At what age did you learn English? How/why?

At what age did you learn English? How/why?

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I still don't know it.

Cheeky. Google Translate?

That's pretty much nothing.

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Now

We start to study english in elementary school but everything changed when I started to do exchange trips with our school (California, England twice, Netherlands) where I actually started to speak it instead writing and reading school shit, also I hosted a swede for 2 months and this made me speaking english daily for 60 days. I started to speak a decent english when I was 16.

>a decent english
kek'd

High school.
In elementary school I was being germanized.

Since I was a kid

Been learning it at school from the age of 7.
After that mostly games and cartoons.

6years old

The english I was "taught" in school was pure garbage, so I think I'm learning since 10,most from videogames and Bob Marley's music

did you ever feel cucked by the world?

i.e. why do I have to learn their language but not they learn mine?

It must really help instil within your young minds what superiority actually means and that life isn't always going to be hunky-dory. That it's a fight for the fittest.

There is no reason to be that rude, I know I still sucks, but I could actually speak to people using another language for the first time when I was 16.

It*

At the age of 7. When I entered secondary school (age 13 to 17) it was a boarding school and there the only connection to outside world was through the newspaper and the class would subscribe to an English newspaper (compulsory). Harry Potter also becoming popular at that time so I read few of the novels too.

I think I was capable of reading with a dictionary by 14. Took me 3 months to burrow through Dan Simmons's Hyperion, greatest book ever f a m

>47%
>This is fairly high level for a native speaker.
Really makes one ponder.

Mostly from movies, IRC chats and video games.

When I was young cartoons on tv were also subtitled. But these days Disney and Nickelodeon also translate everything into Dutch (which can be quite inappropriate at times).

I got English in school from the age of 10 up until I was 18, but I don't really feel I learned much from it because I always just filled in the assignments based on my gut feelings.

around 12, but i have been on PC since i was 3 so we can say it began there

The fucked up thing is that I'm still learning english words to this day and I'm 28.

i.e. You guys are fucked. You'll never learn as much as I know.

>age
Since about age 3
>How
A bunch of educational cards and TV. I also had tons of books and all the time in the world to read them at home because my father was a bit domineering.
>why?
My Hispanic mother didn't want me to be an illiterate Spic, and English is the language of the great country I was born in.

Around 9, can't remember any details, it just happened.

Live in California and have had two min wage jobs here. Both strongly encouraged me to learn Spanish because it's what most customers speak. They'd come up to me speaking Spanish I'd say I didn't understand and and a few would get pissy telling me(in terrible English) I need to learn so I can help them. I actually learned a bit just from context clues an pointing bit I'd always pretend I didn't.

We get English from the age of 10.
German and French from the age of 12. (Unless you are dumb, then you can pick one)
And if you're smart greek and/or latin from the age of 12.

>You are the one that needs to learn a language to appease a minority
Holy fuck, I'm Hispanic but that pisses me off.

Do you guys actually remember your German/French or is it like American schools where as soon as you graduate, you forget the foreign languages you studied in school?

'struth, mate.

Dutch is a language in between German and English. So with basic German knowledge we can wing it. Most people can improvise some German and understand what they are saying due to it. But I'm also pretty sure they have forgotten most what was taught in school.

French is actually pretty hard. And the only people who remember it after high school are the people who go on vacation to France every summer (which are quite a few people).

The majority were really nice and would try their best to speak English, or I'd find someone who did. a lot of them spoke English perfectly and just assumed we preferred Spanish lol. But those assholes that felt I needed to know it can go fuck themselves, if you live here and don't speak English you're probably illegal anyeay

Started at age 5 playing pokemon and watching PPG on cartoon network.

By age 8 or 9 I could hold a decent conversation, even if it was just about as interesting as those two topics.

>anglos will never know the feeling of playing pokemon blindly
We had to discover what type advantages were and what moves did what, and where to go and how to capture shit. My first game was Silver and I had a Crocanaw fighting lvl2 pidgeys before I could catch my second pokemon because I had no clue what to do or where to go to get those first 5 pokeballs to unlock the first city.

It was actually wonderful, looking back.

Hey dude, do u like the US? Most people i see dont, but id like an opinion. I plan on visiting at some point. Maybe even getting a work visa. My english is good enough I think.

I mean, every year Dutch people cause traffic jams all across France.

