MrHurricane89

I think it is very valuable knowledge to know and practice at least one foreign language, possibly even two. The language choices should be ones that you can regularly or professionally use. Or ones you can tie into your hobby, for example if you watch Japanese anime, then you can actively use Japanese language to watch those even without subtitles.

I think this can help with listening exercises, especially if you intentionally listen for words and read the lyrics along with the songs.

I only use shortcuts when I want to send the message very quickly, and even then only the most common abbreviations and shortcuts such as "u" instead of "you". I don't invent new shortcuts or use less common ones, as I wouldn't want to decipher such messages, either.

In Hungary, English or German is mandatory in elementary school, from grade 4-5 (out of 8 grades). If you want to study at an university, it is mandatory to have at least one certified B1-class exam. For 80-90% of the student this language is English. Actual use of English is another thing; most of us don't even want to watch foreign series or movies with English language, only if no other option is available. Even then most people use fan-translated version of subtitles.

It depends on many factors, such as what I'm reading, what is its purpose (I can read entertaining literature much faster than technical books), and of course, the language. In Hungarian I can read quite fast, but in English I sometimes stop to look up a few words or phrases in a dictionary, which slows down my reading.

I think that I could prepare some elementary school or highschool kids for their exams, using their books as a base to go by. But I couldn't teach English by myself without any real guidance, for example if someone came to me simply stating that he wants to learn English from me, I wouly find it very hard without him giving me any book or simialr resource of his to go by.

The Hungarian language has an amazingly huge vocabulary of swearing and tons of derogatory words and phrases. We have at least 5 words which can be replacements of the "universal 4-letter F-word" in English.

In the high school I attended in Hungary learning a third language  next to Hungarian and English was required. I could choose from German, French or Spanish. German was my choice, although the teaching proved to be horribly inefficient, as we mostly wrote word list exams, and didn't really focus on grammar. Also she didn't even teach us in the second half of senior year, we just played games and quizes.. in Hungarian!

So I think German should be offered as a second or third language, but with proper focus on actually teaching it, and more focus on grammar than just learning some vocabulary.

I believe they can be quite helpful, but only if they supplement real tutoring or studying at a language school. For me, I can't really imagine trying to study any language without real, in-person tutoring.

In e-mails, it annoys me because people should take their time at least a little bit when writing e-mails. It is not like chat where you just send messages quickly and without too much thought on spelling and grammar, so e-mails should be decently written.

In messaging and chat it doesn't annoy me as long as I can decipher the message without looking up what the shortcuts mean.

We started learning English in elementary school, when I was about 8-9 years old. When I got my computer and I got into Computer Roleplaying Games, I had to use a dictionary and look up many words to understand what those games were about and how to progress in them.

I'm currently studying German as a third language after Hungarian and English, I started recently, and I find it quite hard so far without a teacher, on my own.

As a hearing impaired person, I find speaking and listening the hardest.

Writing is a lot easier, although sometimes, especially when writing business or inquiry letters, I have to look up the accepted phrases and words online.

Reading comes the easiest for me.

I agree with most of the above, Google Translate is a good tool for individual words and short sentences, but not for idioms and expressions.

What I don't like about it when people ask me to help them in doing something on the internet, and I can't understand their Hungarian version of what they are speaking about. When I try asking for clarification, they tell me it's translated with this tool. This is the part where I don't like this tool, as it can be very hard to understand translated websites, because most of them are horribly wrong.

Example from Ebay:

Shipping cost -> "Hajózási költség" which has nothing to do with the cost of shipping as item, because Google Translate takes "shipping" literally as something to do with ships.

Some of my favourites form an online game: "You couldn't keep the keep!" and "The keep is yours, keep it!"

It means that if you chooose your GW2 game to be in German, for example, then you can press and hold right CTRL button to temporarily switch back to English, as long as the buttonis held.

This translates all text in-game, with the exception of player chat. For example, if you are learning German, and you don't understand what does the item's tooltip say, you hold right CTRL to switch to English so that you can clarify its meaning. Same goes for Non-Player Character conversations, skill tooltips, menus and etc.

It's not a real-time translation, instead just a switch between English and another language text.

I just can't get over that people always mix up "lose" and "loose", and when I try to explain it to them, they insist that "loose" means that they lost something, and don't even seem to know about the word with one O letter in it.

Also the other one is when they confuse "attain" and "obtain", and they say they obtained a diploma or some degree in 2007 or so.. what, did you buy a fake diploma or did you attain it by studying?

I have been watching movies with English language and accompanying English subtitles for about 6-7 years. I noticed that it really helped expanding my English vocabulary, especially when I could just pause the movie while looking up an expression, idiom or a word which I didn't understand.

Now I'm at that stage where if the movie is voiced in Hungarian, but sub is in English, I read and comprehend the subtitle faster than the voice actors finish their lines.

I only use "lol" when I want to express that it's not (that) funny, because I think this acronym has lost its real meaning long ago. It is way too overused, and most of the times doesn't really mean that the person who wrote LOL really found something funny.

There is an online RPG called Guild Wars 2, which has an interesting feature, that may be related to learning languages.

The feature is the following: if you are using a language other than English, you can press and hold right Control button to switch to english on-the-fly, without going into the game menu or restarting it. Releasing the button reverts it into your language.

What do you think of this, would you like to see this feature in more games, and in movie subtitles if possible?

My mother tongue is Hungarian, and I try not to mix in any English woeds while speaking it, but I noticed recently that sometimes I really have to think hard before speaking, because some expressions and words usually come at me easier in English than in Hungarian.