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.

I've been learning English initially because I was playing a certain game online years ago and I wanted to be able to communicate with others on there that were speaking English for the most part. then I continued learning out of necessity because I'm a freelance web / app developer and the vast majority of books and other resources on the subject is only available in English.

It was fun learning though, I don't feel like I actually had to put any effort into it.

Hi everyone,

Although I've already made a few posts, I'm new to this great forum and thought I'd leave a short introduction here.

I'm a 33 years old guy from Belgium currently working as a freelance web / app developer.

If you don't already know, Belgium is a multilingual country but my native language is French.

I'm not actively learning any language at the moment, but I plan to pick up a new language at some point as it is something I enjoy doing.

English is my first foreign language that I learned, but I'm past the learning phase now. that is not to say I mastered it and there is nothing more for me to learn, I'm still learning new words sporadically; there is always more to learn, but it's not something I have to actively work on and put efforts into anymore.

I have also learned a couple of other languages (Japanese, Cantonese, Tagalog, Dutch...), but not to the point of fluency. I tend to switch from one language to another because I can't figure out which one I really want to learn.

I'm looking forward to be an active member of this community, and wish you all the best of luck in your language learning endeavor!

Any word containing the "th" sound is difficult for me to pronounce correctly.

There is nothing like it in French (My native language) and I always struggle with its pronunciation.

There are many other things that make an English word difficult to pronounce for me, but this one is the primary cause of my struggle with English pronunciation.

Oh and I almost forgot there is also R's that I apparently just can't pronounce right. Sounds the same to me though, but native speakers tell me it doesn't...

The first word that comes to mind is "quintessential". I don't know what it is about this English word that I like, but it just sounds nice to my ears.

There are many other words that sounds nice, but this is the first one that always comes to mind when asked the question.

The most efficient way for me to learn a language, is with the help of someone who speaks that language fluently. I have a hard time learning a language by myself, but with some assistance it is made easy.

That is very true, having someone whom you can speak the language with helps a lot indeed.

Early this year I tried learning Cantonese; having my now ex girlfriend (She's Chinese) to speak it with helped a lot and I learned more and more efficiently than I probably would have without her.

Admittedly though, I still gave up with it despite having her to help me as I found it hard if not impossible for me to get the language's pronunciation consistently correct.

Under the right circumstances, Google translate can be very useful but you shouldn't rely on it to give you 100% accurate translations.

It can however give you a good idea of what the text you're trying to translate says.

Personally, I very rarely use it as English is my most used foreign language and i'm completely fluent in English, so translating it to my native language would be redundant as I understand English just as well. In fact, the translation would certainly be more confusing to understand.

The rare times I use it is when I need to understand any other language; as I stated though this is a rare occurrence but when it happens Google translate comes in very handy.

I don't forget words in my native language; not that I have noticed anyways. However, when speaking in my native language (French) I tend to mix up English words with it that sound similar without even noticing that I do until people point it out and correct me.

Personally online tutorials and learning the way it's typically done in schools is of not much help to me. I always did very poorly at languages learning way back when I was still in school, but very good at it when doing it my own way.

For me, past the basic vocabulary learning, what's most efficient is simply interacting with people online in the language I'm trying to learn. Be it on forums, chat rooms, an online game or Skype (I suppose it would be even better if you could live for a while in a country where they speak the language you're trying to learn, but not everyone can afford that), and reading books / articles that interest me and simply look it up online when I come across a word or expression I'm unfamiliar with. At least this is how I went from hardly understanding anything in English and badly failing at it in school to becoming completely fluent in the language within a relatively short period of time.

So, what works best for you ?

I like American accents (I know there is several different accents in the U.S, but I can hardly differentiate them for the most part. I don't have a good ear for accents...)

Accents from other English speaking countries are difficult for me to understand for some reasons. For example I can watch anything on a American TV channel and understand absolutely everything as if it was my native language, but if I do the same thing with a British or Australian channel it all sounds like gibberish to me. I'll only understand every other word if even that.

French speaking Belgian here.

You won't notice much of a difference beside the accent (Which can vary from one region to another in Belgium) and some French-Canadian words and expressions that doesn't exist here but will be understood either way for the most part.

It's much like the difference between American English and British English.