I took english in school, and I speak it all the time :3
Good job. English is a very hard language that barely uses logic.
It really is illogical lol :3 I tried teaching my parents before and trying to explain why all 3 Es in mercedes or all 3 Cs in pacific ocean make different sounds like “they just do”
Though my native language is quite hard for non-native speakers as well
mercedes
In English’s defence, it’s not an English word. It’s a German company named after a Spanish name. And at least to my ear, the Spanish and German pronunciations also have 3 different Es. One helpful Redditor also provided an IPA guide to the German pronunciation, agreeing with my ears:
mɛrˈtseːdɛs
The “e” in the middle is long and stressed.
Edit: I would also say, that most of the times it is even pronounced like this:
məˈtseːdɛs
But I can’t even begin to justify the letter c sounding like /s/, /k/, and /ʃ/.
Well the c being s and k thing comes from latin I think :3 like v and u being the same letter… and I believe i also had a second sound? Plus there’s vowel shifts that happened after the writing was standardized and all that, and characters that no longer exist like Þ and ð
Either way it can be confusing when coming from a language with a fairly regular pronunciation ^^ (though of course we also have some quirks lol)
Me, an English teacher: nods somberly
English is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn.
Chinese, Arabic, and Russian speakers laugh at me when I say this.
Why? There’s plenty of strange things in English, inconsistent grammar rules, weird pronunciations, and pointless words for simple ideas.
Like there’s umpteen words to describe different kinds of meat, pork, beef, veal, mutton. In Chinese you can get away with saying just the animal + meat, 猪肉, 牛肉, 小牛肉, 羊肉 (pig meat, cow meat, young cow meat, goat meat).
English has stupid rules around pluralisation. There’s been arguments that the origin of the word should dictate how it’s pluralised, and other arguments that a “true English” pluralisation rule should apply, but then incorrect usage slips into common vernacular and suddenly it’s perfectly okay to pluralise a Greek word with a Latin plural suffix. Then you end up with the plural of octopus being octopodes, octopuses, and octopi!
The long and the short of it is that all languages have weird-ass quirks in them that don’t necessarily make any sense but feel natural to their native speakers. It’s a prime example of how intuitiveness isn’t actually real a thing.
Would you believe if I told you that there’s someone who speaks 20+ languages
doesn’t count
Most people who take a language in school don’t keep at it. We’re just doing it because it’s required, and to pass the class. I took French in high school. The only person I’ve ever met who spoke French fluently was my teacher. I really should have taken Spanish, but I wanted to be “different”.
In Europe, also, because of the open borders, and being packed so close together, people encounter foreign languages far more frequently. It makes sense they’d all want to, and benefit from, knowing multiple languages. And, they’d have more opportunities to practice. Not many Japanese speak a second language, compared to Europeans, for instance.
Speaking multiple languages is a thing because you need it.
Everyone needs to know English, because its the global Lingua Franca. Not only to speak with native English speakers but to speak with everyone. If as an Austrian I speak to someone from China, I will do so in English.
Everyone needs to know the local Lingua Franca, because it’s a massive career help and you will need it quite commonly. That’s why most people in Hungary learn German. They need that all the time, since the economies are tied so closely together.
Everyone needs to learn the language of the country they live in, because only if you know the language you can access the job market and all services without barrier.
Lastly, everyone needs to learn their mother tongue to be able to speak with their family.
If you are from Serbia and move to the Czech Republic, you will learn and frequently use four languages.
If you are from Germany and stay there, you will learn and frequently use two languages.
If you are from the US and stay there, English is the global Lingua Franca, the local Lingua Franca, the language of the country you live in and your mother tongue, and thus you will likely never learn a second language to fluency levels.
In Europe
yes for what I know, unless you are from the UK or Ireland, it’s quite common to speak at least two. Not per-se fluent, but at least conversational level. It’s usual the national language & English. I speak four and that rarely raises an eyebrow.
I’ve tried no less than 4 times to learn Spanish. High school, twice out of school, and then uni. It’s just not getting through. I’m a communications graduate, so it’s not like language isn’t one of my strong points… Just doesn’t seem to carry over to any other language.
Maybe unsolicited advice but I have gotten my Spanish to a decent level, and I’ll paste a comment I made a year ago somewhere else below if you want to hear the method I used.
warning: long
So first, set your expectations. Learning a language takes a lot of time. A LOT. How long overall really depends on how much time per day you do it. But rest assured, if you do stick with it you are going to learn it. If you dedicated every waking hour, you could get to a high level in maybe half a year. But you’d have no life and would probably burn out. A more reasonable pace is 1.5-2 years. That sounds like a lot, but remember you don’t have to be fully fluent for it to be useful and to make connections in the language. Even after a couple months, you’ll be able to do a lot. And besides, two years is going to pass by anyway - the only question is do you want to be bilingual by the end of it?
