English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#91

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #8

I enjoy watching foreign movies with subtitles, and then trying to learn a few words in the language that way. I watched a French movie a few days ago that way, and was surprised at how many French words I already knew. I've been told that's how the Dutch learn English. The country isn't big enough to make it worth dubbing the shows, so they are shown in English with Dutch subtitles.

That's pretty much it. We also start second (and third) languages pretty early in school. True story: toddler in a local health center after being asked to count from 1 to 10: "what language do you want me to do it in?"

I never did find out how many he spoke but I wouldn't have been surprised if it was 3 (both parents from different countries in NL, they spoke English between them).

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#92

Post by petke » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

Vomzor wrote: post #64

xixixao wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what you noticed is correct, but the reason is completely wrong. edit: see the map on wiki[0] The reason it might be true that people from smaller countries speak better English is emphasis - in a small country, people are fully aware that knowing foreign language (English, German, French in Europe) is super important. People in big countries (Spain, Italy, France) don't think it's that necessary, because they…

I think you're wrong. Dubbing or subtitles make a big difference. In Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) we have 8 years of French in school and only 5 years of English. Even though France is our neighbor and 40 % of Belgium's speaks French, most young people their English is still much better than their French. It's because we grew up surrounded by English; English songs, English tv shows and movies with subti…

Its the same in my case. Me and my class mates where taught Finnish from 1st grade, and English from 5th. (We where taught Finnish because we are Swedish speakers living in Finland).

Even after all those years of lessons. Few of us spoke even half decent Finnish by the time we where adults, but most of us spoke good English by that time. So I think school had little to do with it.

Me and my class mates watched hours of English cartoons or movies on TV, every day on our free time. Its not surprising it made a bigger difference.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#93

Post by graeme » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

joeyspn wrote: post #88

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

> I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? No, it just means that you need more exposure. That very same thing happened to me while learning english (as my 3rd language after Spanish and Catalan [0]). I started to interact and shared flat with people from USA, England, Wales, Australia, Ireland, e…

Spanish speaking people tell me they find the Cuban accent difficult. Of course, it's all inter-comprehensible, but you're not refuting the OP's point.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#94

Post by foggy80 » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

The only country where English is the native language is the UK.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#95

Post by AlexeyBrin » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

petke wrote: post #16

Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…

Personally I started to watch English and French movies without any kind of subtitles since about 2005. It certainly helped with my level of English.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#96

Post by defen » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

metafunctor wrote: post #38

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

English does not have a simple set of rules for pronunciation or dictation. Spelling bees don't exist for most languages, but it's a thing for English. So yes, I'd say English is “phonetically broken”, if that means it's difficult to figure out how to convert from spoken words to text and vice versa. I am not a linguist, but I speak English, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, and German. English does seem to be an unusually…

> English, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, and German

Just curious, in what order did you learn them? That's a pretty diverse set.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#97

Post by cjsthompson » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

aquadrop wrote: post #37

xanderstrike wrote: post #21

As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…

I think Spanish, English and Portuguese are broken languages (French less, because France dominates it) because they were spread during era of colonial empires and now there a big countries which use it as main language, they have evolved since.

French is supremely broken. It makes no fucking sense as it's influences are too varied. Which makes it great for poetry perhaps but not much else.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#98

Post by fridek » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

Drup wrote: post #17

Being an academic, I often hang out with people of various nationalities, usually each with it's own english-based language, slightly modified by grammar quirks and foreign vocabulary. A linguist friend call that "international english", which I like quite a lot. After a while, you can play "guess the nationality" based on the grammar quirks. And everyone is still easier to understand than Scottish people. :) I got l…

I'm from Eastern Europe and I've heard from native speakers that we use perfect tenses more often than a native speak would.

It is interesting to see how much easier it is to communicate with other non-natives in English than with natives. I always struggled with UK accent and considered the US version simpler. However it seems British have developed more tolerance for varying accents over time, while Americans have often trouble understanding anything I said. For them, there was only one version of any given word and I was not using it.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#99

Post by DonaldFisk » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

petke wrote: post #16

Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…

Not sure it's down to the size of the country. More likely, it's the size of the community speaking the language, and the closeness of the language to English, together with some other factors.

During my time in Belgium, I found that few Liégeois spoke English, and one simply couldn't get by in Liège without being able to speak French. However, during visits to Antwerp, I could speak in English and people there were happy to reply in English.

So why the difference?

Dutch is a lot closer to English than French. Both are Germanic languages. I know English and French share a large common vocabulary, but grammar and basic vocabulary are quite different.

Dutch isn't spoken much outside of the Netherlands and Flanders, so there's more incentive for the Dutch and Flemish to learn a second language, and the obvious one is English.

Many people in Liège actively dislike speaking languages other than French.

Not many tourists go to Liège.

Brussels, though mostly French speaking, is more international, and gets more tourists, so English is spoken there, though French is preferred.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#100

Post by nommm-nommm » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

id wrote: post #49

frooxie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is my third language; I've read and written English almost every day for 30 years, but I've only ever spent two weeks in English-speaking countries. I sometimes find myself unable to pronounce words that I've used for decades in writing – often, it's the type of more formal vocabulary that doesn't often come up in movies or TV series. For instance: cuticle, paean, echelon, emaciated, heinous, comely, disreput…

"heinous" is featured in every episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Yeah, its in the intro:

"In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad, known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories."

Vicious is another word I want to pronounce wrong if I see it in writing.

I think often English speakers have a similar but opposite problem - they are used to speaking words but when you come across them in writing you cant recognize them. The "typical" examples of this are gazebo and hyperbole.

I also think only very educated and well read people would know what half those words mean or how to pronounce them.