What it's Like to Learn English as a Second Language

[Anonymous]

Hey there :)

I noticed that a lot of GAGers are from the USA and therefore native speakers. So i wanted to give you an idea of how it's like to learn English as an second language. Hope you like it :D

1.) My first encounter with the English language:

It was in 1st grade when our teacher taught us some very simple words like ''Hello'', ''Goodbye'', ''Thank you'' etc. Back then I was already amazed how cool that all sounds, so I got very interested into learning English and I talked some with my family to learn it better.

2) The REAL Beginning:

Stuff got serious in 3rd grade where English is an own subject. Before that, we kinda did it randomly, which was way too rare for me. We still learned simple words like ''hot chocolate'', ''bell'' or ''shoulders''. We also did some grammer but my interest in this language was still huge. This was also the time where I got introduced to the internet. This will be important for later.

3) The most important time:

It was between the 5th grade and 8th grade when I learned the most. Our teacher was amazing and taught us a lot. It was also clear in my marks that I love English because I mostly had A's. At this time I was already very active on the internet and because of school, I was already able to read and write some stuff in English which felt amazing. I got to a point where I could understand nearly everything in an English video. Also writing English with people online wasn't that hard anymore.

4) When school wasn't enough:

During 8-9th grade I already scrolled through memes in English, twitter feeds, English videos etc.

Our teachers taught us words I already knew months ago. But I wasn't satisfied because i still made dumb mistakes I don't want to happen. So I still need to grind :D

*) Last words:

I'm now working in an apprenticeship and I'm glad I learned English the way I did. It was an amazing and hard journey to learn English even though it isn't as hard as my mother tongue. (German/Austrian)

I really hope you enjoyed this myTake of me talking about what it's like to learn English :)

I appreciate all feedback.

:)

[cherryphi82]

This is a very interesting and important take, thank you. I can relate to everything you wrote. My English education began as a small child as well, when my dad taught me a few words, but mostly because of all the songs on the radio. I always wanted to know what they were saying and I looked a lot of things up in the dictionary. But not until 7th grade did we start English as an official subject. But honestly, school English is so different from real spoken English. In school, we mostly learned language theory and grammar. Which is important, but it doesn't necessarily expand your vocabulary or your way of saying things in that language. Only when I embarked on a foreign exchange year as a teenager did I really learn how to speak it. It took me maybe 3 months to become really fluent.

[Krumpir]

I agree and couldn't said it better myself!
My teachers were completely useless, both in middle, and high school. We started learning English in 4th grade, and by the time we got into 6th grade, I already watched movies and tv shows without reading subtitles. (papa bless Family Matters and Full House for teaching me English 👐).
At this moment (age of 22), I would say I can read, write, and listen (understand) English better than most of the native speakers. My speaking English is not the best, but inly because I got no one to practice with (yeah, yeah... excuses).

[PillowThief]

The difficulty of learning a particular language will depend a lot on what language (s) you already know.

There is still debate as to whether or not a young child will find learning any language to be easier than for, say, an adult, but for now, logic would seem to suggest a good reason for that being apparent: babies can't communicate in a world where we all communicate. Thus, there is a drive from the beginning to learn to speak until fluency. Adults already presumably know a language, thus, there isn't such a drive to learn more, since they can already communicate. This might also attribute to why immersion into a language helps to increase the understanding of that language, rather than sitting behind a desk for it.

As an adult, then comes the part of gauging the difficulty of learning another language, with what language (s) you already speak. Languages all over the world range from extreme similarity all the way out to entirely different on every front. If your one language lacks any similarity to your target language, then it's probably going to be hard to undertake, especially if it contains a similar amount of common words (or more) as well as different dialects. If you have to learn entirely new grammar rules and alphabets, then you're probably in for quite the show.

On top of that is determination, aforementioned as 'drive', which helps people best the odds in any field of knowledge, not just language. And look at that: babies generally seem driven to learn to speak. Perhaps the real level of difficulty, therefore, is determined simply by how much you want --or need-- to learn a new tongue.

[BeeNee]

Most languages are easy to learn when you are young and exposed to the language on a daily basis, but the older you get, the harder it gets not only because you've learned to pronounce things in your native tongue/accent, but because you don't have the same mental capacity to just soak up the language as quickly as you do as a child, so I give huge props to those that have made it their business to or have had to learn to speak another language because it's not easy, no matter what language you're trying to learn.

[Intraluminal]

German supposedly is an easier language for English speakers to learn because of all the cognates, but I dodn't know it cuts both ways. Was the grammar very difficult? A lit of English speakers find German grammar very difficult to learn.

I don't know if you will be insulted of laugh, but a famous comedic American writer, Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemons) wrote an essay about how bad German grammar is

https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html

[SixFeetOfMan]

Even Germans say their grammar is unnecessarily convoluted.