I highly, super recommend checking out Dreaming Spanish - it’s a channel/site that teaches Spanish through a method called comprehensible input. Basically, all you do is watch, listen, and read in Spanish totally in Spanish, no translations whatsoever. That sounds intimidating, but the beginner stages they really talk at you like you’re a baby almost. They talk with their hands a lot and use drawings. That’s the most important part, because in the beginning you won’t be able to understand any Spanish or hardly any. But by making it so simple you can basically understand even though you don’t know the words. After a hundred or so hours of this, you can move on to slightly less easy content. And so on and so on until you can understand just regular media in spanish. At that point, your learning will really take off, because you can watch things that you’re actually interested in and that will capture your attention more.
They don’t do any explicit grammar or vocabulary practice. That’s on purpose, the arguments of comprehensible input is that language isn’t learned, it’s acquired. You didn’t learn English by rote memorization, you listened a lot. If you can hear a few words and make the connection to the meaning by watching, and then you hear that word dozens or hundreds of times more - you will have a better understanding of that word than a simple translation flashcard could ever give you. Because words don’t have just one meeting they’re complex and change in different situations. But the best part is through this method you won’t even realize that you’re learning these words. Same goes with grammar, with this method things just kind of sound right. You can use the correct grammar, but you might not necessarily be able to explain why. Just like native speakers.
I’ve personally listened, or watched over a thousand hours of things in Spanish in a bit over a year. And at this point most media is almost as easy to watch as English for me. I also read the full Harry Potter series in Spanish. (It was rough at first, but after I got used to the writing style a lot of the times I’d forget it was in Spanish in the more exciting sections) I need to practice speaking more, I can definitely do it and be understood but it lacks pretty significantly behind my understanding but that is really just a question of how much practice I can get. But once you’ve banked 1k, 1.5k hours the rate at which your speaking will improve is way faster than the process of learning so far.
Check out this this playlist of videos that really explains things in more depth. It has English subtitles you’ll have to turn on. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf
They have a ton of free content, and if you want more you can pay just $8 a month - but honestly if you do a few hours a day after a couple months you’ll be able to just watch some YouTube videos of native speakers and you won’t really need dreaming Spanish anymore. But the site does have a handy hour tracker that you don’t need to pay for at all that I still use to this day.
I’ve tried to learn French, german, and even Spanish before but until this try when I discovered this method, I didn’t really get anywhere. At this point I’m almost comfortable saying that I’m bilingual. And it really doesn’t take that much effort just make it a routine, and once you can get into more advanced and interesting videos just watch things that you’re interested in. When you really get good, you can just watch the TV shows and movies that you already like to watch, but put on the Spanish dub. It’s that easy. I’m not doing anything differently now than I was before I knew Spanish but I’m learning every day because I just do the things I normally did but in spanish!
You can start their Super Beginner (most basic level) here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GbOHc3siOGQ5KmVSngZucl
But I’d recommend doing it on https://www.dreamingspanish.com/ where it will automatically track your watch time, let you filter by person/accent/level/topic, etc.
The beginning is by far the hardest part. The least interesting videos, the least level of comprehension. It will feel like a chore. Luckily the beginning is where you have the most motivation to push through it.
I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Hi! I remember that side, and the thing that separates isn’t the knowledge of the words in the language it’s the lack of ability to think in that language. instead of trying and failing at “enable real time translation from x language to my mother tongue” you must practice the language enough to think it. in your dreams and outloud. it starts to happen faster with immersion. but practice is the only means of success either way. your brain has to hear yourself speaking it to replay it at night.
I think that’s a great point. That seems to be what the other person who replied to me is saying. Immersion is #1, changing my relationship to language and the voice in my head, so to speak.
Just move to Spain. Immersion is the best way to learn a language.
Watch Narcos lmao
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I am the world’s shittiest polyglot. I lost a lot of my native language, turkish. I can get by. I speak english, but my accent is getting worse. I studied german in school for 5 years and forgot most of it. I live in the river plate, so the shitty amount of intermediate spanish I can speak has one of the worst accents for spanish, just behind tied first of caribbean and chilean. I can READ cyrillic, but not understand it, except few words whichever language has in common with languages I know. I can recognize some chinese glyphs, and understand some words.
