Is English your first language?

[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!

[Llyrel]

Well, learning the basics in school wasn't much of a nightmare: English is a compulsory subject here, so I've been studying it since I was, like... 9? The grammar was never -that- difficult to me... but then again, my native language is Italian, we have verbs with suffixes that change with each pronoun, we have a ridiculous amount of articles and we randomly assign genders to inanimate objects, so I guess my perspective on what's meant to be difficult is kinda skewed

What WAS difficult, though, was learning stuff like slang and chatspeak. I found that the best way to learn quickly was to spend time on forums and chatting with other native speakers... however, not everyone I talked to seemed to be aware that slang terms, abbreviations, acronyms and chatspeak can be VERY difficult to understand for a non-native speaker. I wasn't aware of the existence of Urban Dictionary back then, so when I saw people saying stuff like "LMAO", "ROTFL", "BRB", "wut" and so on and so forth I used to get extremely confused XD false friends were also another can of worms of their own. Even to this day, there are sentences I know how to use in an English-speaking context... but have absolutely NO IDEA how to translate in Italian :'D

Pronunciation was/is also incredibly hard and one of the things I'm still very self-conscious about. The fun thing is that, despite the fact that my entire school career was focused on learning British English, I have a much easier time understanding American English. Though I guess Youtube, videogames and in part movies are to blame for that :'D

[noenoh]

Im not fluent, I only understand them and be on survival mode if in overseas...

Summary

First of all, Im old af, so Ive some had time for it xD

Since I speak Spanish(and I LOVE IT), a romance language, it share many roots with other romance ones so it makes easier to understand and remember (cheat!). Spanish also have a lot of unaltered Latin and greek words (cheat! cheat!!) the grammar is similar too so you jsut need to focus on the conjugations. (Plus I had some books in italian and french I tried to understand on my own when I was a kid and there were also lots of portuguese influence with the brazilian soap operas and their super nice songs my mom used to watch hahaha I love you Roberto Carlos lolololol about that, many artists used to sing their won hits in various languages so its a common thing for latinx people to share our roots).
With japanese, I should thanks my weabo side, and I learned it from a japanese native teacher (basic level) so I can survive in Japan (also the vowels and consonants have the same pronounciation as in Spanish lol)
For Armenian, Im just recently studying it for my story purposes, so I have a reason/passion to do it. Sadly I havent found much time to do it if Im trying to keep English practice as well oTL and their scripture system is something I need to give proper time. I want to reach at least a survival level on it.
For English... as I said, its mostly because its the forced karenish language to use and I need it for work irl too and currently for my story since Im aiming to be seen more than only for Spanish readers. So its out of a necessity...

I think you can learn almost any language that is related to your native one or one taht shares similar pronounciations. Ive heard for English language native speaker Chinese its easier to learn (spoken)

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.

I feel you on that!! ToT it happens with English for me. Public schools didnt have the best english teachers back in my time (since we were just being freed of the communist system when I was in highscool and they hated anything that was related to USA so the teachers werent properly trained so most of us were self taught) so it wasnt until we had access to internet we could get more exposure to media in the original language than just dubbed/translated one.
If you ever try to learn Spanish, dont worry if you mispronounce some words, we will understand you and help you if needed. We know the conjugations and gendered words are difficult for more a lot of foreigners.
Keep curious and dont be afraid to fail. Natives loves when people who tries to learn their language.
Thats the real communication/understanding between humans the wish to understand each other.

[noenoh]

Urban Dictionary dudes will have a special place in Heaven
They have saved me a lot

[vothnthorvaldson]

3d in order of learning
2d best (or less bad) in term of skills
1st in term of use. At this point, I can't speak properly my birth language, and my English is still very approximative, so I factually don't have a good language anymore

[sorible]

Korean is my first language and so when we moved states and I went to school, I learned English from books, games, other people, etc. It was a lot easier for me to pick it up because I was younger. Even living in America for so long, I still mispronounce words like "pomegranate" and "latte".

Sometimes I go back into my korean accent again without realizing it which sometimes makes others(strangers) think I'm bad at English. I remember giving a presentation in an online class and I'm pretty sure everyone was super confused.

[NickRowler]

My first language is English but I have dyslexia, so I am not the best at it.

I do also know some Japanese and German but not enough to hold a conversation.