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Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#141

Post by evincarofautumn »

faster wrote: post #86

When I started learning French, a native speaker told me to exaggerate the sounds. It turns out that I was softening the sounds that are uniquely French because I lacked confidence in my spoken French. I imagine that the same thing would work for learning to speak English with less of an accent. That obviously doesn't help you learn the language, but I found that it helped me to speak better (or at least more confide…

Yeah, I totally agree about exaggeration, but I think it can also have a positive impact on learning the language. A big issue I see with non-native speakers of languages I know is that they stick to the comfortable sounds of their native language, approximating the foreign sounds instead of trying to really imitate them. If you haven’t done it before, it feels ridiculous to try to put on what feels like such an exaggerated “fake” accent. But what you’re doing is getting a handle on the phonetics, which increases your ability to recognise and distinguish those sounds when listening, and be easier to understand when speaking. It also helps you cope with phonetic variations and different accents, which may at first sound totally different from the “standard” language you learned—but if you understand the phonemes as a native speaker thinks about them, your comprehension will be much more resilient and adaptable.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#142

Post by teolandon »

I'm Greek, been living in the US for the past 4 years of my life. I had two very large spikes in my English knowledge during my life.

First one was when I actually started taking English classes that were good. That was in my private middle/high-school. In a lot of countries public education does not care enough about English and a lot of classes are half-assed. Another option for this would be private afternoon lessons. This really helped me understand the grammar, syntax, put effort in learning new essential vocabulary.

The second big spike occurred when I got into the IB program at my high school, and all classes were taught in English. Any professor interactions were also usually in English. The whole atmosphere created by this encouraged me and a lot of my friends to start talking in English to each other on a daily basis, which really helped with talking, and making the language feel way more natural. This is also when I started "thinking" in English regularly.

But I feel like the most important thing was the constant consumption of English content. I read a lot of books in English, and underlined any words I didn't know, looked them up later (kind of a tangent, but for some reason I found Greek writing to be very corny, while English writing/poetry seemed way cooler in my eyes. So that helped a lot). I watched a lot of YouTube, pirated movies without subtitles, and played a lot of games that were in English. That constant exposure and willingness to learn the language was probably the biggest factor, but I'm unsure of how good my English would be today if I hadn't started serious English lessons or didn't have friends that I would speak English to.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#143

Post by Baeocystin »

aerovistae wrote: post #129
FearNotDaniel wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say it, but your written English reads very stilted to me, a native (British) English speaker. Assuming your spoken English is a similar level, your European colleagues are right - it is clear in the sense that it is easy to understand what you are trying to say. But your word choice and grammar are a very long way away from a native speaker. If you do have a desire to sound more natural in the way you use E…

> a very long way from a native speaker uh....this guy's English is really excellent. it may be distinguishable from a native speaker by occasional poor phrasing or misuse of words, but it's really, really good. i think your criticism is overblown.

No it isn't, and you are not doing him any favors by saying otherwise. His usage is at a level I would consider intermediate at best. FearNotDaniel's assessment is accurate.

There is no shame in not being 100% fluent. I'm multi-semi-lingual, in that I can read a newspaper, shop at a store, etc. in several languages. But I am only fluent in English. When I speak something else, my friends will frequently correct me. I appreciate it, because that is the only way to improve.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#145

Post by firexcy »

I’m a Chinese speaker and also on my way advancing English skills. What I learned from my past experience is that don’t distinguish between good and bad sources of contents. Enjoy nonsensical shouts and murmurs in YouTube, Reddit, or other communities. At first I tried a lot to follow recommandations on Top X lists, only to find myself quitting frequently on the half-way because either I lost interest or they were too far from daily English I can learn for practical usage. Now my opinion is that there’re always gold and craps in contents of a certain language, and since languages were invented first for daily communications, which by nature are full of nonsense and improvisation, “crappy” contents are always far more than well-composed ones, but it’s from these craps that you know what daily interactions sound/look like, and get the bonus of less likely getting bored.

