The best way is to have a girl/boyfriend that only speaks english. The second best way is to move to a country where they speak english and avoid people who is not native. So basically the way to becoming fluent in english is to use it as much as you can. Movies, books also help, but for communication you need to talk a lot.
Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
111–120 of 187 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#112When I came to US, we had the cheapest cable plan, and it has the C-SPAN channel. Very boring but there were no commercial interruptions. So I just followed the speakers loudly with the subtitle turned on. I thought it worked very well years later.
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#113- school (grade school, high school)
- Hollywood (movies in NL are as a rule subtitled)
- Reading (the public library, second hand bookstores, the internet)
- Work (An American Bank, working all over the planet)
- Running an online business
- Living in Canada for a number of years
- Writing (blogging, HN)
Each of those contributed in some way, it is still not perfect. It likely never will be, there is no substitute for being born in an English speaking country but at the same time there are many people that are born in such a country that have the most horrible accents or that couldn't spell if their lives depended on it.
Language mastery is never done, it just keeps getting better at an ever reducing rate.
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#114I studied in Tamil medium. When I entered college, I could not speak a sentence in English. Here are the things that helped me. 1. Read Bible cover to cover many time with a Tamil Bible side-by-side. I didn't understand many of the words / phrases. Still I kept reading as long as I understood the meaning. 2. In college we met every evening for prayer. I started sharing messages for few minutes. I made lot (a lot) of…
Reading the bible to learn English does not seem like a good idea. The English of the bible is not common everyday English that will be most useful for communicating with others today. Watching films or television in English, with subtitles in your native language is good advice.
If anything, you might learn a _cooler_ English by reading the Bible! :-)
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mimicking is the critical skill for spoken English. I bet you have ugly flaws in your spoken English, although I also bet that your written English is better than many brought up speaking English. I often deal with tourists, and I detect serious flaws in their speaking as a result of their learning to read and write first (transliteration is a problem too). Common ways of teaching English in schools are deeply flawed…
Sorry but I disagree. Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling?
That might be more apropos for learning Chinese (where premature focus on reading/writing can distract from actually learning the (spoken) language). I think in learning English, reading will help, because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient (even though English arguably has the worst orthography after the logographic ones).
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#116Dutch people learn English because it's such an important part of our education. Most people under 50 will speak English at a decent level. Also, all our foreign movies and TV shows are subtitled, not dubbed, that is also important. For me, early on I understood that English is the language of the computer world. So that makes learning English a necessity.
> Most people under 50 will speak English at a decent level. Most people, period. In fact the Dutch speak English so well that it is hard for an English speaking foreigner to learn Dutch because everybody will automatically switch to English at the first sign of foreignness.
Not only English... they frequently speak German, French, etc. well, too. Thus it's virtually impossible for outsiders to learn Dutch :-) A veritable shibboleth.
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#117One of the most remarkable obstacles when trying to shave off any accent or just trying to hone in your grammar skills is lack of understanding of the language learning process by most native English speakers, as most of them can only speak their own language, if so.
Best advise I can give is, move to a country where English is broadly spoken (Scandinavian countries come to mind) and work in one of many English-speaking companies there. It'll be much easier to shake off at least most of the grammar mistakes (ESL speakers are actually rather proud of their grammar skills) and hopefully also soften any regional accent. As a bonus, you might also catch some other language basic skills. In the EU, NL and BE (Brussels area) are also good choices.
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#118Being born Dutch there are many advantages into learning it. I don't think I could've not learned English while being brought up in the circumstances that I was. However, having said that. I think a lot of native speakers could see all kinds of phrasing mistakes. Last year I learned that I secretly translate Dutch to English without knowing it. It's either that or my Dutch and English are really intertwined.
1. Subtitled videos from the day you are born. And when I was young, cartoons were subtitled as well, now they're dubbed and that doesn't help.
2. Digital games do not have a Dutch option in most cases. Other often used languages are: French, German, Spanish and English. What are you going to choose? I suppose the language that people speak during those subtitled movies: English!
