much every medium in English.
I learned English at an early age from cartoons, movies and video games which allowed me to excel at English in school as well. Unfortunately I feel that my English has regressed in recent years, despite still consuming pretty much every medium in English.
If I were to quote my Italian brethren "ni"-- i.e. sort of. I am a Greek/Italian mother tongue but I've been speaking English since the age of 5 and speak it better that I do Italian, American accent and all (much to the dismay of my British relatives). When I got out of university I took some teacher training courses and have now been teaching ESL full-time for the past 4 years.
There's probably a massive selection bias in the poll in that a lot of English speakers would probably not care much for voting in the first place while non-English people would want to be heard.
Anyway, I learned at primary school (English is mandatory as a second language in Spain, or was when I studied anyway), but mostly RPGs. No joke, my English really started to take off when I fell in love with Phantasy Star 2, Final Fantasy IV and so on, which I got from an import shop.
Anyway, I learned at primary school (English is mandatory as a second language in Spain, or was when I studied anyway), but mostly RPGs. No joke, my English really started to take off when I fell in love with Phantasy Star 2, Final Fantasy IV and so on, which I got from an import shop.
School, then books (paper books and now only ebooks): reading a lot of books helped me identify correct sentences, and it was a great foundation to understand better why they were correct when I went back to school a couple of years later.
Reading english websites about gaming and high-tech was also helpful, but I still don't like playing a game in English, so I almost always use the french translation when it's available (and it should always be available !): I'm only using english translation when I'm using a guide to finish everything in some games.
Since hearing a friend (working for one of the biggest US tech company) speaking english in a video, I lost all shame about my heavy french accent 😁 Not that I have a lot of opportunity to speak english in the first place, but still, if he can work in the US with his french accent, I can speak english with mine 🤓
My first language is French. Learned English by playing videogames pretty much (and then moved to an English part of the world).
No,portuguese is. I learned it by just using internet and games. There's the old(and true) belief here that playing videogames teach you english,and this is how a bunch of kids convince their parents to let them play. Final Fantasy teached me more english than any wizard school would ever do.
You'll take your 10 US internal politics thread a day and you'll like it!
I'm surprised too tbh. I wonder if this aligns with internal user data from the admins.
Didn't learn english till I moved to the states at age 6, spoke only bengali back then
Took about 3 years ..mostly 1st and 2nd grade where I cried a lot cause I didn't know english lol ( not to mention the friends I made in my neighborhood helped me tremendously)
By 3rd grade english became my primary language tbh and I lost knowledge of how to read and write in bengali which I was learning when I was 5-6. I only speak Bengali at home with my parents that's about it, everything else english
Took about 3 years ..mostly 1st and 2nd grade where I cried a lot cause I didn't know english lol ( not to mention the friends I made in my neighborhood helped me tremendously)
By 3rd grade english became my primary language tbh and I lost knowledge of how to read and write in bengali which I was learning when I was 5-6. I only speak Bengali at home with my parents that's about it, everything else english
No, Spanish, it was supossed to be good to get a job, I actually use at my current one, so my parents were right when they made me learn it I guess.
I'm exactly on your same boat but with Spanish. Playing games as a kid where no game was translated to Spanish also helped. They were always in English only or in Multi-3 (English, French, German). In fact I played one game in French as a kid, Dragon Ball Super Butoden for the SNES. It was cool to try to understand it with my understanding of very basic French, words similar to Spanish or Catalan and Dragon Ball Story, as a kid.
A German girl I knew found it very handy to have the subtitles on in Curse of Monkey Island while trying to improve her English. I imagine it would make it easier trying to keep up with the audio having the words up on the screen.
A Czech friend of mine learned by playing video games, plus taking English as a language in school, of course.
One thing I've noted is that foreign speakers will usually speak better English than people who have it as their first tongue. I imagine it's because the latter people speak with local colloquialisms which colour the language in a not altogether correct manner, while people learning it in class learn how to speak it as correctly as possible.
No, I'm from Spain. However, for the past few years I've actually been speaking English more often than Spanish as it is what my SO and I both speak.
I learned as a kid, surrounded by all the English media. It's safe to say the language has become culturally dominant, so I wonder if we are headed to a future where there's a single worldwide common language as the economy continues to become more global; so far English is holding all the cards.
(I still think English is an inconsistent mess though, nothing like the ironclad Spanish grammar).
I learned as a kid, surrounded by all the English media. It's safe to say the language has become culturally dominant, so I wonder if we are headed to a future where there's a single worldwide common language as the economy continues to become more global; so far English is holding all the cards.
(I still think English is an inconsistent mess though, nothing like the ironclad Spanish grammar).
Only spoke french until maybe 10-12 years old. Learned English reading Nintendo Power magazines (and later on PC Gamer and other similar mags). By the time I had my first English class at school I was far ahead (basically never put in any work and got the best grades every semester, every school year). In post-secondary I was in native language classes with Australians and English immigrants due to my scores.
Most english speakers only seem to be able to speak one language fluently. So I would hate to be monolingual.
I started to learn English in school in 3rd grade, so at about 8 or 9 years old.
Learned the basics in school but at some point, I just got increasingly immersed in English media, and from then on progress was completely disconnected from learning in school.
My German is still better than my English, though. It is hard to develop a very good sense of flow and arrangement for a language that isn't your native one. I can replicate phrases and styles I've experienced before, but I can't judge what exactly does sound elegant to native speakers and what doesn't.
Similar thing for accents. I can't judge how accents sound to native speakers.
Like, as a german, when I hear a Berlin accent sounds distinctly chilled and nonchalant. Rural bavarian accents sound primitive, but I'm bavarian myself so I can distinguish between the accents spoken south of Munich and north of Munich. But east german accents are basically just one for me and it sounds dumb.
Now I know that redneck accents sound dumb/primitive to native English speakers, but it doesn't to me.
Learned the basics in school but at some point, I just got increasingly immersed in English media, and from then on progress was completely disconnected from learning in school.
My German is still better than my English, though. It is hard to develop a very good sense of flow and arrangement for a language that isn't your native one. I can replicate phrases and styles I've experienced before, but I can't judge what exactly does sound elegant to native speakers and what doesn't.
Similar thing for accents. I can't judge how accents sound to native speakers.
Like, as a german, when I hear a Berlin accent sounds distinctly chilled and nonchalant. Rural bavarian accents sound primitive, but I'm bavarian myself so I can distinguish between the accents spoken south of Munich and north of Munich. But east german accents are basically just one for me and it sounds dumb.
Now I know that redneck accents sound dumb/primitive to native English speakers, but it doesn't to me.
Spanish here. As most people here in Argentina I learnt basic English in school but after the 7th grade you basically get the same stuff every year, so I've been learning by myself since. Music, games, TV and movies helped with that. I used to translate song lyrics for fun as a kid.