Of course it’s always helpful to keep certain doses of more “serious” contents. I always enjoy the challenge of reading longforms from The New Yorker (forgive me if you don’t think that a challenge, but from my point of view as a non-native speaker the vocabulary thereof is quite a challenge) or non-fiction books. You’ll feel improved in both skill and intellect aspects if you can persist.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#146

Post by fenomas »

Izkata wrote: post #137
bayindirh wrote: post #18

First of all read a lot. Read local communities like Reddit, HN (here), slashdot, etc. This will make you familiar with the daily language. Second, listen a lot. Watch movies with original sound and English subtitles. Try to understand, try to make sense of it. If you listen English songs, try to listen a little more attentive. Then write a lot. Try to take your notes in English. Comment your code in English. Try to…

> Watch movies with original sound and English subtitles. Something I've heard over and over is that using subtitles actually stunts your growth, because it's too easy to fall back on instead of making sense of what you hear.

GP is saying to watch with subtitles in the language to be learned, not your native language.

IMO it's good advice. When I do it, I inevitably wind up looking for and finding differences between the audio and text, thinking about how I might have translated things differently, and so on.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#147

Post by stordoff »

aerovistae wrote: post #129
FearNotDaniel wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say it, but your written English reads very stilted to me, a native (British) English speaker. Assuming your spoken English is a similar level, your European colleagues are right - it is clear in the sense that it is easy to understand what you are trying to say. But your word choice and grammar are a very long way away from a native speaker. If you do have a desire to sound more natural in the way you use E…

> a very long way from a native speaker uh....this guy's English is really excellent. it may be distinguishable from a native speaker by occasional poor phrasing or misuse of words, but it's really, really good. i think your criticism is overblown.

The guy's English _is_ excellent (100% intelligible and reads fine), but there can still be a long way between excellent/"functional fluency" and a native speaker. A native speaker wouldn't say "I'm exposed to English when I'm ~4 yo" (they would say "I _was_ exposed..." or "I've been exposed... since...") or capitalise "Job". Small things in the grand scheme of things, but they make it fairly obvious it's a non-native speaker.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#148

Post by funkaster »

There are some good comments here, but I'm curious if there's any reason you can't take lessons? I would recommend going to your local British Council (or the American equivalent, forgot the name) and try to get classes there. If for whatever reason you can't (too expensive, you live in a place with limited access), then you have lots of good comments here, but IMH(and somewhat biased)O if you want to get a good, professional level of English, you can't avoid classes.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#149

Post by stordoff »

robocat wrote: post #125
FabHK wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient I strongly disagree. Firstly on listening to tourists, some of the worst pronunciation mistakes I hear are because they have learnt the spelling: you can hear mistakes that can only occur if you know the spelling (or are due to use a "general" voicing rule). This shows up clearly when you are in another country and you tell someone a word for something and the…

> Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at.

I disagree - I guess at pronunciations frequently (as a native speaker), and it is a useful skill to be able to do so. For a learner, it may be _helpful_ to ask how to pronounce (especially to avoid reinforcing misconceptions), but I don't think it's a universal rule of English that people ask how to pronounce words. I also find that many of the mispronunciations are regional variations or misconceptions (e.g. hearing Worchester as "War-chester" instead of "Wus-ter", or Yorkshire as "York-shy-er" instead of "York-sha"), so even if you ask, you might not learn the "true"/regionally appropriate pronunciation.

I've also never come across the later -- I know plenty of well-read people (native and non-native) who have made mistakes in pronunciation (such as a friend who read "parser" as "pa-ray-ser"; native speaker) and they are simply corrected, not laughed at.

Re: Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

#150

Post by fenomas »

Baeocystin wrote: post #143
aerovistae wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a very long way from a native speaker uh....this guy's English is really excellent. it may be distinguishable from a native speaker by occasional poor phrasing or misuse of words, but it's really, really good. i think your criticism is overblown.

No it isn't, and you are not doing him any favors by saying otherwise. His usage is at a level I would consider intermediate at best. FearNotDaniel's assessment is accurate. There is no shame in not being 100% fluent. I'm multi-semi-lingual, in that I can read a newspaper, shop at a store, etc. in several languages. But I am only fluent in English. When I speak something else, my friends will frequently correct me. I…

> His usage is at a level I would consider intermediate at best. ... There is no shame in not being 100% fluent.

Your notions about language proficiency are wildly out of whack. The speaker you're talking about is clearly articulating their ideas, coherently and without (one presumes) halting or grasping. That's fluency.

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