Straight up facts right there
I'll never forget when I worked in fast food and my coworker from Guatemala asked me, "Can you settle a bet between Jorge and I? You speak English like a second language, what's your first language?"
English is my first language.
Jorge won that bet.
F
I have found that reading challenging texts out loud has helped my writing, reading, listening, and speaking.
People mock me for it. But it develops an active vocabulary faster than anything that I have stumbled upon for myself.
Pls elaborate, what types of challenging texts, some examples pls.
For me it was Bad Religion lyrics. 13 year old me would sit down in front of the CD player, booklet in one hand, dictionary in the other. Greg Graffin uses an obscene amount of vocabulary that I haven't encountered anywhere else.
One example:
The masses are obsequious, contented in their sleep. The vortex of their minds ensconced within the murky deep
Yeah, insane. And he sings those lines so easily like it was just basic stuff.
I'm a native speaker and even I learned words from reading that
I'm a native English speaker, and Greg Graffin did more for my vocabulary than public schools ever did.
Garfunkel and Oates are great for it too
Try The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's pretty cool and has some very complex sentences
Speaking was one of my weakest skills, so I started streaming. I speak way smoother now.
I'm a swede with fully swedish parents, and I have always lived here, but I've always sucked at Swedish, both spelling and vocabulary.
But I'm way better at English, I often use English words because I can't remember or simply don't know the Swedish equivalent, and sometimes I just give up and fully use English for whatever I'm trying to explain. I wouldn't say I'm great at grammar overall, but I'm above average based on how bad most people are.
Old Swedish people must be terrified by you!
My brain learning French - 'Yes, this makes perfect sense "
My brain trying to send French words to my mouth - "Christ on a fuckin bike, why are there so many vowels?!?
The worst between French and English is “I miss you”. It translates to “tu me manques” which breaks down to “you me miss” and neither makes any sense. Oh and “This makes sense” also doesn’t translates right “ça fait du sense” means nothing in French.
Reflexive verbs can go themselves fuck
C’est logique.
This even happens to me in my native language
It's refreshing to know that I'm not alone. My English skills suck ass. I blame it on not having enough chances to actually speak it in public.
As a French,
That's it, that's my answer.
I usually try to misinterpret my sentences as hard as possible before posting.
It also works for program comments, I don't know how the fuck some text can seem to be almost perfect one moment and be totally useless garbage next time I find it.
Swap that out for Spanish, and that's me.
4 years of it in high school, and the best I can manage is sounding like a drunk 5 year old that curses with what I'm told is a Mexico City accent because the girl I dated from Mexico City taught me the fun words.
Like, I would have to have a dictionary in front of me to apologize for my bad spanish and be clearly understood. That's how bad my Spanish is. But in my head? I'm all suave and shit. And in my dreams, I'm bloody fluent. Awake? Not even close
People need to watch more english things in english. Synchronisation is bad.
I watch English movies with English subtitles, my grammar is non-existent, but at least I can try to convey meaning of a sentence to someone.