Everyone seems so good at English so I wondered how many people learned it to such proficiency and how many are just natives

  • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє@lemmy.sdf.org
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    11 hours ago

    I don’t know how good my English is, but it’s my third language. Bengali and Hindi are my first two. I speak a couple more languages closely related to these (e.g. Urdu, Punjabi, Assamese, Odia, Sanskrit etc. Also been trying to learn French). But I can’t read or write in them.

    I learnt English from two sources. My reading and writing abilities mostly come from school. I had some pretty good teachers, who encouraged reading newspapers to learn English. At least in my case, it really helped.

    When it comes to speaking and understanding spoken English (with all its irregularities due to accents and whatnot), watching movies and cartoons helped. I used to download and watch all kinds of movies during high school, possibly some that I shouldn’t have watched at that age. My love for movies is basically what made me somewhat competent in the spoken aspect of English. (It also got me into piracy, and ultimately into FOSS, so I guess I owe a lot to the great directors whose movies were hard to find legally lol.)