Yo no hablo inglés

How come the Netherlands preserved/developed their own unique language, when Switzerland and Austria and Belgium all have borrowed ones? Were you not invaded that much?

Asians do very well here. They're make more money and have a better quality of life than whites on average. Move to the west coast an you can find little Korean collectives all over. I know a lot of first and second gen Koreans ho are killing it over here. Our military loves you too if you're interested

nine y/o with few shitty classes in school. Later, I started playing videogames and reading some articles written in English with a dictionary in my side and well, I've learned most english by my own than in school

I alredy was able to understand English at the age of 12, thanks to the good school teacher and videogames. But last year I had to host some guests from America, and then I realized how much my English sucks. She was still able to understand everything I said, but, jeez... I guess even now you can see how hard mistakes I do sometimes.

So I have to go a long road before I'll became a fluent speaker.

Asians do well here. Most major cities have "Koreatowns" where a lot of Korean immigrants live, keep the culture, and speak Korean

>On the basis of your results, we estimate you know 54% of the English words

How the fuck are most of these even words? They sound like randomly generated place names in Dwarf Fortress.

it's fine

Do you think that by the time your generation is elderly, 99% of the Dutch population will be able to speak English?

Well I visited it as a teen and I liked their cities, landscapes and nature, but americans were all fat and dumb, friendly but they were lazy fucks, also California was full of mexicans and there were people who could only speak in spanish and a lot of them were acting like "gangsta" niggers and rappers.
I would go there only if I got a very good job offer. I didn't like California very much.

In total we have been occupied by France for 15 years and by Germany for 5 years. But that's it.

Dutch comes from Frankish. We conquered the others. When Spain owned us it was just on paper. Some far away king inherited us. But it didn't mean anything to us.

Although before the Franks came to power the Romans ruled here. And for for many years German and French have been the diplomatic languages and the languages of the elite here. So that did have an impact on our language.

The next generation of most countries will speak English fluently thanks to the Internet.

How, though? Don't take me wrong, but dutch never struck me as a war nation. How did Germany or France not Annex you permanently?

Or am I just making the same mistake everyone does about Portugal and assuming you're militarily weak because of your size?

Well, in high school the English of some girls was truly appalling. So I'm not sure.

>Germany or France not Annex you permanently?
Swamps.

Did they not want them, or was it just hard to attack?

Started at 5, fluent by 7
I moved to America

>Born into an English-speaking country
Best feeling in the world desu. Imagine being cucked into learning another language because your native language is becoming increasingly irrelevant

Shudder at the thought

3rd grade

When they fought against Spain they flooded the entire country, fighting was hard as fuck.

Heh, we did the opposite, and burned most our crops so they couldn't eat anything.

And yet, we never got along with the dutch.

We defeated them. We even stopped an invasion of England, France and half of Germany at the same time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampjaar

We stopped several English invasions. A French invasion. A Spanish invasion. A Russian invasion. A whole bunch of Holy Roman Empire invasions.

Eventually we even had to take London to stop the constant invasions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution

We did so by
1. Good naval power. All our trade vessels could turn into warships.
2. The canals. We have wartime canals that can be flooded when someone is advancing.
3. Mercenaries from across Europe. We bought help.

You know, when you fought us you were just fighting a Dutch corporation. The VOC. Which was basically like fighting 14 Shell oil companies.

1. 16
2. I was bored

I can read and write in Spanish decently, but I'm not very good at listening. How did you guys get better at the listening when you were learning English?

Weren't the games released in your countries translated? How did you get English language versions?

>2. The canals. We have wartime canals that can be flooded when someone is advancing.
This is probably the more important one I was unaware of.

Yeah, we fought you with scraps, too. Spain stopped funding our ships during the Union of the kingdoms, and we were basically fighting with old ones with half the crews conscripted to fight against their will against the Brits. Some of our captains deserted even, and good firm leadership and strategy was how we won when under numerical disadvantage.

Not in Portugal. Unlike most of Western Europe, we never translated that kind of thing. Only disney/pixar movies are dubbed, but only until like 6 of age. Everything else is subtitled and we have a good grasp of the English language by ear. No games are translated here.

We speak a lot better English than everyone else because of exactly that. (except the nords and dutch, since our old generations grew up very very poor during the Regime). Almost everyone below 35 can hold a conversation in English.

I got 77%. Keep trying my dude

The foreigners never realized it either. Even in WW2 Germany couldn't advance into the western provinces due to the canals until our generals decided it was a futile war and surrendered.

