I think English is peculiar in the sense that tons of people use it as a second language, and there are also many local variants that sound quite different. As a result, I feel that English is a more flexible language than let say French.
I wonder how often English native speakers here on HN feel that some comments aren't clear or odd-sounding due to approximative English. It's something I barely have experience of in my native language, as there are comparatively fewer foreigner speakers. And when reading HN comments, I'm mostly incapable of guessing the origin of the commenter (with a few exceptions).
I've read about native English speakers who take classes to cleanse their colloquialisms from their speech. It's for conducting business with people who speak English but not natively. OP in a way is trying to do the opposite.
Thanks for teaching me the word garrulous! For years in my teens and twenties I built my English vocabulary slowly, by looking up any word I didn’t know while browsing the internet. Looking up 15 words every day adds up, even if you don’t have a system for memorizing them. But there too have I reached a plateau.
I remember taking a test that tries to gauge the size of your vocabulary fairly recently (it was linked and discussed on HN IIRC), and being somewhat disappointed that I, in my mid-30s, rank like a native ~15 year old. I’d like to express myself in more sophisticated ways, like an adult would, but the look-up method is at an end there. Hardly ever do I need to look up a single word when reading tech content, which is what I consume the most.
So for me it would take an effort to seek out such material, that pushes my vocab bounds. Kudos to you for getting active, it’s not that low of a hurdle to get started on!
(Corrections welcome)
This is one of those titles that doesn't make sense when HN drops the leading word. It should be:
> Why I start taking English classes at the age of 46
I think learning at that age for some people is not going get anywhere (at least for me). And this is not about giving up. It's about being adult is about not giving a shit to a lot of thing.
Learning language process is about > 50% mimicking / copying. I didn't realize until I graduated and worked with a British boss first time. I realize that 90% of schools in my country have taught english wrong all along. In school, they still teach student to mix and match a sentence on their own which is WRONG, resulting in weird non real world sentence with correct or incorrect grammar. Good speaking comes from listening to tons of real world audio / conversation / encounter any arbitrary context. This is akin to the process of training neural network. Good writing comes from reading a tons. And then we start to write and speak like those english speaker.
So at this point my english skills won't going anywhere because my adult's mental model commands me to stop mimicking and copying. For example, this phrase sounds good but I hate it and I won't use it: "that being said, ..." which sounds nonsense to me as non-english speaker, I prefer "however" which sounds mediocre writing but it's a straightforward meaning. Think about it when you translate "that being said" .. it doesn't give a twist hint at all, it sounds like "something is stated" that's it. Excuse me for long whining.
Question for ESL people here.
One of my direct reports is a non-native English speaker. He has a pretty thick accent and talks fast. Common feedback I get from customers we work with is that he can be hard to understand.
I plan on giving him some career advice that he should work on this. Talk slower, consider working on reducing his accent.
Any suggestions on how to do this in a way that is sensitive / not-offensive?
My first instinct is just to say it, share comments I’m getting from our customers, etc. but I don’t want it to be hurtful. It’s really a “you could be more effective if … “ thing.
Two things I observed while slowly getting better at English.
First, the "sophistication" can backfire. There're a lot of comments about reading here, but there're very fine lines between
- "simple English", think a stereotypical ESL speaker
- "well educated" English, think a native posh college alumni
- "colloquially broken" English, the way native speakers speak to their friends
- "out-of-place highfalutin" English, a hallmark of someone who didn't have a chance to experience the variety of contexts growing up in an English speaking country.
It's quite hard to balance those, but I guess it just comes with time and practice while being mindful of it. For me personally it worked in waves, from unnaturally-broken to too-correct to feeling comfortable enough to break the grammar in natural ways to noticing more unnaturalness to… you got the idea.
Second, and I'm forever grateful to the person who first introduced me to this idea, is realising that high level language acquisition can only come with a new personality attached. It's very weird and disorienting if you're not aware of it happening, but it's a natural and necessary part of it. You need to grow a personality to feel in your second/third/etc language, to react to jokes on the spot, to make friends, to dream, to live in that language context. It often differs from one's identity/personality in the first language, and that's fine, it's just as valid. Embracing the process and the difference makes things easier.
I don't think it's possible to do that through learning though.
What's a good rule for when to use "the" before a noun?
I liked the movie
I installed the new update
I installed the new Python
I installed ~the~ Python 3.11
I visited ~the~ Brazil
I visited the Amazon River
I visited ~the~ San Francisco
I sometimes think about sitting down and properly learning English. But for some reason, I think that would be a waste of time.
The issue is that my mistake stems from my carelessness, not from my knowledge of English grammar. One of the most common mistake I make is forgetting to use sub-three letter words to my sentences like - to, is, and, or etc. Now the issue is that, this IS 80% of what English grammar stands for. My writing style is kinda keyword focused, if that makes any sense to anyone.
The internet as a whole has become quite tolerant and the spaces I dwell usually don't criticize me for my bad grammar. My keyword focused statements gets my ideas across. Also I found that, if I cared too much about something I end up not expressing it. So the only things I talk about are my impromptu ideas which are jumbled and careless.
>I start taking English classes at the age of 46
I think it should be "started" instead of "start".
I'm also ESL and have given up on learning English properly after 30 years of trying. Nowadays I just rely on grammarly/gmail (and it does catch this particular example).
I'm a native English speaker currently studying Russian in Kazakhstan, and I completely understand the frustration of lacking sophistication. It can become a negative feedback loop where lacking the ability to have fun and nuanced conversations causes me to avoid talking in the target language, which then only brings me further from reaching the language level I want. It certainly takes dedicated effort - language learning by osmosis can only take you so far as an adult. P.S. I had to look up the word "garrulous", so kudos to you for the vocab word.
One trick I employ for language acquisition: as a native X-speaker, I often encounter native-Y speakers making mistake Z in my mother tongue. When I remember to do so, a little googling at home often reveals that a light retro-translation of Z is indeed the proper (sometimes even a refined) construction in Y.
Fortune, mxgrn!
I think one of the best ways to increase your overall ability to utilize a language is to read as much fiction as you can. Authors do not like to sound repetitive. As they write their novels, they will be forced to find alternate ways to say the same thing.
The comment about discovering as you write is interesting. Might have to give that a shot. I never really had a motivation to write.
As someone who moved to an English-speaking country as an adult, I noticed the temptation to reach a "local maximum" in language learning and stop making progress. This can happen when you feel like you have reached a point where you can get by with your current level of proficiency, but it can actually limit your ability to fully express yourself in the language. The only way to overcome this challenge is to make a deliberate effort to continue learning and improving. I agree with the author of the blog post and appreciate their message.
One thing I also noticed is that the general tendency to be welcoming and non-offensive makes it very hard to get corrections and feedback from people you are talking to. That is very much the opposite approach than what happens in my country of birth (also a Slavic country, as the OP) where people will almost always correct you. I now realise that receiving corrections and feedback, even if it is sometimes delivered harshly, is an important part of language learning.