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How did you learn English/your second language?

claudya87
As many others from this site my second language is English.
I learned it in kindergarten but I can say that even before that I knew basic English while watching cartoons on TV. Truthfully speaking I never actually learned it though, as I hated grammar..Even now I use English "by ear" (forming phrases as I see fit and using verbs without thinking about rules) so most of the time I make mistakes.

I remember a friend of my family saying that I was a natural and trying to convince my parents that my "talent" came from a past life. More amusing was the idea that my mom really believed that fact and for many years was interested in occult things. She even went to someone to predict my future but refused to tell me the result. Even to this day I'm curious about it but it seems it managed to scare her so I'm thinking that maybe I'll end tragically.. :p
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claudya87
About other languages I know..I have to say that I'm the kind of person that starts many things but never finishes something. This being the case I can talk/understand/write different languages but I'm not advanced in any of them. I learned English in kindergarten. French and Latin in school. Spanish, German and Portuguese because I watched way too many Tv. Took Japanese classes. Started learning Korean and Chinese from books/audio and video tapes. I feel kinda embarrassed now..
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Ashu
Computer wrote: Kind of off topic, but two thumbs up for this! I totally loved cartoons as a kid to the point where whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be as an adult, I'd answer, "A cartoon." (I was a dumb kid, what can I say?) It's a shame they don't air those old shows anymore. As much as I love the new stuff, nothing beats a classic Looney Tunes in my book.

*ahem* Sorry, back to the topic at hand...

Better than me. Apparently we have it documented that I wanted to be a "Lion, Tiger or leopard."
Yep, that's right. Thanks dad, I had a screwed up childhood.

arvedy wrote: I am envious of all my online friends who speak their native language and then completely rock English.
I personally only know English fluently, and Spanish (not fluently)


MUWAHAHAHA- wait I'm one of them right? D:
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Skye-N-Rain VIPAdmin
DBessiftem wrote: Better than me. Apparently we have it documented that I wanted to be a "Lion, Tiger or leopard."
Yep, that's right. Thanks dad, I had a screwed up childhood.



MUWAHAHAHA- wait I'm one of them right? D:


Yep :P
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curie
ZetaZaku wrote: I'm totally envious of all Koreans who do not need subs to watch the dramas.


me too that's why i'm trying to learn korean as soon as posssible
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SayItAintSoJoe
Ceamnenaf wrote: About other languages I know..I have to say that I'm the kind of person that starts many things but never finishes something. This being the case I can talk/understand/write different languages but I'm not advanced in any of them. I learned English in kindergarten. French and Latin in school. Spanish, German and Portuguese because I watched way too many Tv. Took Japanese classes. Started learning Korean and Chinese from books/audio and video tapes. I feel kinda embarrassed now..


You ARE advanced in english. From these two post you obviously speak it very well.

It's funny that this thread got started. I just asked amrita the same thing. She's from Italy and she speaks english better than I do lol
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VioletSakura
Ceamnenaf wrote: About other languages I know..I have to say that I'm the kind of person that starts many things but never finishes something. This being the case I can talk/understand/write different languages but I'm not advanced in any of them. I learned English in kindergarten. French and Latin in school. Spanish, German and Portuguese because I watched way too many Tv. Took Japanese classes. Started learning Korean and Chinese from books/audio and video tapes. I feel kinda embarrassed now..


