DiesIrae

Not yet. Within a year, I'd be moving to the US though to get married. I might also have to work with phones, talking to people so I guess that will exercise my tongue in the American accent. I'm not that worried though because I did work in customer service talking to Americans. I'm more excited about learning to live in the culture itself which can be very different from what I'm used to.

You can take advantage of Skype and other online communication tools to talk with someone who speaks the language. You can also chat with them so you won't forget how to write in the language. Of course the first challenge in this is you'd have to find the people who speak the language you studied first, and just like culture, their interests can vary much.

Totally overuse it D:. This stems from my being a regular in an IRC chat when I was younger. I kept on using it over the years especially with my online friends that it bled into my chats with friends I've had outside of chats. It can be weird because I can chat properly but using lol and its variants sort of make me sound like a troll or something.

I love books in English, especially those that deal with messed up people. I like reading Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, because he likes going for the shock factor. It can be soo weird and graphic that it can be uncomfortable to read for some. I love Edgar Allan Poe and his short stories for being creepy although he can also write non-creepy stuff like "The Spectacles" which is funny. For the classics, I like Fyodor Dostoevsky English translations because he has characters I can relate to.

Sure, it can be effective. But this mostly depends on the effort you are putting in. Most of the time, you learn at your own pace and some will learn more or less than you would, exactly for this reason. If you are using all the resources available, plus if you try to talk with people who are proficient or learning the language you are interested in, it will surely be more effective.

Esperanto as a concept is nice. But ultimately, you'd have to think about the people who want to learn different language and their reasons for picking one. Most would say it's to learn more about the culture and the people of the language, with hopes of being able to converse with it. It also works in a circular manner in that learning more of the culture/people leads to a greater motivation of learning the language.

I am not much into poetry but one particular poem stuck with me for several years now. It's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot.

Here's a link: http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam312/prufrock.html

I don't know what about it exactly that speaks to me. I think it's the indecisiveness of the character, the social fears he has, all beautifully described with imagery that touches me. I love flaws in characters and I think J. Alfred Prufrock is one very flawed individual.

People here have problems with P and F. It makes me giggle when someone says cellpone instead of using the F sound. You would also have another person saying peenix instead of phoenix. It's not that bad. We don't really have F in our language anyway.

It would probably be good to set up the context in why we feel the way we do when someone takes notice of the way we talk. In the Philippines, if your English sounds gets a bit too funky, people make fun of you. What makes it weird is while English is used widely in the Philippines, not many would have what they think might pass for an American accent (or something very similar to the native ear). In any case, I don't really care much about what people think, just that people should try to express themselves the best way they can should be enough.

I can't agree that english is a hard language to learn. I fluently speak english after no courses at all, just talking with people over the internet through forums and multiplayer games. When i encountered a word i didn't know, i looked it up on a dictionary.

It did cause some problems for me now, tho. I use english MORE than my home language, Polish which leads to the fact that i often loose words and end up saying something stupid. Or actually knowing what a word means and being able to explain it in english, but not knowing the polish translation.

Don't feel so bad. In my country, the Philippines, we have mostly become dependent on English that any Tagalog equivalent of science or mathematic terms are virtually unknown to the populace. Even words that might have been commonly used a few generations back would be replaced by English words, if the person haven't really talked much in what we call "hardcore" Tagalog.

Before I became dependent on the internet for most things, I used to check Merriam-Webster dictionary for unfamiliar words. Those come in very cheap, pocket-sized versions I brought to school just to have an edge over the other students. Lately, it's just google. I still see Merriam Webster online although I usually use Free Dictionary these days.

You don't have to use them.  You only really need to know what they are and what they mean. It's weird if someone complains to you about being called a b-word or a c-word or even a motherfleeeper and you don't really know what they mean. Basically the same reason why you'd learn the other words too.

Yeah, dealbreaker. I mostly communicate with people who speak my language and English. I can't afford to change my whole life just for a language. I'm sure it can work if someone funds my living in Japan. Otherwise, no. I'll stick with learning casually. It will take longer but at least I'm not sacrificing a lot.

Thanks! I'm not that concerned though. I don't really think they'd take points off anyway for not having perfect American English accent. At least it's on my list of things to do now. Heh.

Being a non-native speaker, I didn't encounter Shakespeare as a required reading. I didn't even get classes where Shakespeare was required in college. That said, I tried reading them myself since there were lots of library in campus and I didn't really appreciate it much. I knew the words but I can't understand the phrases, the imagery used much. I only started appreciating it when someone suggested me to read it out loud and then it started to click a bit. Also helped when I started watching them on plays.

I only care about it if I can't express myself well enough. I'll echo what Adobo said. It's not really about how people think about the way I talk, it just bothers me that I can't get my point straight, especially if I strongly want to communicate it to present company.

One time I did care about it a bit was when I came home from studying in the city. My sister was saying that I had a snotty city accent which wasn't really something bad, I was just annoyed that she was making a big deal out of it.

For words with familiar pronunciations, I just google the word and usually the dictionary hits would also show a pronunciation guide. As for my English pronunciation, I train on it by singing English songs or rap. Rap can be fun, just pick a song that's not highly inappropriate.

I like capitalisations. It satisfies my need to be organised in my writings and can be used to show I'm serious about the point I'm making. Granted, this is generalising but I'm so used to it, as you are with not really liking capitalisation.

I don't think I would blame the digital age for making us lazy to mind our spellings. I think we're just more aware of our failings because everyone posts in the internet. Think about it, the spelling standards are relatively new to our history (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html).

That said, people should use the red squiggly lines under misspelled words.

French hmmmmm. You can say the silliest things in it, even stuff that do not make sense and it will make me melt. Check this video, it sounds so cool even though it's mostly standard words/phrases. 

Foux da Fafa

I love Scottish and Australian accent. Well, I like Scottish as long as one doesn't sound very similar to Sean Connery. I love Ashley Brown's accent on America's Next Top Model British Invasion. I have cousins who grew up in Australia and it makes me giggle when they're talking. So adorable!

For the written language, I giggle when I see people use alot. I know there's "allot" which means to allocate. And there's a lot, means means, well you know! I've used alot before but only when my finger misses the space bar. Anyway, for those who are having problems with it, here's a funny blog about the "alot".

Movies and shows help me out by giving the pronunciation and then being used in ordinary sentences that aren't being introduced in language lessons. It also gives me an idea of the social context of which some words are used. So, it's really a mixed bag of learning.

Sure. It does immensely help me when people talk naturally. Of course, with any foreign language I don't know, I would appreciate it if they have subtitles xD. The first time I was attracted to foreign languages was when local TVs were releasing foreign series. I would go to the internet and then find the original version with subtitles.

English is pretty much used here as a second language so it was more imposed of society. As for other languages, I'm having problems thinking of a way to effectively learn one by myself. Do any of you guys use a structure for which you learn new languages in?