how to learn english

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It's become quite hard to hear it on the streets because of mass immigration of people determined to keep to their own languages. Even immigrants from English speaking parts of the old Empire and Commonwealth of Nations - Jamaicans are a good example - have kept their own Patwa and slang versions thereof and are corrupting the English language.

On top of that is the younger generation's use of alternative spellings and the dreaded txtspk - SMS language they use on mobile (cell) 'phones.

Every generation has had its own lingo to hide what they're saying from the elders but this current crop seems determined to make theirs stick. I'm no stick in the mud and I recognise language must evolve but I care very much for English and fear it could die out from its present form.

I expect someone like me said the same in 1066 and thereafter when the Norman French invaders corrupted our native Anglo-Saxon but at least we had the chance to fight them off. Any mention of immigration over here or attempts to have serious debates about it is branded as racism and suppressed.
 
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Yeah gropouce ... its standard protocol for the English to blame the French.

We Aussies are thankfully half a world away gropouce ... but yes ... the French did invade England ... why though?

The place is freezing cold, has frack all natural resources, and the people are a miserable lot.

The French must have been working on "Improving" them ... a bit of the original "Colonialism" perhaps?

France certainly was a much more advanced culture at the time.

The British only managed to beat them in naval warfare by copying the French designed ships.



 
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Like any language, immerse yourself in books, take courses. Get an english tutor to educate you in the pronunciations of each word. Alas, i'm Scottish so i probably butcher the language under my heavy accent.
 
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Don't talk about accents, that's my awkward since december...
i have to work in a prison for a while, and i question people who come from England, Iran, Irak, Albania, Croatia, etc..
We have to speak in english when they don't understand french or german...

awful moments for me...
as listener AND as speaker... you have no idea.

exept with this english guy... i wasn't able to ask any understandable medical question in english, so we talked about rugby, that was great ^^

Reading and writing on TH does help me a lot. i hope i improve my level.
But i really have to improve spoken language..
 
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HAHA!!
Two problems, at least.

First, i don't have a clue about how to teach a language.
Second, i'm not sure my english is good enough.

edit : third problem, and maybe the worst: i think that people here really don't care about other languages.
 
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I might be the exception to that, gropouce but it's why I try to avoid my fellow Englishmen when I'm abroad. It's not only embarrassing but most annoying to think they're so self-centred, they can't be bothered to learn languages. It's quite amusing to hear them try a few words of poorly pronounced French in Belgium and wonder why they can't be understood in almost half the country. 😀 I had a reasonable command of some languages back when you would be granted fluency by the Foreign Office just for learning five hundred words, regardless of whether you could put a cohesive sentence together or not.

Sadly, it fades away with age and lack of use but now a form of English is virtually world-wide on the net, it probably matters less. The Francophone countries will never give up, of course, and Chinese will probably take over at some stage (can't wait for the Americans to adapt to that one) but I'm pressing on trying to get some languages back as an exercise in brain improvement.

Your English is very good by the way and surpasses any of the French I could ever manage. Charles de Gaulle had marched you all out of NATO the year before I was [strike]Shangheid[/strike]posted into SHAPE so we never bothered with it. The Walloons had to fit in with the rest of us.

Happy days.
 
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Yeah, we're the minority...
Foreing languages always interested me.
__________________________________________________________________________________

And my government is saying that french sucks at foreign languages for 20 years... i'm upset with that.
So, ok, we have this kind of guys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JulmkVVfyDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=304UHIZE01c

But f**k it!!
i can understand french, english, german, italian, a few japanese and i start to learn spanish.
I even had to learn LATIN in school... and translate some text from the first century...
And the badest english speakers of my country are complaining about our "lack of efforts in foreign languages"... CONNARDS! (sorry, but french swear words are the bests)
___________________________________________________________________________________


I don't think that our american friends will have to adapt to chinese languages in any time...
China has too many languages.


I still need some times to get the rest of your message 😀
 
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I speak no Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) beyond yes and no and thank you.

French and German no problem ... since I did these at school.

I spend quite a bit of time helping a chinese mech eng who is working on part of my project - I edit her poor English on documentation and she teaches me construction assurance - its a good deal. She is very polite, patient and thorough, and I have a lot of respect for her.

I just don't want to see chicken feet on my plate at lunch ...

:)
 
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Very sad indeed to hear this.

 
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