But they surrendered almost instantly. So.. they probably had some foresight. :^)

I learn the english when I am 15 years old

Are you still 15 or something?

This

Got my FCE with 96% at 12

We did something similar against the Spanish and Napoleon - burn everything to the ground.

West Spain/East Portugal is very mountainous and they were falling downhill on their horses, or breaking bones and dying of infection. Since all our roads are on the west, the conditions were very grim in the East (you have meme about Portuguese roads even), and they arrived hungry and sick at our army and a lot ran back and surrendered.

I guess that small countries have to survive in similar ways. But both are great strategies made obsolete by the invention of the air force.

Not really.
I speak 5 languages so what's one more.
As a kid you can usually pick them up pretty easily.(lived near the italian border)

you must not learn english, you must teach english to learn you

Nah that's actually a fairly good score
I am pretty confident in my english skills and got 46%, most of the words they show you in the test are weird as fuck

During the cold war we created some new waterlines in case of a Russian invasion. There are some defensive lines in the east. But also entire Holland can turn into an Island.

Having to fight over a bunch of canals can really slow things down. Which can be quite demotivating.

I feel I am in the same boat. It doesn't help that the word order in Spanish is more flexible, so lots of ways can work to say the same thing. Could someone help answer this?

Trench-foot x 10000

Pretty neat and unique strategy.

That Island is a bunker. In case you missed it.

Pic related can also be flooded.

Today I tried watching Toy Story in Spanish with Spanish subtitles, but the subtitles only matched what the characters were saying about 60% of the time. It was quite frustrating.

Hey a childrens playground.

All movies and tv-series here have subtitles, so they aren't dubbed like in other countries. So I probably already picked up some stuff from a very young age. I actively learned whilist gaming and ofcourse having English at school

What the fuck is this? I study at Ghent University

Listening shit over and over. There's no way around it. It's easier for English because you're so overexposed. For Spanish you'd have to watch a lot of telenovelas, I guess. Translations too. Try to pick one kind of Spanish, though. Otherwise you might mix up Spanish Castilian and Mexican and never tune it to a specific one.

Pretty neat. Everything is so green. Here it's a brown-dark green mess.

Learned some basic vocabulary when i was 4. Dad got me some sort of vocabulary for kids with Disney characters (Mickey, Donald etc.), i remember it had basic furniture, food, types of shops.
We start English in 2nd grade.
But generally my English improved significantly after i started watching Cartoon Network and Jetix.
I became my English teacher's favorite student. She passed away 2 years ago.
Why would anyone feel that way?
It's about learning to communicate with people, and opening up doors in the future.
I'm glad i learned 2 foreign languages.
I'd gladly learn another one, but i'm indecisive, and i just can't find the time.

I felt that some of the words that I answered yes to knowing I wouldn't ever use in day to day conversation
I felt like I would struggle to use them when writing an essay for university stuff

Bunker. Here starts higher ground.

+1 on learning from Cartoon Network

>69%

Literally what

Canal ends here. Sorry. ;D

I started to learn English only 1 year ago and still speak it very bad, my English is disgusting. Trying to improve it by studying grammar, reading, listening to podcasts and music, watching movies, games and speaking to some English speaker aside with reading crazy 4chinners posts. But the progress goes very slowly. I guess it just takes time and I have to be more patient.
I can understand more than I can tell.

test post

>just from context
I feel like this is how I get away with answering half of the questions given to me in my Mandarin lectures
I can't understand three quarters of the words in the question but I can usually come up with some sort of answer that is usually on right lines of what she's looking for

Since I started going to school

70% of the English vocabulary comes from French

age 5, from Japanese video games, to play Japanese video games.

>tfw Cuban-American
>All Spanish tv is Mexican, futbol announcers are Argentine or Spanish, and most popular spanish music is from Puerto Rico.

I guess I'm lucky the Cuban and Puerto Rican accents are so similar, but the point is, running into unfamiliar accents and modes of expression is an unfortunate inevitability.

well it's going to be infinitely better than any high schoolers here trying to speak the language that they study

so at the age of 5 you had already learned English?

I've been studying it for 4 years and now I'm 25

I did learn grammar (only a bit) from school. Then i learned from U.S Shows with Turkish subtitles.

Yep, better than my parents. I played a lot on NES.

>At what age did you learn English
6-7

>How/why
In school since it's a mandatory subject