Question for our non-native English speakers

English is the most important language in the world for business, finance and politics, which themselves make the world go 'round. That is the principal reason why learning a foreign language isn't as important for native English speakers. There is far greater practical value in learning to communicate with Americans, Australians, British and Canadians than vice-versa. That is why in countries where a second language is taught, it is typically English.

 

Yes because they are all Latin languages. I've noticed that the Anglo-Saxons seem to have a hard time with French while for instance, all the Romanians I've met spoke French with ease; and the reason is because Romanian is also part of the Romance languages. That could also explain why I find it much easier to pronounce Italian and Spanish than German or Russian.

Lol, of course. Actually, if you can speak Lingala or any other Bantu language, you can learn the others rather easily as according to specialists, they are just variations of another languages. So though there are more than 250 languages spoken in our country, most of those languages are mostly variations of one language.

Cameroonians told me they have the same words in their language as in Lingala, words like Mabindi(testicles), Miso(eyes) etc. There are also alot of words in Lingala that come from Portuguese because of course, the Portuguese were in the Kingdom of Kongo and taught the King Portuguese. So words like Mesa, Sapato, Manteka come from Portuguese

For Lingala and Kikongo, it could also be due to the geographical promiximty of the capital Kinshasa and the region of Bas-Congo. Also because Lingala is also spoken in the other Congo, the Republic of Congo(Brazzaville) which also shares boders with Bas-Congo and where they also speak some variations of Kikongo.

Languages are intersting because they can prove the affinity with different groups of people: Walaf/Wolof, a Senegalese language spoken in the extreme west of Africa on the Atlantic Ocean, is perhaps as close to ancient Egyptian as Coptic. The kinship between ancient Egyptian and the languages of Africa is a demonstrable fact, and has been desmonstrated by Cheik Anta Diop and many others.

Swedish and Norwegian can understand each other while still speaking in their own languages. Many Japanese have a hard time with English and struggles with the "R", but they can speak Lingala without a problem.

Also, the Russians I've met articulate French much better than the Americans, and I've always wonder of there was a rationale explanation for that.

 

really? I loved it! it's beautiful! and i also liked people, they are all so good. they helped us to find a way when we needed to, and just were really nice to us.

 

yeahh! that's sooo true! when you think in one language, you have hard time with speaking an other one.

 

I started learning english 4 years ago. when i fisrt went to the US I hardly understood what people were saying and had really hard time talking to them. My english started improving after being there, in the US for about two or three weeks. I overcame the language barrier and just started talking without worrying if i sound stupid or not. I tried not to pay too much attention on that and it worked. so basically I have learned grammatics at university, but i realised that the spontaneous speech is something that i could learn only if i am in the english speaking country. and the last year my english kept getting better only owing to the fact that we talk on the phone with Nate quiet a lot. so... that's my secret. oh and i also have watched movies in english and listened to american hip-hop music all the time. lol

 

DI , i am quiet impressed that you have started to learn english only 4 years ago.

About Europe ( Sweden , Norway , Holland , Denmark , Sweden , Finland , Hungary , etc )... i believe they are fluent in english due to the fact that they are learning english from the early age at school. And most TV programs (like movies) are in english with their home language subtitled.
If you go to france or Germany , it is different a story as all TV programs are in their native language even hollywood movies are translated. And most french speaking people i have met can hardly speak english contrary to what people think of them ( they say french are rude ).

I will like to bring another fact , In countries like : norway , denmark , Sweden , finland , Holland , hungary , etc ... English is in fact their second language , most post-university studies and good scientific books are in english.

 

yep - I learend English in school starting in third grade (had to pick a third one in grade 7)...
Also, as you say - we do have subtitles so since all good series etc come to Sweden pretty much immediately, you also get it from TV. God bless TV:grin:

 

Sorry, but hungarian is not a slavic language. It is an uralian language and has some influences from the turk languages. Finnish has more to do with hungarian then any slavic language.
Me as a nearly native speaker of polish, I can´t get what hungarian people are talking about, it sounds totaly odd to me.

 

Sorry nooo
Many English native speakers don´t make the effort to learn other languages and it is a misstake at one point.
It makes u not being able to understand, how hard it is to speak an language wich is not ur own.
The american company I worked for, a few years ago, had english as their language for every note and every e-mail. Team meetings where hold in english. But not all German co workers understood the topics of the meetings, even when thier english was pretty good.
We got out of those meetings and everybody understood something diffrent.
Our american teamleaders always got it too late that things where going wrong, because they was not realy ably to talk with the people in a more spophisticatet way.
There are idioms in every languages, wich u cannot translate with a word by word translation, U have to know about them.
When u know about things like this u can lead ur comunication better, because u know there are many ways expressing and understanding.

 

Each native language provides the speaker with specific gramatical and phonetic skills.
Just taken the phonetics, Russian has more possibilties then English, and English has more then Japonese.
So Russians have less trouble learning English and Japonese, while for the English it is easier to learn Japonese than Russian, and Japonese people just have trouble with all the European languages.

If u are Japonese, ur brain learns in that spezial time window only that what u need to speak in Japonese. Japones is pretty simple build when it comes down to the phonetics. It has simple vowles like o, i and a and some simple konsonants like k, n or m.

In english u have stuff like the r or the sch in school and that recuires a lot of more work to spell. If u never learned to say that in a spezial age, u will have a very hard time learning it later.

This is not about the grammar part of languages wich is an other chapter anyway.

I hope I could explain that well....

 

In my case I began to study English at school in 3rd grade at the age of 8.The first 2 years were on a voluntary bases but in 5th grade it became mandatory(that's just how the German school system works).Well after 11th grade we were supposed to each pick 2 college or A level courses.1 of them has to be either a scientific class such as maths,chemistry,physics,biology or informatics or a foreign language.My school offered Latin,Spanish and French as foreign languages as actual classes.Greek only as a course to take for fun without getting grades.
So I ended up taking German literature and English since my talents lay more in the linguistic than scientific area.
However I also dated men whose native language English is.Since they couldn't communicate well in German with me I was basically forced to speak English to them.Sure I could also teach them some German but I still had more experience with English so conversations on a higher level than simple small talk were only possibly in English.
The internet sure has helped a lot as well.I have also read English novels besides the one I had to read for my English lesson at school.
The latest Harry Potter book for instance I read in English.At first I tried to look up unknown words and add them to a vocabulary book.After 150 pages I gave up and tried to gather the meaning of unknown words from the context and remember them.