How do you guys know English so well??

Well, first of all: 8 years of English in school... and then reading english forums and other websites pretty much each day for the last 12 years. At a certain point I realized I was not able to remember if a website I had seen 5 minutes ago was in english or german.
That's for reading and writing... for actually speaking english it helped alot that I got into an advanced english course with a native speaker due to my job. And then I got a new boss who was from England, that's when I stopped going to the course because I got my english "lessons" for free each day. :)
 
My dad is an English teacher, so he introduced at quite an early age to the language/culture (movies, tv shows etc) and encouraged me to read in english. I just liked it and kept it up.

And of course I've studied it in school since I was like 9 or whatever, and took a few extra classes during my last years of school.

I also got a few people at work who don't speak swedish, one american, a couple of pakistanis, one from holland and whenever I hang around them we all speak english.
 
i´d say mostly by watching lot´s of TV about 20 years ago, (when you´re in a good spot to know and absorb other languages) and without translations, just subtitled... in my country they were like 95% subd.
i really hate translations in other languages it takes the fun out of what you´re watching...
 
Yeah, I too started learning through games and cartoons and whatnot, and obviously also had English lessons since the 3rd class of elementary school. By then, I was already pretty good. I then went to an "international" lower secondary school, which had like half of the courses in English. That made a massive difference, and at that time, I also started to think in English a lot, and always when I'm talking or reading it. I always prefer to read books in English and I don't ever look at subtitles when I'm watching movies etc.

Besides English, I also know Swedish (which I progressively got crappier at though, since the teacher in our upper secondary school SUCKED), some German (studied through lower secondary school, but again a crap teacher at 9th class made me lose interest) and enough Japanese to communicate with it, but not enought to read pretty much anything yet. I want to learn Korean too because it sounds so pleasant and interesting, and Thai and Chinese interest me too. I've got somewhat of a fetish with East Asian languages it seems.
 
As an Australian we have barely any other languages imposed on us. At school it was very easy to get out of learning another language. I was learning German at school but decided to get out of it and now years later I have started learning it on my own. I've only been learning it since February but am getting pretty good by listening to tapes. Also, if any German speakers know 'Bushido' or 'Fler,' two German rappers? Just learning terms and such. But damn you for putting a gender on everything... I mean is that really necessary? A simple 'die' for everything would suffice.

I am amazed at how well all the Europeans and South Americans know English on this site. You know more terms than me when it comes to recording slang as well which is annoying haha. Power to ya!
 
ze kink said:
I want to learn Korean too because it sounds so pleasant and interesting, and Thai and Chinese interest me too. I've got somewhat of a fetish with East Asian languages it seems.
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Ni hui shuo Putonghua ma? Wo hui yi dian :) Zuijin zenmeyang?

Chinese is actually not that difficult. The biggest issue in understanding native speech is that you have to be really heavily on the lookout for the various tones (up to 5 different ways to pronounce a word and make it mean completely different thing :lol:), otherwise you'll miss the meaning entirely :erk: Just for a quick tip, if you read Chinese guides, you'll see words with a number after them. That means the tone, eg. shi0 = no tone, shi1 = 1st tone, shi2 = second tone, etc., and it's quite simple to remember the pronounciation with the number as it's basically just a sinewave :lol:

Tone 0 = no tone, neutral (sometimes this is listed as tone 5 instead of 0)
Tone 1 = flat tone ( __ )
Tone 2 = rises from flat to high ( _/¯ )
Tone 3 = high note ( ¯¯ )
Tone 4 = drops from high to flat ( ¯\_ )

So, in full, the "sequence" is: .... __ _/¯ ¯¯ ¯\__ ;)

And just a real example:

Shi1 = poem, poet
Shi2 = ten
Shi3 = arrow
Shi4 = is (also, basically it means "yeah")

Completely different meaning :p

And one funny one:

Shi3 xi1 (pronounced: "she she" with high and flat tones) = Shit (literally)
Xie4 xie0 (also pronounced close to: "she she" but with rising and flat) = thank you

Be careful ;) :lol:
 
AboutBlank said:
That is not a good idea, cause these dudes don't spell and speak properly.
And we have MUCh better german gangster rap.
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Really? Cause I asked someone who speaks German and he said that their sentence structure is usually pretty good? Can you tell me some other good German music to listen to? I love the challenge of trying to understand it... also it would be great if the lyrics are pretty correct, grammar wise.
 
