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Studied all courses only in English language from preschool onwards (India). So it is the only language I can read, write and speak.
I can hardly even speak my mother tongue now ( Tamil) and only understand a bit of Hindi. So my Hindi speaking wife who knew English but not fluently, had no option but to speak to me in English. She is now now very comfortable conversing in English.
Funnily enough my MIL who lives half the year with us speaks more in English than Hindi, and now has difficulty writing in Hindi.
A long way until I got my current level (which I couldn't say how good it is).
I studied English for one year and a half when I was a child, but my behaviour was apparently poor and my parents gave up sending me there. Then I had three years of English (and two years of French) at the secondary school. Still a very basic English I'd say. When I started college I had the need to improve my knowledge of the language and I studied on myself a lot. Just several years ago I got really interested in speaking fluently a second language so I took more serious English courses at the University of Buenos Aires, so here I am.
A related question I wonder is how native speakers see/deal with us non-native speakers whose writing skills are obviouly not as good as theirs and might commit many grammar and spelling mistakes. How annoying is it?
Your written English is much better than mine and I am English! As an Englishman with the usual language skills of an Englishman (ie shameful) I am always very impressed with anybody that can speak a foreign language fluently, I just wish I could do the same, I have tried a couple of Spanish courses and can speak the (very) basics.
I started studying English, German and French in school from age 10. My parents had a lot of English friends. Later, when my parents got divorced, my mom got an English boyfriend who became more or less my stepfather, so we spoke English at home all the time.
Also, in my teens I got into Punk Rock and plaid in a punk band. We wanted to sing and write lyrics in English so that really got me extra motivated to learn the language
Also, like 75% of the shows on tv in the Netherlands are either British or American with subs so we hear it all the time.
And also i've always worked in an international environment. I have to study a lot of english contracts
Last edited by cattledog69; 03-21-2015 at 05:34 AM..
Well, I love languages and I love english, but to be precise...
The first language I studied in middle school was german because in France it is considered to be more difficult, and as a result fewer people study it and you have a higher chance to be in a class which has a higher level.
After studying german for two years, and liking it, I had to study english because it is mandatory to learn English for everyone in France in middle school. At this point I was almost 13.
Let me say that after learning German, English seemed genuinely easy. Actually as a teen I was listening to a lot of anglo-saxon pop/rock music so I enjoyed being able to make out what my favorite bands sang. I started listening to british / American pop/rock music when I was about 6 or 7, and had little interest in music sung in French for a long time.
After that I always was one of the best in English in class, and started improving in the university when I was watching many subtitled movies, and finally the internet arrived and in the beginning there was a lot more material available in English than in French. Also, I loved being able to communicate with people from all over the world, the internet was an exciting place at the turn of the millenium.
And then when i was 23 I got to spend a year in Toronto for my studies. I improved again my skills at the time.
Later I started to get involved in the DIY/punk network of my city and we would often receive bands from the United States, so I always had a chance to converse with them.
Now I'm happy with my fluency in written English, but I'm a lot worse at speaking because I rarely practice. Generally I tend to get the accent of the person I'm speaking with.
Hi
It would be possible to a person to learn and speak english as good as native anglo speakers?
I've seen plenty of people coming pretty close to that level.
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