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

[Bollocks]

Quite a ridiculous reason, as dubbing voices are professional actors, while the original voice cast is not.

Can confirm. The dubbing in Spanish is much better than the original voice cast.

[Wildmoon]

No, I learnt English from high school and WoW. In my country, people are really really bad at English in general. Even today, I am stil lnot that good at English.

[Bollocks]

No, I learnt English from high school and WoW. In my country, people are really really bad at English in general. Even today, I am stil lnot that good at English.

Which country do you come from?

From my experience when I played wow I never needed to speak English. Portuguese on the other hand

[tlitd]

[...] in Spanish, if you can pronounce it, you can probably spell it. French is worse, but nowhere near as bad as English. German spelling is straightforward. Portuguese too.

While not nearly as atrocious as English, it's disingenuous to state that German is phonemic. Just a couple of examples:
1. Consider the "e" sound that is found in the English "set". Without prior knowledge of a given word (i.e. not being fluent in German) and/or without its context, it's hard to assign that "e" sound in German to e/ä/eh/äh/ee in written form. Loanwords make it worse, as the aforementioned sound sound can be assigned to é/è too.
2. The abhorrence which is the silent "e" in English (e.g. -ble as adjectival suffix) can be met in German too (e.g. Papier, Melodie). Significantly less widespread, but it's there.

Sure, call German straightforward if you want to. Don't be surprised if a speaker of (e.g.) Serbian or Romanian will giggle at such a statement.

[Deleted]

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.

I think the (common) notion that MMO-Champ/GenOT is predominantly frequented by Americans isn't necessarily true.

[Cephilia]

Second language. Also a native Finnish speaker who learned English from games, books and in school, and who never learned proper Swedish :P I guess our school system has hard time motivating kids to learn Swedish, since it really is not that difficult language but so few of us seem to learn it properly.

[Noradin]

Native. Well, I grew up learning two languages at once. I think being a native bilingual is why I'm really good at pronouncing other languages correctly after hearing it a few times. I mean, I've seen people who just cannot pronounce some things to save their lives, and I've never understood why on an intuitive level.

The problem is that you lern to put sounds into categories when you first learn languages as a child. Later in life you instinctively put sounds you recognise as being part of speech into the closest categories and subconsciously dismiss the difference. Someone foreign might not even hear the differences between two sounds in another language. This might also apply to you, you think you are really good at pronouncing other languages, but you cannot really objectively tell by yourself. You need a native speaker to tell.

The same that goes for recognising sounds goes for making them, and here it is even worse. You can learn it, but the later in life you do the more stressfull it is to make those sounds you only started practising after your childhood.

- - - Updated - - -

German voice overs from english Movies or TV shows simply suck nine out of ten times, and it gets worse when you add Anime and / or US Cartoons.

That is because of the budget, and maybe because they do not meet what you expect after first hearing it in English and getting used to their voices.
I have found that in general Germany is on of the best at making professional voice overs that really fit, often better than the original ones.
Of course, if you look at low-budget mass products there to fill countless channels so they can hit some randomly set number they decided to offer, then you have a high chance at finding trash.

- - - Updated - - -

While not nearly as atrocious as English, it's disingenuous to state that German is phonemic. Just a couple of examples:
1. Consider the "e" sound that is found in the English "set". Without prior knowledge of a given word (i.e. not being fluent in German) and/or without its context, it's hard to assign that "e" sound in German to e/ä/eh/äh/ee in written form. Loanwords make it worse, as the aforementioned sound sound can be assigned to é/è too.
2. The abhorrence which is the silent "e" in English (e.g. -ble as adjectival suffix) can be met in German too (e.g. Papier, Melodie). Significantly less widespread, but it's there.

Sure, call German straightforward if you want to. Don't be surprised if a speaker of (e.g.) Serbian or Romanian will giggle at such a statement.

It is straightforward, you are just laboring under the misconception that each letter denotes a sound while in reality it is small groups of letters that get fixed sounds and in German these groups are generally small, common, and unambiguous.

And no, the examples you gave for a silent e are just false. The e in Papier is not soundless and the one in Melodie is part of the ie and not an e at all.

[tithian]

I'm not a native English speaker, took classes when I was younger and then kinda refined it though repeated use (reading, internet, movies and tv, voice comms on games etc.)

I'm currently in the process of trying to bring my German language skills up, preferable on par with my English. But becoming fluent in a second foreign language can be a bit of a struggle, especially after a certain age.

[Northy]

It's funny because pre-WWI & II the native tongue around here would have been German for many of us. Yeah, there'a ton of us German folk in Wisconsin.

[Reeve]

While not nearly as atrocious as English, it's disingenuous to state that German is phonemic. Just a couple of examples:
1. Consider the "e" sound that is found in the English "set". Without prior knowledge of a given word (i.e. not being fluent in German) and/or without its context, it's hard to assign that "e" sound in German to e/ä/eh/äh/ee in written form. Loanwords make it worse, as the aforementioned sound sound can be assigned to é/è too.
2. The abhorrence which is the silent "e" in English (e.g. -ble as adjectival suffix) can be met in German too (e.g. Papier, Melodie). Significantly less widespread, but it's there.

Sure, call German straightforward if you want to. Don't be surprised if a speaker of (e.g.) Serbian or Romanian will giggle at such a statement.

OK fair, but it's a hell of a lot easier than English. I just remember when I was a kid learning German (which I don't really speak at all anymore beyond a few words), learning to read and pronounce words in the language was pretty simple.

[Rehija]

@ Noradin

Ofc. there are good german voice overs and "some" are surprisingly better than the original, but in most of the cases its nothing like the original. Puns or linguistic jokes are one example wich comes to mind wich can be translated analogously, but you never get the real thing.