Hello to my friend multilanguage learner :D I can't help but want to learn new and new languages.
When at school, I studied French and Spanish. Now I can sos-so speak Spanish, but French is a little problem.
I'm now studying Japanese, and I think I've made progress. I can already speak it on daily basis.
Now Korean...I watch so many dramas and movies on Korean, that I just learn it unconsciously...You know, at first I hated the language... When I was watching BBF, I used to say "God...are hey speaking or barking???" :D Now I love the language...And it lately, kind of, reminds me of my mother tongue :)
So basically: Russian, English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean :D
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Grumpy Witch VIP
Meganimexiii wrote: I just loved your entire story especially when you said thzt your father decided to join the civilized world because both my parents jointed it late too (and when i say late i mean very very late) and i enjoyed the flinstones too: it was my first english cartoon ( i'm not a cartoon type person usually)


I barely watched TV before I had Cable, I just really disliked, and still do, the local channel's programming. I really liked the Flinstones...jejeje...it's been a while since I watched that.
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Grumpy Witch VIP
chouko wrote: me too that's why i'm trying to learn korean as soon as posssible

I'm also trying to learn, but it has turned out harder than we I took French in college. At least there I had a professor correcting me.
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Yeona
In my country we only speak Romanian language. I started studying English and Italian in the elementary school. At high school I was in a class specially formed for learning foreign languages: English, French, Italian and ... Latin ... . I watched a lot American movies and tv series and 99,9% of the music I used to listen to was in English.
After I discovered korean dramas and movies I tried to learn Korean but I only succeeded to learn the alphabet characters, the numbers and some simple words and sentences... :D After I will enter at faculty I want to learn German. :D
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claudya87
dramaholic wrote: You ARE advanced in english. From these two post you obviously speak it very well.

Thank you for believing that, it's like encouragement to me, but I still feel I have a long way to go before I should consider myself advanced. It's funny that even though I never liked grammar I have an English grammar exam next week. Hope I'll pass. It was a crazy idea to choose Romanian-English as my major but I think the best way to confront something is to get right through it.

cutie28 wrote: Hello to my friend multilanguage learner :D I can't help but want to learn new and new languages.
When at school, I studied French and Spanish. Now I can sos-so speak Spanish, but French is a little problem.
I'm now studying Japanese, and I think I've made progress. I can already speak it on daily basis.
Now Korean...I watch so many dramas and movies on Korean, that I just learn it unconsciously...You know, at first I hated the language... When I was watching BBF, I used to say "God...are hey speaking or barking???" :D Now I love the language...And it lately, kind of, reminds me of my mother tongue :)
So basically: Russian, English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean :D


Wow..you know a lot of languages..Just like you, I have a few problems when it comes to some of the languages I learned because I didn't practice and forgot many things.
The worst is Latin where I can only remember the basic even though in high school I used to like translating/reading different texts.
My French was never that good so I can't complain but I'm interested in learning it now because I want to go on vacation there.
Because there weren't many things to watch on national TV, I spent most of my childhood following German channels like RTL, RTL2 or Pro7(prosieben), being mostly attracted to anime but also movies so I soon picked up words and phrases getting to the point that I could understand ~70-80% of the language from TV. Now I have only basic knowledge of it.
I was very good at Spanish (reading and writing well) but that was many years back when my interest spiked because of the only telenovela I could ever watch : Corazon Salvaje. I was obsessed with it to the point that I had every little thing I could get my hands on from posters to magazine interviews, reviews,etc. Learning the language was just the next step in finding new/updated information about it. My universe crashed though with the death of the main actor.
While roaming the internet in search of "knowledge" I also found many Portuguese sites and because I was frustrated that I couldn't understand the language, I started to learn it too. I learned to read it but conversing was another thing..
Soon as that period of my life ended I started/restarted a new obsession : anime. After getting immersed in the universe of Japanese anime, then manga, again anime followed by live-series, I got curious about the culture and history of Asian countries, mainly Japan, so I began taking Japanese lessons.
I started learning Korean because I felt the series were better than the Japanese ones and like others I was impatient when it came to waiting for subtitles. Currently I'm only beginner but I started to understand my series better.
The Chinese language is the hardest language I've ever tried to learn. I can't seem to remember much even though I try my best at it.

