Is English your first language?

[Shea]

English is my first language, but I very much want to learn French. I happen to work for two French ladies (seperate buisnesses) who have their native friends here working with them. They all try and help me along a bit, but I still can't understand a full sentence without hearing it several times. I'm lucky to have them all though. Typically here in Florida, one works with those who can speak Spanish.

I was able to immediately identify a movie scene that was dubbed in French the other day without looking at the screen. That's a start, right?

[lover of jesus]

my first language is arabic...not english

i am trying to learn english bcz it is important in having good job so that i do my best to learn it it also it is an international language i can establish good friendship around the world

[Adelheid]

Mine is a weird case, I guess. Being a chinese, I'm supposed to speak chinese as my mothertongue, like the rest of my cousins, but I grew up in an English school. I was taught both chinese and English, but because we speak english at home, my english became better. Then moving to Australia made my chinese worse... at the best i can only understand people who speak in mandarin, and can only speak a few basic words of chinese... what a disgrace. all my years of studying chinese is wasted!

[Koa]

ostia........people tell me that thats what they always say in veneto? is that true koa?

LOL it's true...well we don't say it all the time, more like old people or people who speak mostly dialect say it more... I actually started to use it after having been around Spanish people, cos they DO say that all the time (so I came home and I sounded like some kind of peasant while I was just being Spanish... )

Martha, I see in your profile you live in Italy??? Can I know more? I suppose you speak good Italian then...

[Themis]

German's my mother tongue.

[Pensive]

Urdu is my mother tongue....

Living in Punjab, it has also taught me Punjabi.

[Martha Q]

actually koa my mothertongue is english....but i managed to get rid of that london accent of mine....
yes i live in torino now.....yes i speak italian...mind you..not very well though..... non credo si sentano le mie vere origini dall'accento.....
ostia...just checking....been asking myself for a while where they actually say that....

[Kaltrina]

nope English is not my mother tongue, eventhough I've been learning it since I was 9 and studying it for 4 years now. my mother tongue is Albanian.

[adilyoussef]

It comes up often here that someone is taken to task on their `issues' of misspelling, punctuation or grammatical mistakes. Even though english is my first language, I myself don't pretend to be a great writer, and I'm happy when others are understanding of it, or don't single me out because of it.

There are also many other reasons why someone might have issues with their writing here including the fact that they might be blind and use speech recognition software or they might be dyslexic.

I just thought I would do a poll to see what kind of percentages there are for the use of english. We all use english on this site, but my question is, do you use english as your first language in your `real' life?

Good thread! Thanks Logos. Behind any language there is a culture. Although we all use English here in these forums, the sentances we write are affected by our culture. For example, when somebody are delighted with somthing he/she might say "This warms my heart." In other cultures where the weather is hot another person might express it differently, like in my country, we say "This frozen my heart." In addition there are some "feaux amis" in a languge. For example, "sonsible" in French means sensitive, and many mix it with "sensible" which has an other meaning. That's a real problem because while discussing some issue people misundrestand each other due to simple mistakes.

In Arabic there is no capital letters. That's why some Arabic native speakers might forget using the capital letter in proper names or in the beginning of a sentance. That is a mistake I did when discussing a religious issue: I wrote "jesus" instead of "Jesus", and one of the forums member was angry with that. I'm sorry again.

English is neither my 1rst nor my 2nd language. I speek Moroccan Arabic as a native language, my second is Classical Arabic, for they are different in terms of structure, one is VSO structure and the other is sometimes VSO and SVO structure, the third langauge I speek sinse I was 6 years old is French. English is the 4th one and I've started studying it since 2001. I don't speek it a lot for that it is not used here in my country as French or Spanish are. I use it only in class, when reading a novel, or sometimes in the internet.

[Logos]

Wow the percentages when I posted this are about 60%/40% non-english/english, slightly higher than I thought!

Thank you for the examples of misinterpreted words adilyoussef maybe this topic will allow others to realise the diversity of cultures represented in these forums! I myself am very happy to get little bits of insight into someone eles's perception of things.

Kudos to all you people who are learning another language, it's one of the hardest things to do with a brain that is more than 5 years old.

[baddad]

I am constantly AMAZED at the sheer brainpower this site cradles.....amazing, amazing people inhabit this place ....I am truly humbled.....and this thread, as have so many others, has revealed insights into members that we may have otherwise missed. Gracias Logos. and kudos to all the little geniuses..........

[Themis]

For example, "sonsible" in French means sensitive, and many mix it with "sensible" which has an other meaning. That's a real problem because while discussing some issue people misundrestand each other due to simple mistakes.
.

Sensible in french isn't the same as 'sensible' in english? Oops.
(But it is the same in french as it is in german, I know that. )

[Logos]

I am constantly AMAZED at the sheer brainpower this site cradles.....amazing, amazing people inhabit this place ....I am truly humbled.....and this thread, as have so many others, has revealed insights into members that we may have otherwise missed. Gracias Logos. and kudos to all the little geniuses..........

yup there are a number of people here who constantly surprise me with their knowledge and wealth of experience, put them all together and it's a great multi-cultural site!

[adilyoussef]

Thank you for the examples of misinterpreted words adilyoussef maybe this topic will allow others to realise the diversity of cultures represented in these forums! I myself am very happy to get little bits of insight into someone eles's perception of things.

Kudos to all you people who are learning another language, it's one of the hardest things to do with a brain that is more than 5 years old.

That is one of the reasons I've started a thread related to this issue: "Meaning of Words." You'll be so surprised to know how differently a word is percieved by people. Really we can learn a lot from each other. Just be open minded.

[Koa]

Kudos to all you people who are learning another language, it's one of the hardest things to do with a brain that is more than 5 years old.

Well language learning is my only skill though I started that when I was 11... and it actually seemed to become harder as I grow old, but it might also have to do that my first 2 languages learnt were English and French which are not too difficult from my point of view.

Sensible in french isn't the same as 'sensible' in english? Oops

In Italian "sensibile" means sensitive, not sensible...sensible would be something like "ragionevole". Well like adil said about French.