Is English your first language?

[SurvivALIST]

"American" English is definitely my first language. As anonymous as I remain, I can tell you that it's quite annoying that my parents taught me to speak a language not of our own but I couldn't even understand their dialect or birth language [not the main one]. I'm a curious child but if it's like with barriers, it's quite helpless for me to reach out and cross it. So yeah, I'm bilingual but never trilingual.

[VibrantFox]

is english my first language? unfortunately yes...

the only language i've learned outside of it tho is spanish but i'd like to learn more

[oshirockingham]

English is my fourth language.

[AilyneGouveia]

dammmn ! I didn't know you talk so much different languages
That's impressive !

For me English is my third language, first one is German and second French, but i speak and understand French and german at the same lvl since my mom is German and my father French \o/

[mlocik97]

Does JavaScript count as language in this thread? (joke)

Well, I'm from Slovakia, so I learned langs in this order:

1. Slovak
2. Czech
3. English

[Llyrel]

Nope, my first language is Italian and English is my second! Still, I write the comic directly in English because I find it easier compared to writing in Italian first and then translating it, especially when it comes to puns (which would be nearly impossible to translate anyway)

As for other languages: I can read/understand spoken French 'cos I studied it in middle school, but I pretty much forgot everything about writing it. I also have some VERY basic knowledge of Swedish thanks to University + some self-teaching

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

Question for the folks for whom English is a second/third/fourth/whatever language: Was it a nightmare to learn? Because like I said, I'm a native English speaker, and even I know that English is a trash fire of a language. It's so confusing and inconsistent, an utter junk drawer of grammar and vocabulary looted from other languages, and I'm grateful I didn't have to try to learn it.

What were your experiences learning it? Was it as problematic as it seems like it would be?

[mcarrowolga]

No. My first language is Russian. English is just a language I learned at school as a kid.

[Ranty-cat]

Well, my country made English a compulsory subject. Thus, I was unable to avoid it even if I desired to. However, I always loved this subject the most for some reason. Perhaps, it was due to the reason that most of my favorite shows /cartoon series were in English. Plus, reading comics was another major hobby of mine and it still is. Most of them were all in English.

Ngl it still took time to reach a certain level..

[surenlicious]

Nope, my first language is Dutch. It was easy for me to learn though, I really thought it sounded beautiful whenever I heard it so I wanted to learn it. Writing stories and RPing about helped me improve a lot.

[noenoh]

Long rant here hahaha

Summary

to say its a nightmare is to say a nice word to it (in my experience). Im only learning it just because its a forced international language (why we dont just use esperanto as international one? why?) the worst part for me is the pronounciation. I also been bullied by usonians when beginning to learn and trying it on forums fffff another reason I dont do livestreams.
My heads shortcircuits when I see misspellings like wrong use or your, your's, you're (ive seen a lot of these here in the forums ugh have mercy!)
Ive found that Im dyslexic in english but not in any other language.

My native language is Spanish so it made me it easer to learn (basic) japanese, italian, latin and currently armenian (even tho I can understand reading: portuguese, french and other romance languages). I use japanese for work and I knwo I have native pronounciation, my italian pronounciation ys good except for some words I still miss the accent?? since I dont use it except with certain ppl. For japanese and armenian the only difficultity is the scripture system but not that much.

Spanish is a rich language and when I want to translate something to english it lacks of the proper vocabulary to make it more beautiful (and Ive been surprised on people in internet calling "obscure vocabulary" to fancy words that are actually kind of common use in Spanish) of course there are lots of things can only have deep or beautiful meaning in English (as every language has their special way to say things). English also have a lot of made up words born almost every month and I need to keep up (thank you Urban Dictionary)

Anyways, as i said in my first reply to this thread Ive avoided learing it when young and now it made me it more difficult to learn as an adult (my fault here) so Ive only reached CERF B1+ level for reading/writing/listening not speaking

[EncryptedWriting]

It is my first language, but I still struggle to say/write it. >>

[Ranty-cat]

Oh dang. This is so relatable. Especially the Urban dictionary thing.

[Kuma]

Spanish is my native language, English is my second language and I can understand Italian (More or less)

[SleepingPoppy]

Hey! As a fellow dyslexic that specifically struggled with learning any kind of second language, I strongly recommend Sign Language. It's extremely intuitive. I mean, I recommend it to everybody, but in my experience it really jived with the dyslexia, while I pretty much bombed any attempt at other languages. Even finger spelling wasn't bad. =)

[Crimson_B]

I'm in awe of all of you who have English as your third or fourth language! That's incredible, especially to be writing a novel/comic in that language English is my first language. I did two other languages in school, but unfortunately I have bad memory and lose interest quickly so I never actually learnt much I can barely English properly at this point

[Ranty-cat]

Thanks to all the native speakers for understanding our struggles.

[Crimson_B]

As someone whose mother tongue is English, I think you're really good at it. As a child, I always used to try and pronounce the words on my own without ever finding out if the pronunciation was correct, which led to me being an adult who mispronounces some words it is quite difficult to unlearn. However, can I ask you how you managed to learn so many languages? I'm genuinely astounded and curious because my brain is like a sieve most of the time so I find it difficult to learn a different language.

[Kura]

Broken ass English is my first language because my parent both didn't know English well when I was a kid, but expected me to just... magically learn it at school??? Where they would teach in both English and French??? (I didn't realize I was going back and forth from French and English words for a long time) Also they wouldn't talk to me at home in their language only in their broken ass English because they didn't want me learning their language because 'if you speak something else you get picked on or shot' but would talk to everyone else in their language so no mater where I was I could never keep up with the conversations. (I still have a lot of trouble keeping up)

I'm terrible at all my languages I should know 3, technically 4. 2 from my parents, they are both immigrants from different countries, and 2 from the country, since the country I'm in has 2 official languages but honestly no one could be bother to learn French past it being mandatory in school if they're not in a French province.

[oshirockingham]

I think I've said that before, maybe you were possessed by a goldfish that time
And also, you're impressive as well!