About the phrase are hey speaking or barking???..When I first tried learning Chinese I didn't like the language that much because I thought it sounded like they were quarreling. The idea of Chinese language was like using sounds to express something that I usually compared it to screaming in someone's ear. Now I got used to the language but for me Japanese will remain the most melodious language I've ever tried to learn.
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Skye-N-Rain VIPAdmin
123456789 wrote: Thank you for believing that, it's like encouragement to me, but I still feel I have a long way to go before I should consider myself advanced. It's funny that even though I never liked grammar I have an English grammar exam next week. Hope I'll pass. It was a crazy idea to choose Romanian-English as my major but I think the best way to confront something is to get right through it.



Wow..you know a lot of languages..Just like you, I have a few problems when it comes to some of the languages I learned because I didn't practice and forgot many things.
The worst is Latin where I can only remember the basic even though in high school I used to like translating/reading different texts.
My French was never that good so I can't complain but I'm interested in learning it now because I want to go on vacation there.
Because there weren't many things to watch on national TV, I spent most of my childhood following German channels like RTL, RTL2 or Pro7(prosieben), being mostly attracted to anime but also movies so I soon picked up words and phrases getting to the point that I could understand ~70-80% of the language from TV. Now I have only basic knowledge of it.
I was very good at Spanish (reading and writing well) but that was many years back when my interest spiked because of the only telenovela I could ever watch : Corazon Salvaje. I was obsessed with it to the point that I had every little thing I could get my hands on from posters to magazine interviews, reviews,etc. Learning the language was just the next step in finding new/updated information about it. My universe crashed though with the death of the main actor.
While roaming the internet in search of "knowledge" I also found many Portuguese sites and because I was frustrated that I couldn't understand the language, I started to learn it too. I learned to read it but conversing was another thing..
Soon as that period of my life ended I started/restarted a new obsession : anime. After getting immersed in the universe of Japanese anime, then manga, again anime followed by live-series, I got curious about the culture and history of Asian countries, mainly Japan, so I began taking Japanese lessons.
I started learning Korean because I felt the series were better than the Japanese ones and like others I was impatient when it came to waiting for subtitles. Currently I'm only beginner but I started to understand my series better.
The Chinese language is the hardest language I've ever tried to learn. I can't seem to remember much even though I try my best at it.

About the phrase are hey speaking or barking???..When I first tried learning Chinese I didn't like the language that much because I thought it sounded like they were quarreling. The idea of Chinese language was like using sounds to express something that I usually compared it to screaming in someone's ear. Now I got used to the language but for me Japanese will remain the most melodious language I've ever tried to learn.


Amazing. After reading this, i feel like i'm lacking knowledge.
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Kawaikochan
Alyssakri wrote: Amazing. After reading this, i feel like i'm lacking knowledge.


Me, too, lol. Why didn't I start studying languages earlier?
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Skye-N-Rain VIPAdmin
Yuuichi-chan wrote: Me, too, lol. Why didn't I start studying languages earlier?


Seriously. I learned Spanish in high school and college but not ...well.
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ilovesuperman
My first language is german. Well, actually it's Swiss. but that isnt officially a language. In 4th grade we started to learn french. God, I hated it so much... so I never actually studied for it and ,surprise, barely made it from grade to grade. When we started to take up English in 8th grade I thought I was in hell. I hated it so much. (Well, needless to say I barely passed English as well). For some inexplicable reason (I still think it was the stroke of destiny that slapped me in the face) I decided after 10th grade to study abroad as an exchange student in the US. Best decision ever. I lived in michigan for a year and I picked up the language like it was nothing. Now I am not as opposed to learning languages as before. (I still dislike speaking french and I feel I will never master it. Simply because it was always forced on me and I never really had a choice other that biting through the dry pages of a livre français)
I dont watch TV anymore, only on the internet. And only in English
And for 2 years now also in Korean and JApanese. ^_^
I love korean. And since its a language I really wanna learn i am positive that I will master it someday.... (I am still a bloody beginner though)
But I am excited to learn and in my opinion that is the most important thing when learning a language....
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