The genreral quality of german voice overs may sound good to ppl. who never heard the english original. As a good example i throw in the first german voice over of Robin Hood with Cevin Costner. To put it simply, it was great. A few years later surprisingly a new german voice over was made and this one is a bad excuse.

Is gets worse when you add anime and partly us cartoons but surprisingly there are a few gems out there wich surpass the originals. Dragonball Z comes to mind where the german voice over of Goku sounds more compelling to western ears then the original and imo. is better than the english one. There are even a few Diamonds in the english sector of voice overs like Armitage III were Elizabeth Berkley absolutely nailed it when voicing the part of Naomi Armitage and Kiefer Sutherland did a great job speaking the part of Ross Sylibus.

On the Bad side, as an example for terrible voice acting i throw the Naruto Card where i think most of anime fans agree with me. Both, the english and geman versions ...

I dont name shows with absurdingly high pitched characters, but i think you get the gist of what i mean when i call german voice overs "in general" bad.

[Simulacrum]

Not native, obviously. Learned english mostly through movies, games, and the internet. Eventually books as well. Did have it in school also, but learned absolutely nothing there; always got top grades on everything, outside of the spellings of some obscure words. Fucking english, man. You guys really have no rules for spelling at all. Everybody has to just learn every single english word by heart in order to spell properly.

Kind of pity places like spain / france / germany / etc, where they live inside their own little native-speaking bubbles because everything is dubbed and so the kids don't grow up learning a global language automatically.

[GennGreymane]

Native speaker.

[mittacc]

A question for all you who only know one language (english in this case, herp). Don't you feel kinda isolated and limited since you can only communicate with those who know english? Most people can talk to you and understand you but if they wished they could just "encrypt" their language in an instant rendering you clueless.


OnT:
Second language. My native is swedish so I kinda got norwegian and dansish in the bundle as well, mostly norwegian since there aren't any potatoes and I have a childhood friend with a family from there and the US. I have VERY limited knowledge of spanish and I've begun learning some words in german.

[Tradu]

English is my 3rd language, but nowadays I use it more than my first/second(Danish/German, not in any particular order)

[vastx]

What has always amazed me is the great difference between Europeans, at least the western ones, and Americans in general (southern and northern ones). The Europeans know at the very least two languages, and a great many of them understand another one, while most people in the Americas can't even speak a language besides their own, not to mention that their dialects for it I find horrid and their language richness seems pretty limited in terms to what should be the standard tongue.

Shouldn't amaze you too much. Location, location, location.

[tlitd]

While not nearly as atrocious as English, it's disingenuous to state that German is phonemic. Just a couple of examples:
1. Consider the "e" sound that is found in the English "set". Without prior knowledge of a given word (i.e. not being fluent in German) and/or without its context, it's hard to assign that "e" sound in German to e/ä/eh/äh/ee in written form. Loanwords make it worse, as the aforementioned sound sound can be assigned to é/è too.
2. The abhorrence which is the silent "e" in English (e.g. -ble as adjectival suffix) can be met in German too (e.g. Papier, Melodie). Significantly less widespread, but it's there.

It is straightforward, you are just laboring under the misconception that each letter denotes a sound while in reality it is small groups of letters that get fixed sounds and in German these groups are generally small, common, and unambiguous.

And no, the examples you gave for a silent e are just false. The e in Papier is not soundless and the one in Melodie is part of the ie and not an e at all.

Small groups of letters that get fixed sounds, hm? Fine, let's take it slowly.
1. Pronounce words where "r" follows a long vowel (e.g. Mehr, Uhr). Notice how "r" morphs into a vowel itself, namely [ɐ] (or [ə], but rarely). Now pronounce words where "r" follows the "ie" vowel cluster (e.g. hier, Tier, the aforementioned Papier). Notice how "ie" morphs into a long vowel (namely [iː]), while the letter "e" becomes silent, converting the i/e pair of graphemes into the [i:ɐ] phoneme.
2. Pronounce a few not-straightforward words with the vowel cluster "ie" in final position (e.g. Aktie, Materie). Notice how "ie" morphs into the short vowel [i] plus the schwa [ə]. Now pronounce a few straightforward words that also feature a final "ie" (e.g. Akademie, Ironie). Notice how "ie" morphs into the long vowel [i:], while the letter "e" becomes silent. Finally, pronounce words with "ie" in medial position (e.g. viel, Spiel). Notice how "ie" morphs into the long vowel [i:], while the letter "e" becomes silent.
3. Pronounce the following loanwords: Orient, industriell, Klient. Notice how the vowel cluster "ie" morphs into the [i] and [ɛ] phonemes.

A small group of letters ("ie") just got three different sets of sounds: [i:], [iə], [iɛ]. Granted, the [i:] realization of "ie" is arguably the most common in German. That's hardly a convincing case of phonemic orthography, and I'm not even a native speaker of German. Der Teufel steckt im Detail, hm?

[Jester Joe]

I think the (common) notion that MMO-Champ/GenOT is predominantly frequented by Americans isn't necessarily true.

Well, I'm not surprised by that honestly, but when it comes to English as a native language, I thought it would be closer at least.

A question for all you who only know one language (english in this case, herp). Don't you feel kinda isolated and limited since you can only communicate with those who know english? Most people can talk to you and understand you but if they wished they could just "encrypt" their language in an instant rendering you clueless.

No, because most people around me only know one language too. There's quite a few Spanish speakers of course, but not within my close acquaintances or friends.

[redfella]

Finnish (30yo) here, but been consuming books and media in english since I was about 10 years old.

[Revik]

Actually I speak American. Native speaker.

American is an offshoot of actual English. Just ask any one from Europe.