leafy

Do you think you're making good progress with Rosetta Stone? I just started a few days ago (also Dutch) and I am a bit skeptical about the whole approach. Anyway, welcome to the forum!

I'm sure I have somewhat of an accent. But it has happened to me on two occasions now that I spoke to someone from England for a few minutes and they asked me something like "You're from England, right?". So apparently I can hide my accent long enough so that people I just met don't pick up on it.

I guess it depends on how you define "learning a language". If I were to define it as getting to a level of fluency where you can understand native speakers and native speakers can understand you, then my answer would be English. Mastering a language is quite a different story though. There is an immense amount of vocabulary in English, that most non-natives will never use nor need. Mastering your pronunciation is probably pretty hard as well, depending on your native language.

For me it's definitely speaking (and listening). If I'm writing I have way more time to think about word choices, grammar etc., whereas everything needs to be fast while speaking. Reading is easier than listening to me, partly for the same reason, but also because I don't need to identify single words from the mumbling of some native speaker.

This is not directly related to learning languages, but I figured there might be a few people here that know something on the subject. Is anyone able to write (Greggs-) shorthand? Did you learn it on your own? How long did it take you to become "fluent" to some degree?

While I have never used any of the "unimportant" words, I don't think they are a big deal. They are just the kind of words that usually stick around for a few years at most and then disappear again. There is nothing anyone can do about, so just sit back and ignore them.