7mo ago

It's amazing so many people are able to use English as a second language.

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No amount of exceptions and quirks will prevent you from learning any language as long as you have lots and lots of exposure. After your reach a certain base level you just keep improving as you use the language, and even the exceptions start to feel natural.
English is the only language other than my mother tongue I have achieved this level with. I'd like to think at least in writing it's indistinguishable from a native speaker. Theoretically tho German should be easier for me as I'm Dutch. But my German never reached the same level because of the difference in exposure
- My native language is a Slavic one but I can't fucking learn Polish because the language is just too fucking funny to me.
  It's like how English speakers think Dutch is funny but turned up to 11.
  
  The Slavic languages are interesting but I don't know a lot about them. It must be amusing to be aware of the various levels of mutual intelligibility. Do you know any jokes Eastern Europeans make about this among themselves?
  
  The one reason that Polish is so funny to me is the amount of homophones between it and my native language with vastly different meanings.
  One of the funniest being:
  Szukać - To look for (Polish)
  Šukať - To fuck (Slovak, improper/slang)
  Both pronounced the same way.
  
  They are not pronounced the same way, the Polish word always has the extra spit at the end
  
  What?
  
  THEY ARE NOT PRONOUNCED THE SAME WAY, THE POLISH WORD ALWAYS HAS THE EXTRA SPIT AT THE END
  
  WHEN SOMEONE ASKS YOU WHAT YOU MEAN YOU SHOULD PROBABLY ELABORATE INSTEAD OF JUST REPEATING IT IN ALL CAPS.
  
  !woooosh@lemmy.world
  
  It wasn't even a joke, they explained what they meant later.
  
  There's an s' sound at the end of szikac' which is different from t'
  
  They're technically different but extremely similar sounds.
  
  I assure you that Ukrainian is going to be just as funny to you, because we did loan like a third of our vocabulary from Polish. And another third is homophones, so you can have two layers of the broken phone game
  
  Oh no.
  If I ever get interested in Ukrainian it's over for me.
  
  Lovely. I used to have a Ukrainian coworker and she overheard me use the word 'zoeken' (search) and she thought I was swearing as I didn't pronounce the 'n' strongly
  
  As a Ukrainian, I can almost understand written Polish and Belarusian despite not speaking either. Spoken Polish tho... good luck
- For me personally, German is really easy as I have been born German. Have you tried that as well?
  
  Actually no, but I'll try as soon as I have the opportunity. Thanks for the advice!
  
  I'm German, born and raised, but in Saarland. One time when visiting a friend in Berlin, I was at a bar and got a compliment on how good my German is even tho I'm obviously a foreigner.
  
  That is damn funny. I don't think we have the same thing in the UK as while we have many accents, they are so unique they sound nothing like any foreigner. I guess German accents can sound similar to foreigners speaking German?
  
  Our accent is so thick that I can talk to my buddy and nobody around us can follow the conversation if they don't speak it. It's kinda neat lol
- I live 30km from the French border, I had 10 years worth of French classes at school. I always hated it, but I did an extra-curriculum to acquire a diploma because a classmate and friend of mine didn't want to do it alone. My French is in a weird spot: I cannot form a proper sentence, but I understand listening exercises and written text well. I recently started to go through some French lessons on Duolingo and I'm already struggling with the sentences it expects me to form in unit 8...
  
  It's probably because you had a lot of exposure but insufficient engagement. I should probably have mentioned this in my original comment. You kind of developed a one way mastery of the language. Exposure will get you there after you get to a certain level but to get there you need lots of practice
- I'm also Dutch and honestly I think part of it is the amount of subtitled English tv I watched when I was young. I tried the same with German struggled finding things to watch.
  If you look at Germany or France they often dub over stuff while we subtitle everything.
  
  It's completely unwatchable with voice dubs isn't it? I don't get how anyone puts up with it
  I've had family tell me The Emperor's New Groove is actually great with Dutch dubs but the title in Dutch just translates to "Emperor Cuzco". No one is gonna convince me most jokes don't get lost in translation when the first time it happens is in the title!
- I know what you mean. When I learned Dutch (as a German) I got close to this state quickly but after I finished uni I left the Netherlands and my Dutch has deteriorated a lot.
- Besides “tho” for “though”, soundin’ hella native brah 😎
  
  I use tho instead of though as a native, although I think I might only actually do it at the end of sentences, tho. I'm not actually sure I use though during a sentence
  I was raised bilingual, and spent most of my life in the UK
  
  Me too!
  Sounded out of place after “theoretically” tho
  
  I agree, although I would'nt've noticed they weren't a native if they didn't mention it
  
  One hunnit
  
  it's normal for natives to use "tho" in place of "though" but it's a pretty casual way of writing it that, to me at least, seems quite out of place with the rest of the comment
  
  American English is not the only native English
- Have you tried french?
  Qu'est-ce que c'est ? C'est un ver sur un mur, qui murmure des vers à côté d'un ver vert.
  Then there are 98 conjugations of every verb, and 98 different groups of verbs.
  Oiseau.

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