How long does it take you to master English, with it being your 2nd language? I did Spanish and French at school and couldn't dream of being able to speak them as well as some of you guys speak English.
Is it primarily in school/college where you learn it? Do you have a set amount of hours per week, and if so, what ages?
Did your mastery of the language come from education or just constant use, like playing bots?
I'm talking about people like Jans and Benny, who have pretty much perfect English, though it would be interesting to know how long other people have been learning it too and what level they are at.
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Also, when I read Spanish/English I have to translate it in my head and then translate what I want to say to Spanish. Does that ever go away? Do you "think" in English now, if you are reading/speaking English?
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I have had a few friends who were from Mexico and a few from South America. All spoke Spanish and all told me they still translated English into Spanish in their heads. I know this doesn't pertain to everyone, but I know when I attempt to learn another language I do the same thing. I attempt to translate everything into its English counterpart. I've been told this is why it's difficult to learn a 2nd language, especially one that is so different from the one you grow up learning.
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My english isn't perfect but I'll tell you my history.
I started to have english classes at the 5th grade (around 11 years old). Since then I had always english classes until enter in the university (18 years old). In the unniversity I didn't have english classes but in my field (microbiology) the books and material to study were mostly in English. Along these years I played bots and I must say that I felt a big improvement by writing/reading daily the forum. However, my listening and speaking of English was poor.
So I started to work on a scientific institute in Portugal where all the seminars were in English. At beginning I had problems to follow the presentations. After 1/2 years I listened to english (although technic...) as I was listening to portuguese. When I prepare presentations in English, for some days I think in English.
Another experience to me was to learn Spanish. Since it is very similar to portuguese, we can understand pretty well spanish, however we don't talk it fluently. I moved to Madrid on October 2012 and now I talk daily spanish and I THINK in spanish. For example, this friday a portuguese friend visited me and I it was hard to talk portuguese without saying spanish words :P at beginning I had problems to learn spanish just by listen to others. The key for me was to read and write in spanish. I have a terrible spanish accent (what we call Portunhol - Português + Espanhol) but I know portuguese people that is very hard to know they aren't spanish :P
I hope it helps you :)
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About the translation thing, although I think in english/spanish, I say the things like in portuguese normally, unless there is some expressions very characteristic of the languages. That's why my english sometimes is strange, like jans said, it has a latin structure :P
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I think it depends mostly on your original language you speak. Some languages don't have certain consonants/say consonants differently or they have different vowel rules. German and English are similar because of this but Spanish and English have a ton of differences when it comes to this. Here's some of them:
C, at least in most of Latin America, is pronounced like the "c" in "cereal" when it comes before an e or an i, and like the "c" in "car" when it is other positions. B and V are pronounced exactly the same. In fact, one of the few spelling problems that many Spanish speakers have is with these two letters, because they don't distinguish them at all from their sound. D generally is pronounced somewhat like the "d" in "diet," although often the tongue touches the bottom of the teeth instead of the top. But when d comes between vowels, it has a much softer sound, kind of like the "th" in "that."
The G, H, J, L, LL, N, N with those diaeresis (two dots on top), R and RR, X and Y all have various rule differences also. It also depends on where you are speaking English because American is different from England-English and Australian English is different from say Canada. There's a ton of differences to think about between the two languages and that is probably why you think of it in Spanish before translation. The day you master English is the day when you stop thinking in Spanish and fully understand all the words in English and use them interchangeably without much effort. If you practice grammar daily you could probably get a normal level of English within about 2-3 years. English is a never-ending language of millions of words so it is very likely that no human can "master" it whether or not they started off in English or not.
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I can´t speak English very good. Only practice typing it all the time :P
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Thanks for the input everyone :>
I can´t speak English very good. Only practice typing it all the time :P
I never thought about that, illusions shattered! You should try to speak it out loud as you type it.
Sessh, I meant master the language like the majority of English/American/Australian/Canadian people have, I'm sure rose, rivan, zal and myself (and many more ofc) know more than enough words to describe anything we'll ever need to :P
Esv, thanks for that, it's weird that you dedicate so much time to our language! I had 1 hour a week of a foreign language, and that was only in high school in which time we covered Spanish, French and a small amount of German. No wonder everyone knows English so well if its in the curriculum from such a young age.
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Nowadays kids in holland start at an early age in school with english. 9 or so. I was 12 at my first lesson. Throughout school you learn the basics; grammar and vocabulary. But it wasn't until i spent 4 months in america until i got anywhere good at it. When you have to interact in the real world with real people, you pick up stuff fast.
