Permidian

My favorite thing about learning a new language is that moment when you realize that you're finally able to communicate in said language without having to look up every other word in a dictionary. When what once sounded like gibberish is now as clear as if it was your native language.

I had English class when I was in high school, however I never really paid attention and never studied. It just bored me back then (Maybe it was just the way they taught us) and I never learned much (In fact my teacher pretty much told me I suck and I'll never learn). What actually got me to learn English is simply having access to internet later on when I was 19. I learned the language by myself through communicating with people online.

I don't know about British English being more refined, but what I do know is I can barely understand British people when they are talking. Maybe it's just me though but while I have no problem understanding Americans in general, British people on the other hand are difficult to understand. I just understand every other word if even that. It's the way they pronounce words.

Personally, I wish English was the official language in every country (I'm not saying that because it's my native language - it's not) but because just having one universal language would make everything so practical. This to me is much more important than trying to preserve an obsolete language. Anyone wanting to learn the language for cultural history is still free to, much like there are still people learning Latin. It just makes sense for society to abandon a language over time in favor of a more significant one.

I always watch English movies with English subtitles. There is always parts I don't understand, when characters are speaking fast, with an accent or just not very clearly. I set the subtitles in English rather than in my native language because I can perfectly read English, and it disturbs me when the subtitles doesn't match the audio exactly.

The way I built up English vocabulary (It's not my native language) is by simply picking up books that are of interest to me in English rather than in my native language and whenever there is a word I didn't know, I looked it up in an online dictionary. I found it very effective for learning vocabulary. Other than that, I was chatting with people online on a daily basis. Unfortunately it's not as easy to find people to talk with when you're not living somewhere where the language you want to learn is widely spoken, which I suppose would be even better than chatting with people, but while that didn't help with pronunciation it sure did with vocabulary and spelling.

Some funny sounding English words that comes to mind to me is ""nincompoop", "canoodle", "lollygag" and "flabbergasted" I don't know what it is about these words I find funny though, it just is

I just couldn't take seriously anyone saying such a thing. It may not be absolutely necessary, but English is very important nowadays no mater what country you live in. Personally I couldn't live without it. I need it for my work (I'm a freelance web / app developer, most resources you can find on programming languages and such is all in English and I work internationally), all the websites I use is in English and the many people I communicate with on internet is done in English. Also I like traveling, knowing English makes communication so much easier wherever in the world you go.

I know a Filipino girl who speak 5 languages completely fluently (Tagalog, English, French, Spanish, Italian). Needless to say, she was less than impressed about me being only bilingual. Unsurprisingly she's also one of the most successful person I've ever met; she's only in her late 20's and could retire already if she wanted to.

Glad my post was useful to someone. Hopefully it will help you as much as it helped me with American English pronunciation. It's by far the best pronunciation tutorials I've ever found on American English. Also here is the direct youtube channel with all the videos if anyone prefer that rather than watch them directly on the website : http://www.youtube.com/user/rachelsenglish

If I ever have children (Which is not very likely though), I would teach them both French and English. French because it's my native language and most likely would be theirs too. And English because it's so widely used that it's really a must to speak English if you ever want to visit other countries, work or learn abroad and also there is so much resources in English online and in books for pretty much anything that isn't as easily available in other languages.

Speaking is definitely much harder than either reading or writing, it's not even close. I can read and write completely fluently in English since years, but i'm still struggling with pronunciation! Thankfully my best friend is American, and she helps me a lot with my pronunciation as well as my understanding (Which can be even harder than speaking depending on the accent). She makes a point of speaking English exclusively when we're together, which is pretty much every day, and corrects me when I'm pronouncing something wrong; it has helped improve both my understanding and pronunciation tremendously.

http://www.rachelsenglish.com/ Firstly I want to say I'm not affiliated to this website in any way. I don't visit the website much, but I do follow the youtube channel and watch all the American English pronunciation tutorial videos regularly posted there. I find the videos very useful to perfect my pronunciation so just thought I'd share and post the link here.

I speak French and English fluently. Italian and Spanish I can understand most of it, but I don't really speak it. It's similar enough to French for me to understand a good part of it. I know a few other languages but only the basic stuff really (Cantonese, Tagalog, Dutch, Japanese...). I tend to learn a language for a few months then lose interest in it and move on to another one. I just can't decide on which one I want to stick with.

I definitely have an obvious French accent when speaking English. I don't mind though, at least when I was visiting the US women seemed to love it! They would always tell me it sounds so charming. Anyways, everyone has an accent. You may not hear it when speaking your native language as to you it's the norm but everyone has one.