[Anonymous]

I can talk English, I can walk English, I can Laugh English, I can run English because English is a very Funny Language. Bhairo becomes Baron and Baron becomes Bhairo because there mind’s are very Narrow.
I know such English that I will leave the British behind.

[Logorithim]

English is easy at a basic level (grammar is simple for the most part), but the idiomatic use of the language at a high level is a tougher task.

[Anonymous]

English is quite easy to learn, since its grammar and vocabulary are very simple. The biggest problem is the pronunciation that varies a lot, but it can be managed by living in an English speaking country for awhile.

[myTake Owner]

I honestly think that the language you learn always appears easy to you.

I can say the same thing about the german language

[Giacomanzo]

Yeah dude, but I'm aware that Italian would be objectively much harder to learn, if I wasn't Italian. Or any latin descending languages, to be honest.

[Shutupman]

English is probably one of the easiest languages to learn.

[Guanfei]

For me, learning English was as simple as playing this and trying to understand everything:

[CoffeeWC]

very interesting. I was raised mostly in United States by Hispanic parents. Because of that I was able to learn both English and Spanish at roughly the same age.

[CaptainSmartass]

Nice. I wouldn't have guessed, before reading this, that English was a second language for you.

Simples...

[Anonymous]

Willkommen im Club haha muss aber sagen habe probleme mit der Grammatik in jeder Sprache lol

[Shihab-91]

I'm trying to improve my English , but grammar police everywhere 😅🤐🙄

[Naydyonov]

Hello, please show me your license and registration.

[Shihab-91]

@Naydyonov sry me not speak English 😂

[Naydyonov]

Get your hands up and step out of the vehicle Dirtbag!

[CubsterShura]

English is a strange language.

[Pink2000]

English is the hardest language to learn

[Giacomanzo]

Are you shitting me or what? English is easy as fuck. It is hard to must, one might say, because it has so little rules that most things have to be learnt by speaking it, but surely not hard to learn.

[Pink2000]

@Giacomanzo it’s hard to those who have never spoke t before.

[Giacomanzo]

Yeah, but I was learning my own language and English basically at the same time; I could easily see that English grammar was much, Muuuuuch easier than the Italian's one.

[Pink2000]

@Giacomanzo that’s you...

[younis123]

English is easy as fuck. The most hardest language is either arabic or chinese.

[Giacomanzo]

Well, most people in my class had less problems remembering
"I have
you have
he/she/it has
we have
you have
they have"

than

"Io ho
Tu hai
Egli/Ella/Lui/Lei/Esso/Essa ha
Noi abbiamo
Voi avete
Essi/Esse/Loro hanno"

and they already spoke Italian as well, so my guess is that it's not "just me".

[Giacomanzo]

@younis123 Yeah, this seems more like it.

[Other_Tommy_Wiseau]

Really? I feel like italian is way easier than English. The hard part is just remembering a few irregular verbs like “tradurre” or making sure feminie and masculine nouns and pronouns match... and even that is more just paying attention. English doesn’t have that, thank god, but it’s such a mashup of a bunch of languages and odd spelling and pronounciations. Italian pronounciation is consistent 95% of the time (100% that I know of)

[Giacomanzo]

@Other_Tommy_Wiseau Oh yeah, reading in Italian is very easy, we are taught syllables along with alphabeth because syllables always sound the same in Italian.
But being capable of perfectly nailing Italian grammar (or, once again, any Latin language one's) means that you have studied it for quite a while.
It's more logic inclined than memory inclined, if compared to English, that's for sure.

[Other_Tommy_Wiseau]

@Giacomanzo you're definitely right about the logic vs memorization thing. Like, grammar is tough only if you don’t pay attention. I know cause I never paid attentioned when writing. But I can speak relatively perfect and was fully conversational in 2 years. You don’t really have to memorize anything. But English is all kinds of jacked up

i.pinimg.com/.../...4b79178a48679af71bdf49b1cf.jpg

There’s a really good one that has like 20 different ones but I can’t find it and I’m lazy 😂

The other part is that Latin languages besides kinda French (idk about Romanian) is that questions and answers are virtually the same format. In English, you usually flip verbs and nouns. I notice people who speak other languages struggle with that sometimes (which is understandable)

[SixFeetOfMan]

lol, try Polish, or Chinese

[happyhippo]

I've studied Japanese and now I'm studying German. English is far away from being the hardest language to learn.

[Pink2000]

@happyhippo that’s your opinion. I’m glad it was simple for you

[happyhippo]

I didn't mean to be offensive, hope you didn't take it that way. Do you know other languages?

[Anonymous]

It's really easy if you have the Internet.

[myTake Owner]

Internet doesn't help you when you can't speak basic english/do proper grammer

[Opinion Owner]

What? Internet does help if you know how to use a search box! How did you watch YouTube videos in English if Internet doesn't help? That's how I look up the words to all sorts of different languages is through the Internet. The Internet is the greatest invention of mankind since breast implants.