Is English your native language, or did you learn English as a second language?

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I'm a native Slovenian. I first heard of English in school when I was about 10 and I had no clue what it was. English became popular just recently here, I'd say during the late 90s. So anyway, I hated being bad at something and I eventually learned it through pc games (trying to decipher what a broken suspension was using the Grand Prix 2 manual, ahhh).

Though I think internet shat on my grammar skills, but I don't really care about doing it properly anymore tbh. So nowadays I'd say it's Slovenian > German > English > Serbocroatian > Japanese.

I can relate to the gaming part. My dad didn't know how to read or listen to english properly, so when he bought Ocarina of Time when I was 6, it was hell. He bought me a small french-english dictionnary so I could go through the game - which I finally did on my own after a while - and it was one of the most rewarding experience of my life.

[RenegadeXan]

I have so much trouble with ''three'', every time i have to say it someone has to troll me in guild... I also have a world of trouble with ''heroic'' and ''word''. I don't mind the trolling to much tho, they know me and understand perfectly what i'm trying to say... sometime it's even worst if you try too hard, if I'm a bit tierd i'll just say it without even trying, idc, they can get what i'm trying to say with context.

Yep, I've seen this so many times, people saying lol wut? when i spoke fine but they just wanna be American trolls.

[Deleted]

> school/self-taught/dedicated classes

All of them. I think it's hard not to get at least a semi-decent grasp of English when you're on the internet, as long as you speak some other European language.

[Goondicker]

Yes.

But honestly, the best English speakers I find are the non-native speakers. When you grow up in a place that speaks English (US, in my case), it's very easy to make bad habbits or learn incorrectly.

Bothers me when a buddy uses "your" instead of "you're" ...

[FobManX]

From age 1-5 it was a mix of both English and Hindi(my parents are from India but I was born and raised here in the U.S.). Once I started Kindergarten I pretty much spoke English only(I can speak Hindi but its not fluent and pretty butchered, understand it 100% though).

[Baelic]

Technically, the first "language" we learn after we are born can't be considered our "native language." We're not born magically able to speak English, French, Spanish, Latin, Arabic, etc.

[Donald Hellscream]

Native dane here so obviously Danish is my first language. As for how I learned english the answer is twofold, in Denmark english is a mandatory subject from 3rd grade until college so we are taught english from a fairly young age, most of my grammar is something I learned in school ( not that I don't make plenty of grammatical errors still.. ) while my spoken English is partially learned in school and partially from playing video games for almost 20 years.

[Ultimacy]

I learned most of my English from video games and television. Then the internet became a thing.

[omeomorfismo]

no, is my 3° language after italian and spanish, parent's languages.
funnily i never studied it in highschool, where i never took more than 4/10, but i learned it thanks to wow (pre-pandaria) and math books, in fact i still have difficult to understand oral english and my pronunciation is basically with italian laws XD

[Deleted]

third language after german and arabic (my mother-/father-languages so to speak)
acquired english through fanfictions, in hindsight a bad idea, but i was still better than most of my classmates, because our english-classes weren't that good

[Lilija]

I first started to learn English when I was 8. My mom was an English teacher but since it doesn't work to teach your own child (especially the all knowing one like myself ), I was tought by her coligue for several years. School didn't really teach me much cause I've already known more than the teachers :P (especially my primary school English teacher who was making obvious mistakes). When I was 14 I started to attend some afterschool classes with native speakers - it was a nice experience that helped me to start talking. The moment when you realize that it doesn't matter if you speak correctly but rather just try to communicate with someone who doesn't understand your native language. I've learned bit more when I was preparing for FCE exam.

When I was studying, I've started playing WoW and this was the best way to become fluent. There was a time that I was speaking more English than Polish on the daily basis and actually started thinking in English as well. At the same time I started watching English speaking movies and TV series w/o subtitles.

[Drunkenfinn]

Not a native speaker.

My parents put me in a English-speaking pre-school when I was a kid so I learned the basics quite early and the kids from that pre-school also started studying English from grade 1, even though normally you don't start learning until 3rd grade. Due to this I could already speak decent English by the time most kids my age just started learning it.

Never really bothered studying it that much, though. Learned most of my vocabulary from watching movies and playing games since they don't dub most stuff here in Finland... And raiding in a guild with mostly British people kinda helped, as well. I also read the majority of the Harry Potter books in English as a teenager, too :P

Guess I should really thank my parents for putting me in that pre-school as it made the English at school a breeze all the way to university

[Puupi]

I also read the majority of the Harry Potter books in English as a teenager, too :P

hahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahaha

[ls-]

Nope, although I was raised as a trilingual child, Russian and Chinese were much more important to me than English. However, these days I almost never speak Russian T_T

[Noradin]

I also read the majority of the Harry Potter books in English as a teenager, too :P

I tried that too, but I found them horrible compared to the translations in other languages. (Tried a few, because everyone had them and it was an international school, so I could just borrow them for a few days.)
Their lack of proper pronouns to indicate the relation and mood between characters leads to the use of really jarring alternatives in their stead.
Where other languages would simply change pronouns or add in some modal particles in English swearwords were used to express familarity.
It made everyone come across as incredible rude, which might be because English teenagers talk that way (the ones I personally knew never did), but the adults were no better.

[Vizardlorde]

I learned watching tv cause school sucked. But ye its my second language, i hail from an island in the caribbean where a butchered form of spanish is spoken.

[ranzino]

Native german; learned russian first ( mandatory in east germany ), then english as additional language.
fluent in reading english, but fail usually in writing.

[DrMcNinja]

I learned it from movies and video games. Could formulate coherent sentences before I was even taught English. I remember finishing my English finals in high school in under 20 minutes and everyone looked in awe as I walked away while everyone was straining their brain.

Dutch is my native language, with Spanish/Italian/German as my other secondary languages.

[Faenskap]

Self-taught as a 2nd language.

Contrary to our Finnish friends here, learning English was actually quite the challenge for me. I struggled in school, but never got any help (7th grade and below). After I starting playing Runescape (which I thought was 'run' and 'escape') and WoW at age 15 maybe, did I learn. Then I spent 10 months in England, and now the British think I'm British. (I also realise that in England they say 'Year 7', not '7th grade' and I choose to spell with 's' rather than 'z')

Is my English flawless? No, it's not - there are many words I even to this day manage to spell incorrectly.

Which English accents are hard for me to understand? Irish (!!!), South African, Australian, some redneck American. I understand most British accents, except maybe the Eastern/redneckish ones? I'm not sure what they are called

[Jester Joe]

Wow, I didn't expect the poll to be so onesided against native English speaking honestly.

Born in New York, so yeah, Native English speaker here.