I have no idea about any grammar words except the obvious ones (verb, noun) and get as much use of IPAs as I do IPAs (the pronunciation guide/the beer)
I have seen the vowel chart a billion times and still don’t understand it.
But did you use AI for this post? … otherwise your English is pretty sound (to me as a non-native speaker) :D
English is my primary language. I said my accent is getting worse, which is only a spoken thing
Don’t forget that you can also understand beginner level Azerbaijani and Gagauz but not speak either of them.
mən çox eyi Azərbaycanca konuşorum. /s
I probably speak better portugese than azerbaijani. / Eu problamenche falo melor portugues que azerbaijani.
Most people don’t really understand how many total hours of purposeful learning and actual usage is needed to become proficient.
For Japanese, it typically takes people who can’t already read 漢字 about 1,325 hours to reach N3 (conversational), and 2,200 for N2 (roughly business). That means if you want to get to N2 in only one year, expect to study like five to eight hours a day.
So don’t feel too bad if you can’t.
Or do, and use that frustration to motivate your study.
And yet, in non-English speaking countries, virtually every kid is taught English to a level that’s at least “roughly business”.
I also reject your premise of 8 hours / day for a year; how about 1-2 hours / day for 4-8 years.
In the case of English, school kids would get more like 2-4hrs per week and be perfectly fluent after a couple of years, btw.
Both are possible. I got to N2 in one year as a full-time student in Japan by studying (school + at home) around 6-8 hours per day. People outside of Japan don’t get as many chances to actually use the language, so the same amount of study of course might yield less in that case.
Most westerners take 2-3 years (3-4 hours per day) to get to N2, which is reasonable. So my hours are about the same, just I crammed two years into one (because I really needed to).
Whereas many Chinese speakers tend to pass it in less than a year of getting to Japan because they already have a huge head start on kanji knowledge.
The relationship with languages you already know changes things a lot. The proximity and opportunities to use it are really important too, I think.
Practically every European I’ve met has pretty good English, I’ve noticed that. But most people in Japan I’ve met don’t. Many, if not, most of them studied it in school. They also get tested on it as part of university entrance exams. But most of them don’t need it much outside of those contexts, so I don’t blame them for not being able to speak English either.
I can speak English quite well.
I took Latin in high school, but I pretend it’s esperanto to remain an oddball.
I took Latin too, but then I realised it was just French but even more boring too learn :/
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I always immediately think Jack Sparrow is Russell Brand and recoil, then remember who it actually is and then recoil again because it’s crook blokes all the way down.
You had me recoiling with you all the way through this comment bravo
I took Spanish from age 12-22 and German from 18-23 and 29-31.
I speak both those languages, though my Spanish is rusty, because I moved to Germany and don’t have much contact with Spanish speakers.
How’s your Turkish?
Abi, I got the reference
I never took it in school, and I don’t have much contact with it now either. I’m picking up some Arabic now though.
Aaaaand that would be me
Countless hours of German and French and at best a few words remain
Time well spent?
I took German in high school and forgot it all immediately. A decade later I found myself in India studying Malayalam, the language of Kerala which is the southern-most state in the country. Very hard language to learn but as I was learning its formal grammar I was like, wait a minute this is very familiar. Turns out a German monk in the 19th Century visited Kerala and gave Malayalam its first formal grammar, which was basically just German’s grammar. So it wasn’t totally useless.
I retained enough to provide basic information to my ESL kiddos/parents, at least in Spanish. Use it or lose it, I really think.
I did but I had after-school classes because I sucked at taekwondo and football, lol. So I learned French and ended up moving to France, eventually becoming a national, and also learned English and ended up marrying a Brit. 🤷
Between the ages of 7 and 14 i was taught five languages, at best i could say hello me name is u\manuallybreathing in a grand total of one
you’d amazed what you can teach yourself woth motivated self study as an adult though, don’t fall for that ‘your brain solidifies after 25’, I’ve learnt a lot since i started again after the age of 30
only after meeting someone who’d done the same though, i really doubted myself
That “brain matures at 25” bs is a myth that was caused by a study in brain development losing funding when its subjects (that it follwed from birth) were 25.
Concluding brain development stops there is like assuming the road ends at any point where you have stopped following it.
Yritän oppia suomen, mutta unohdin harjoitella kuukausin ajan
(If I made a mistake tell me)
Where you randomly pressing buttons?
j/k but Finnish does feel like that
Je ne parle pas Francais.