Torniojaws said:
Ni hui shuo Putonghua ma? Wo hui yi dian :) Zuijin zenmeyang?

Chinese is actually not that difficult. The biggest issue in understanding native speech is that you have to be really heavily on the lookout for the various tones (up to 5 different ways to pronounce a word and make it mean completely different thing :lol:), otherwise you'll miss the meaning entirely :erk: Just for a quick tip, if you read Chinese guides, you'll see words with a number after them. That means the tone, eg. shi0 = no tone, shi1 = 1st tone, shi2 = second tone, etc., and it's quite simple to remember the pronounciation with the number as it's basically just a sinewave :lol:

Tone 0 = no tone, neutral (sometimes this is listed as tone 5 instead of 0)
Tone 1 = flat tone ( __ )
Tone 2 = rises from flat to high ( _/¯ )
Tone 3 = high note ( ¯¯ )
Tone 4 = drops from high to flat ( ¯_ )

So, in full, the "sequence" is: .... __ _/¯ ¯¯ ¯__ ;)

And just a real example:

Shi1 = poem, poet
Shi2 = ten
Shi3 = arrow
Shi4 = is (also, basically it means "yeah")

Completely different meaning :p

And one funny one:

Shi3 xi1 (pronounced: "she she" with high and flat tones) = Shit (literally)
Xie4 xie0 (also pronounced close to: "she she" but with rising and flat) = thank you

Be careful ;) :lol:
Click to expand...

Thai has the same tones in it too. But yeah, I do know that Chinese in a way is not that difficult, since the grammar is so simple that you can pretty much just have a dictionary with you and just pick whatever words you need from there. Thai on the other hand is considered a very difficult language to learn, or so I've heard.

Though written Chinese must be a pain in the ass for sure, since you need to learn a shit ton of hanzi, and on top of that, there's both the traditional and simplified forms. I've got about ~100 kanji down for Japanese now myself, and it's quite monotonous and boring to get them memorized (at least with my current method). Obviously, by e.g. learning Japanese, you learn pretty much the same characters that are used in Korean as hanja and in traditional Chinese, so it's easier then to just memorize one more meaning for them.
 
Although I live in the US now I also learned it while in Europe. From TV while living in Sweden and from studying at an english school while living in Spain. Sadly I couldn't learn from TV while in Spain cuz they switch it to spanish and catalan hehe.

Ashgarth said:
I went to a private english school here in Barcelona and have the first certificate in english by the university of cambridge.
The english classes at spanish high schools suck so much.
Click to expand...

Which one? I went to an english school in Barcelona and then later one in Castelldefels.
 
DanLights said:
British people are fags, they write "mum" instead of mom
Click to expand...

I agree, I've always found that gay as fuck :lol:

DanLights said:
and use to much "s", like realise instead of realize,
Click to expand...

Actually quite the contrary, using S in words instead of Z is what americans do.

I often prefer the british way in cases like that. But for example; I never use "colour" - always "color" which is how they use the word in America.
 
you amerifags and your supporters have it all wrong! we invented this horrible mash up of a language! get it straight!

it's colour not color!

it's mum not mom!

anything with -ize on the end, it should (probably) be -ise!

oh and fix your units and measurements whilst (not while) you're at it. you're one of the only countries in the world that uses the arcane imperial units!

honest to fuck, you're worse than the scots! ;)

thanks,
 
Every time anyone calls their mom, "mum" ... it just sounds like they're trying to get inside their dad's cock one more time.
 
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