Everyone seems so good at English so I wondered how many people learned it to such proficiency and how many are just natives
I’m German. Back in my day, we had 9 years of English classes in school and from what I’ve heard it’s even more now. I was lucky to have a teacher who had spent a couple of years in the UK so he had much less of a German accent than most other teachers at our school and was also able to give us a lot of insight into how people actually speak, compared to the rather formal and stilted examples in our textbooks.
Between social media, movies, shows and a job in software engineering, I would say that on most days I read and listen to more English than German.
So many people from Germany here on Lemmy! I wonder why that is. Maybe free software movement is a bit more popular there? There seem to be so many good German open-source projects!
German here.
Basically 80-90% of my media consumption is in English.
I search (mostly) in English, read documentation in English and document my own stuff in a mix of English and German (we call this Denglisch in Germany (compound of (D)eutsch+Englisch)I’m Argentinian. I began studying English early in my childhood and I love learning languages.
I am, my spelling and grammar are rusty as hell, so I’m here to practice. I’ve found that people are too nice to correct my mistakes (which I make a ton of), so I usually catch them myself re-reading my comments :s.
English is my third language, but I read a lot of English books as a kid and spent a lot of time in English-speaking circles. I don’t feel disadvantaged compared to a native speaker as I’m fluent and have been speaking English for a long time.
Hungarian here, learned in school and through games/videos
German and Russian native speaker here, so English is my third language.
Two native languages, cool! One or both of your parents are Russian?
My mom is from Ingushetia (in USSR times counted as part of Chechnya, now a Russian republic). My dad is German.
Not a native speaker. I learned mostly from American TV and reading Internet discussions. I have also absorbed a lot of more technical language through the native speakers at work. I made sure my coworkers know that I want them to correct my English, and working with a bunch of pedantic nerds, I sure get a lot of helpful corrections!
I’m a non-native English speaker, learned it by watching cartoons without subtitles when I was a wee little squirt
I also learned from TV, mainly Friends, Scrubs, Family Guy, and similar, with and without subtitles. Then had a gf/wife for twelve years who was native English speaking from across the pond.
I’m good with math and music, and such people tend to also pick up languages easily, or so I’ve understood. I would say I speak and write at a native level though thanks to being with that woman for so many years and communicating with her in English, and doing daily communication online in English for decades now.
Also having a curiosity where I look up words I don’t know, or when I see new words. And I’m interested in a lot of fields where there’s a lot of advanced lingo which also helps. People I listen to are well spoken and good with words, which inspires me.
So I guess all these things combined made me quite proficient. 🤷♂️
I’m Dutch, but due to the large amount of English content I never really had an issue with English. While I struggled with German and Fr*nch, I never had to pay attention or study for English lessons. I just did what felt natural and ignored the homework etc. Not that I’m a great English speaker or anything, my vocabulary is sometimes a bit limited which makes me have to search for the right words to use. But when watching or reading I can follow pretty much anything. I also sometimes feel like I’m more resilient to accents than native English speakers, maybe because we get exposed to British and American English and therefore kinda learn a more generalized representation of the language? Idk, maybe that’s not a thing
A bit of the same boat (minus the 3rd lang. Am only bilingual).
My struggle is primarily switching and mainting the speed but also the vocabulary at hand. And I feel more pressured while talking than writing.I like to think I learned most of my English from watching nickelodeon past eight. Watching drake&josh, iCarly, the Simpsons and Southpark with Dutch subtitles on was a big part of me when I was younger.
I learned english because i’m deaf and french subtitles were scarse. Futhermore, i always wanted to read the latest scans :)
English is my 4th language. I mostly use it online and in professional settings.
My first and mother tongue is Farsi but I haven’t spoken it out loud in any sustained fashion in actual decades at this point and I learned English when I was very young so I guess at this point while English might not be my “native” language, it is my primary. I noticed some time ago I think in English and when I go to speak Farsi I stammer, it is kind of a bummer but I’m more focused on Spanish than learning how to speak a language I am not around.
Me. Non native
I’m danish…
This sounds almost as if you’re disappointed XD
That was projecting something… XD