3. The Dutch internet is not the biggest place and clearly lacks information. Want more information? Learn English. My gateway drug was when Dragonball Z was on air and I was 12. The Dutch websites were 6 months behind the English websites. I read all the spoilers, I loved it.
4. Being part of an international community helps such as HN. I did that for several communities, but this is not a seperate principle per se, it is a consequence of #3.
5. We had English at school! However, that helped just as much as French and German, i.e. not really.
6. Compared to American accounts that I read, Dutch people take quite a bit of vacation, at least once per year. The family I was raised in definitely did that and Europe is so small that if you goo 200 miles / 320 kilometers in the right direction you are in another country or you passed several countries already. Can't speak the main language? Speak English, because most countries are influenced by good ol' Hollywood.
7. What nailed it for me was tertiary education. Studying computer science meant that some teachers would ask if they could speak in English. In some cases, I even asked the teacher to do that. I'd rather listen to pretty good English compared to horrible Dutch, and who cares about Dutch anyway in the global economy?
(I know it sounds rude but the difference between some teachers their English and Dutch was really big, you clearly could notice that they didn't learn the language after years of living here. Moreover, they didn't care, and I couldn't blame them. Their teaching dramatically improved and imposing those teachers to speak Dutch by university management was obligatory in a legal sense. It was also silly.)
7+. This effect was even stronger in my master degrees, since they have English as the main language. I was so happy with how many international people were in my classes.
8. Oh, realizing that I am a part of the world that knows a language that is more or less useless outside of my own country (yea, Flanders, former colonies and 16 million traveling Dutchies but whatever, they all speak English as well).
9. Last but not least: the Dutch language is related to English which makes learning easier.
Edit: and then I went on.
10. Being in a relationship with an English native speaker, who happens to be Dutch ethnically (and learned Dutch from her parents). It taught me a lot more nuance regarding emotional words. I thought I knew English but the intuitive cultural nuance is not something I learn by only living in The Netherlands. I'd need to live in a native English speaking country for that.
11. Picking for a style: I choose Californian American English. It's not that my accent sound like it, but when in doubt to pick a formal style that is my style. Most talks and online seminars that I watched came from that placed and influenced me when I was 16 to 17.
12. Asking teachers if I can write my essays in English, in my bachelor degree. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. I learn English better. 2. I noticed some teachers were worse in English than me, so when they graded me, I had the language advantage.
13. When I was very young and on vacation I wasn't very shy to adults. I would have conversations with them and if I didn't know a word I'd run back to my parents to ask and then run back to the conversation.
14. I wanted to learn English.
15. Being young helps, I was 7.
-- For a Dutch person, I think my story is quite common.
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#119Chatting on IRC with other developers, reading technical documentations, and watching series in English (first with subtitles, then without).
I also started reading fiction in English recently. I have an e-reader with a builtin dictionary, that's very helpful.
It gave me the necessary skills in my everyday life (reading, writing, listening), but I have an horrible French accent when speaking.
Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?
#120I grew up in Italy. Among EU countries, Italians have one of the worst English accent and vocabulary, because Italian TV "dubs" every single movie and TV show ever invented. In fact, you often hear that "Italian dubbers (e.g. voice over actors) are the best in the world". In my teenage years, my father gave me an amazing present: for two summers, he paid to send me to study English in Scotland once, and in Sussex onc…
> In fact, you often hear that "Italian dubbers (e.g. voice over actors) are the best in the world". Hah, I've heard that from my Italian relatives, but didn't know that it was a widespread thing to say. When I heard it, I couldn't help but think "What a weird thing to brag about." It'd be like bragging that you're really good at tracing over art. It's a sad brag, because it's conceding entirely the ability to become…
> It's a sad brag, because it's conceding entirely the ability to become good at making original things.
That's a non sequitur. Being good at dubbing/tracing doesn't concede originality any more than Hollywood studios making remakes concedes them from originals. The dubbing/tracing/remakes are just work for money, but probably actually increase your ability to make good original content of the same nature.