agentzero

It sounds classier and more sophisticated when it's John Cleese who's speaking. Hearing Cockney or Scouse accent makes wonder if they even speak English. American accent for me. Well, except that southern accent they have. Not a fan of Boston accent either.

Their English is just... I see your point. Anyway, do you try to watch an American or English show with English subtitles? Or do you watch them with Italian subtitles?

I think I've mentioned this in another thread and while I do agree that reading can be useful, it can also be discouraging. I tried to read my first book in English when I was 15 and it wasn't even that hard of a book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows), but I was stumped most of the time and had to pull things out of context or just simply read in front of the computer and google things I don't understand. This turned me off from reading in English for a while (~10 years) and I started to watch movies and TV shows with English subtitles instead. Only after so much later, I have finally decided to go back and try to read another book in English and this time it was incredibly easy (the book was Gunslinger, by Stephen King, first part of Dark Tower series) and I have actually felt a little silly for not trying again sooner.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King. It's the first book in his Dark Tower series and I think it's the shortest, but even if it was the longest I would have breezed through because it was very interesting, but also because I have underestimated my abilities to read English. I had a bad experience before when I "read" Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. There was some dispute with the publishers and word got out that they wouldn't be translating it to Serbian and I got really bummed and then I got really optimistic when I thought I could read it in English. I could comprehend what was happening just fine, but I wouldn't call it an enjoyable book reading experience as I was having to pause and go look for translations of certain words online.

I think they can help anyone, but I won't generalize like that. In the beginning I was watching English and American movies with Serbian subtitles, but with years and my increased in knowledge, I slowly changed them to English. Around that time I also started to read books in English and that was immensely helpful as well. I've noticed recently that I rarely even put on subtitles when watching a movie or a TV show, now they just get distracting. Unless, of course, I'm watching The Walking Dead. Then I have to use subtitles because those people don't speak the way normal people do.

You're right, you're right. I went a little over the top because my girlfriend majored in French and I took it one year in college as well (she gave me lessons on the side) and I never thought fondly of that language.

There's a similar expression in Serbian "Bolje vrabac u ruci nego golub na grani" which roughly translates to "Better a sparrow in hand than a pigeon on a branch" and I think it makes the whole thing a little clearer. Kinda weird to think what somebody would do with either a sparrow or a pigeon though.

It can get diluted, for sure, especially after several translations. Most of the time the original sense can be retained, although in a different shape. I remember seeing somebody doing this funny experiment where they would take a simple sentence, put it through a translator and work their way through say ten languages and then circle back to the original one. Some were way too hilarious mishaps, but most of the time the sentence retained its meaning.

I mainly translate between Serbian and English and usually it's pretty bad. When I have large chunks to translate, I would just rather translate the stuff myself. I used to do this thing where I would translate the text via the app and then correct the mistakes manually. Not fun. Truth be told, it would probably take a lot of time to make a reliable translator app that can translate few paragraphs and still have them make sense. Like @Miya said, online translators are only good for when you can't find the word you're looking for.

Like everyone else already said - no, you shouldn't rely on a language learning app if you want to learn language. They can often be clunky and in my opinion, nothing replaces a good teacher. Sometimes you'll want to ask a question and it'll take you some time to find out for yourself using an app. Although, I will concede that language learning apps can be useful for practice. As a matter of fact, it would probably be beneficial to practice in that way.

I'm going to get a lot of hate, but don't go for French. I personally have a dislike for the language, mainly because there appear to be no rules (this is the part where I get the hate). Follow your heart man, if you really like Japanese culture so much, chances are you'll probably want to move there one day or at least visit it, maybe live for few months, who knows.

What's with this crazy influx of Serbs all of a sudden? haha It depends on the situation, if I'm speaking in English I'll probably get angry in English and vice versa. Although I have caught myself swearing in Serbian when I get a little tipsy and angry in English.

I've added some in Serbian, but they are in Serbian Latin (we have two scripts and use there equally, although in recent years Latin has been overcoming Cyrilic) and hope that's not a problem. There's one really long one and it's a literal translation, but that is also a common saying in Serbian, so I hope that's okay.

Lets add some Serbian into the mix: pas (dog): av-av mačka (cat): mjau (read as myow) petao (rooster): kukuriku kokoška (hen): p-ka koza (goat): bee-e-e-e krava (cow): muuuu žaba (frog): kree-kree

I feel like I definitely should be embarrassed, but I didn't read almost any of the English books (unless you count Alan Moore comic books) and as a matter of fact, I haven't read almost a single "classic" book. Books I've read are all modern, being released months or so before I read them. i think the oldest stuff I read is Lovecraft's short stories. I also read Tolkien and he's English, does that count? I would love to get more into some English writers, as I am sure there's a lot of great ones out there, any suggestions? As things stand now, I'm pretty much a fan of American literature purely based on the fact that I haven't read much of the other...

Thank you so much for warm welcome and for kind words. It actually took me a while to figure out what I want to do with my life, and just saying I know where I want to go feels incredible.

I started posting without making a proper introduction and I apologize for the rudeness. My name is Aleksandar, I am 24 year old guy from Serbia. I've studied English and French, although now I mostly focus on learning English and learning the grammar in the best way possible since I want to become a writer one day and I want to write in English as I consider that to be the only language where you can still be somewhat of an okay writer and earn enough money to not have to treat your writing as a hobby anymore.

Hey, thanks for this! I consider myself fairly fluent, and I write a lot in English, but hyphens are still bothering me. Hopefully I'll adopt the knowledge from here and finally figure it out. Also, are two words connected with a hyphen considered a one word or two words?

At the moment I'm studying English because I want to become a writer and it seems like you need a pretty good grammar for that. I also studied French and Spanish in the past, French because it was mandatory in school to pick a second language, and Spanish because I was on the verge of getting a scholarship in Spain. Didn't pan out, but I still got some language skills out of it.

Yeah, this is so weird to me especially since America has so many different cultures thrown into one big nation. In my country, we had German since thirds grade (although that was optional), English since fifth (mandatory) and most high schools have a choice between second foreign language (aside from English) in French, Spanish, Italian, or Russian. Pretty much the same choices once you get to college as well. This is all in state schools.

I don't think it was fair of me to put down Cyrlic since that is the script I'm using in my daily life. I also consider it beautiful, it's nice, very simple yet to the point, I like that about a script.