Proper respect to the ESLers on the site

[Winner]

I've actually been thinking in English for a long time, which has only increased since I started to visit CFC on a regular basis and there are times I have to name the English because I forgot the Dutch one

Happens to me all the time.

Worse, I use a lot of English words in Czech, because they're more apposite. People sometimes look at me weird when I do that

My English tends to get worse after the first couple of beers, I'll start to stutter, forget words etc. But when I drink some more I'm getting fluent at it

I am best at it after just a beer or two, then it's really great. More beers incur performance penalties (in more ways than just speaking ).

But you people have it quite easy, right? Dutch is surely much closer to English than Czech. The Dutch people I've met spoke really good English. The accent was kinda obvious, but they were perfectly fluent.

 

[mayor]

Worse, I use a lot of English words in Czech, because they're more apposite. People sometimes look at me weird when I do that

Yes, especially my family likes to make fun of my habit of using English words

I am best at it after just a beer or two, then it's really great. More beers incur performance penalties (in more ways than just speaking ).

true that

But you people have it quite easy, right? Dutch is surely much closer to English than Czech. The Dutch people I've met spoke really good English. The accent was kinda obvious, but they were perfectly fluent.

Well it helps that a lot of shows are subtitled instead of dubbed. However I notice a trend that shows are dubbed more often so I predict that future generations will speak it less well.

I find the accent hilarious. I used to have a gf who studies English and I could annoy the hell out of here by reading English with a Dutch accent
I myself don't really have a Dutch accent... the funny thing is, is that I do have an accent but thusfar nobody has been able to recognize it

 

[Leifmk]

I wonder then, of those of you who post so well in English, how many of you are so confident with your spoken English?

Completely; or that is, as confident as I am with spoken Norwegian. (In either case I find it easier to express exactly what I mean when I can take the time to write, edit, rewrite and re-edit it, as opposed to when I have to do it in real time.)

I did spend a year as a foreign exchange student in the USA (Kentucky) long ago and obviously got lots of practice speaking English then. Also picked up a regional accent. These days my default spoken English is a kind of generic mid-Atlantic accent, although whenever I spend any significant amount of time around speakers of just about any given accent I will subcounsciously begin to mimic them.

I can think (in so far as I think verbally) equally well in either Norwegian or English, the default state of my brain depends on which language I've been using most of late.

How long have you studied English?

Formally? Between... either 4th or 5th grade (I forget which), and the end of high school, so nine or ten years of actual classes. Informally? Started a little before the English classes began in school, driven by my parents' 1970s collection Mad Magazine at first and later by my interest in nerdy pursuits such as messing about with computers (there was a quite limited amount of lierature about that available in Norwegian in 1983; and then there were these fancy things called text adventure games, also mostly in English) and reading weird nerdy genre fiction (ditto). I am pushing 40 now, and have been capable of reading English books for fun for nearly 30 of those years. (I know for sure I was reading Stephen King and stuff like that in English before I turned 13, at least.)

 

[warpus]

How long have you studied English?

English is my third language; I started learning it in Germany in grade 5, but the lessons didn't really teach me that much - just the bare basics - not nearly enough to get by with.

I really only started learning the language when I moved to Canada - mostly by watching TV, etc.

My German isn't really that fluent anymore, I can understand it and I can say basic things, My Polish is decent.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

People who can't communicate well in English probably don't even post that much here.

 

[Antilogic]

I had that experience in Italy UNTIL my Italian got good... that made me happy

Pretty jealous--I really want to go sightseeing in Italy, Spain, and Greece.

Since work was still done in English and I was only there for two months, I didn't get enough practice in to really pick up on German. Maybe some day I'll get to go back.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I moved to the US when I was 5 years old and my parents at first didn't speak english so I learnt my english from watching Spongebob Squarepants and going to kindergarten. But as we stayed longer in America and my parents used less and less Bosnian I forgot Bosnian, so when I came back I spoke Bosnian bad and had to learn it again, but now I speak both fluently.

 

[Winner]

(...)
I forgot Bosnian, so when I came back I spoke Bosnian bad and had to learn it again, but now I speak both fluently.

Is that a dialect of Serbian or something?

 

[NedimNapoleon]

No its a dialect of the common Yugoslav.

 

[Winner]

No its a dialect of the common Yugoslav.

I.e. Serbo-Croatian, got that.