Because you can know the (literal) meaning of words and stuff, it isn't until you get the expressions and sayings before you actually understand (some) of the language. And then there's the slang..
With english, i don't have to think what i want to say and translate it. I just think in english. I can relate to what Esv says, about switching languages. It's weird how that works, but it's not easy to switch from one language to another. It's like your whole mindset has to change with it..
I was working for an international company with people from various places, and the main language was english. There was another dutch guy as well, and even when it was just the two of us, it was easier to just keep speaking english rather than to switch to dutch.
Anyway, playing games like this, interacting in forums and chatrooms really helps too. But not so much with listening and pronunciation. i've talked to guys who were pretty good at written english, but i had a hard time understanding what they were saying :)
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i forgot to mention: we use subtitles instead of dubbing tv series and movies. That really helps too!
i also spent a couple of months in spain, learning the language. But i still suck at that, and have forgotten most of it :P Simply because i dont use it, and i'm not confronted with it on a daily basis.
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In Portugal we have subtitles too but in Spain not. This sounds weird to me for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7FEyRmncoI (see from minute 3:00)
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@jans: viene visitarme a Madrid y asà praticas tu español. yo tampoco hablo muy bien :P
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You want Jans to visit you in Madrid so you can teach him Spanish?
No google I swear.
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I didn't said I would teach him but that he would practice it ;)
And portuguese?
@benny: Quando é que me convidas a ir à Suécia? É melhor ser no Verão para eu não passar frio :P
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Suécia = Sweden?
The rest looked like gibberish sorry :(
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It's not that different from spanish :(
Yes, Suécia it's Sweden. Btw, we have a card game that we call Sueca (sweden girl) and it's one of the most played!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sueca(cardgame)
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What I get from this thread now is that if Ender had half a brain he'd make this game part online game and part English as a second language teaching forum. YOU'RE SITTING ON A GOLD MINE ENDER, A GOLD MINE! lol
And yes Gandhi, I just meant that master is a tricky way of saying it. You can master Latin because there aren't that many people creating new Latin words but English is an alive language and it keeps growing.
And grats to you guys on doing so well in English :)
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So is English the hardest language to learn?
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"Quando é que me convidas a ir à Suécia? É melhor ser no Verão para eu não passar frio :P"
When will you convince me to visit Sweden? Its better there's no.. somethingsomething.. cold.
:)
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"Quando é que me convidas a ir à Suécia? É melhor ser no Verão para eu não passar frio :P"
When will you convince me to visit Sweden? Its better there's no.. somethingsomething.. cold.
When will you invite me to go to Sweden? It's better to be in Summer so I don't pass cold :P
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So is English the hardest language to learn?
I would say something like chinese :D in fact, english seems the easiest one to learn hehe
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invite makes way more sense, but why not 'invitar' like in spanish? >_<
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Convidar is the portuguese translation of "invitar". They mean the same but there's something funny about it, for example:
If you say "Convido-te a tomar uma cerveja" in portuguese you are just saying if the other person wants to take a beer with you.
However, if you say to a spanish "Invitote a tomar una cerveza" you mean you will pay him a beer xD. Recently I invited to dinner all the persons on the lab and 20 people appeared. Since I used the word "invitar", I was afraid that I had to pay to all of them!
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I found learning English relatively easy compared to other Asian languages like Mandarin or Nihongo.
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what languages do you speak Neps?
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I started having English classes in preschool at an age of 6, maybe once a week, then had a break until 4th grade, about 10 years old, then had it for 3 school classes a week until 2nd year of high-school, age of 18. I also learned french from 7th grade.
In the same period, I started playing Diablo 2 and Runescape and other online games where i was forced to interact in English.
After high-school, 70% of my educational material has been in English and some of the classes I've been taken has been with international students, so lots of good inputs.
Also some years back i started reading a lot of online mangas, witch is mostly in English and lately i have begun to watch movies without the subtitles, just to better what they are saying, instead of relying on some random idiots half-assed translation, that is btw wrong half the time. Both I found is helping me with understanding and speaking.
My native language is danish so English is not that far off (considering we have contributed a lot to it in the past), but I didn't really find learning french that hard either, (maintaining it being another story).
I also learned Japanese (or Nihongo as nets say) from i was 6 to 9 years old, because we lived i Japan at that time and i went to the local school, but at that age you learn stuff much faster and i could more or less speak it fluently after the first year. However, since i haven't used it since then, I have forgotten most of it.
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I still translate my Spanish into English... Hardest for me is Chinese because I have to think of the character, then think of how its pronounced. Since it doesn't use a alphabet similar to English reading Mandarin is very hard.
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