A second language

Caite-chan

Caite-chan

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    For most of us English is our native language. We can read, write and speak it with ease. But what about another language. Other than what you were taught in high school as most of us (at least in the US) had to take a foreign language...Is there another language you can speak, read or write? For those who's English isn't their first language how hard was it to learn?
     
    I had english classes four days a week every single year of education until university, but most of it was just grammar. It never really clicked on me until I started reading Harry Potter 6 in English just to save the year until they translated it to Spanish and won an American copy of Pokémon Ruby in a contest, 7 months before it was released in Europe. By then I had had like, 8 years of almost daily lessons? Yeah, it took a while.

    I've also learnt a lot of Catalan through osmosis, since my dad lives in one of the states that speak it, and now I'm trying to learn German, which is like English's weird cousin.
     
    I can speak very basic French as my character for my wrestling fics is from Montreal.

    My biggest one is Japanese with much of the blame on Pokemon...lol. I can speak basic Japanese rather well because I took a Japanese course in college but I had a hard time remembering all the symbols and would have to write everything out in Rōmaji to speak it. I also work at Round One which is a Japanese company and if I know we are going to have corporate show up I'll put my books out to freshen up.

    I've also tried to look up American Sign Langauge and try to learn that because we have quite a few people that come in that are deaf. But my ASL is not all that good.
     
    I want to become more proficient in Spanish. It would help me out a lot considering where I live, and because there are literally parts of my city where it seems like English is the second language.
     
    Due to where I live and my heritage I ought to learn Spanish, but if I could learn any language I'd probably chose Japanese for selfish reasons such as consuming untranslated Japanese media.
     
    I went through 8 years of English lessons but didn't pick up too much in them. Most of my knowledge about the written language comes from playing video games. Most knowledge about the spoken language came from watching Let's Plays back when I used to watch them. I also got into the habit to read books out loud and since a lot of literature I read happens to be in English I get a little practice in that aspect as well. Though, so far I didn't need the latter.

    Also, if people where actually speaking in Latin I'd probably be somewhat decent at it as well. Didn't really need it after school so I forgot most of it. ^^"
     
    Where I live, French classes were mandatory. They started in grade 4 and went all the way to 9. After that it was optional.

    I lost most of it since I live in a predominantly English area.
     
    Thanks to full on white-washing of my country, I can speak English better than my own native language. I try my best to keep up with locals so I don't lose my touch.

    On a completely different note, learning Japanese for a class in college was pretty darn fun. I could understand anime without subs for a bit there.
     
    In the Netherlands you learn 3 other languages aside from your average Dutch. It's usually German, French and English.

    I can speak, read and listen to basic German. There was a time that I also knew basic French too but I haven't used the language in 10 years or so. It wasn't really hard to learn English but I sucked at it when I first joined PC. I got a lot better after picking up hobbies that required a understanding of the language and having to speak it most of the day at work. My Dutch has been getting a bit worse but I think English and Dutch are my most fluent languages.

    And then we also have sign language. Which I should and want to learn.
     
    I don't remember English being difficult. I learned it decently around the age of 10 or so. But I didn't become fluent until I joined PC in my upper teens and started typing in (and even VCing) English regularly. The long RP posts helped too :)
     
    Well for me my first language was English it wasn't hard, Instead I found it super easy.
    My second language is Russian, most people have difficulty in pronouncing Russian letters, but from my childhood I have mastered a language in which nearly some letters or combination of letters are just pronounced like Russian, although the letters are neither from Cyrillic nor from Latin, So it is a piece of cake for me to pronounce Russian words and phrases.
     
    I can speak Russian! Am Russian-born so it was my first language, and I speak it at home with family. Can probably be considered fluent even though there are some complex words that throw me off, which I guess is no surprise when I don't use the language with anyone other than family. Can read slowly too, but my writing ability is near 0 at this point lol. haven't done it in ages
     
    English is my second language. I wouldn't say it was necessarily difficult to learn it as I've been surrounded by it from a young age, but it was a gradual and slow process. The process was greatly accelerated when i started playing multiplayer games and going on the internet regularly. School only slightly helped the learning process with grammar lessons, but for the most part I've learned it on my own.
     
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