[Closed] English as your first language, but fluent in others?

I learnt flemish / dutch through watching English TV programmes with flemish subtitles.
Not the most conventional manner but it's good if you are lazy & ignorant like me. Of course this is supplemented by other media but I have never taken any formal lessons.
I am also fortunate to live (t)here with a flemish lady too which certainly helps.
Sadly my kids only speak Flemish so that is also a good kick in the ass to learn.

I am pretty fluent in French.

My Dad is a languages teacher (French & Spanish) and we used to spend the whole summer in France/Spain when we were kids, getting sent out to play with the local kids armed with some key phrases (I can still organise a game of hide-and-seek in Spanish!).

Studied French all the way through school, my Dad taught me enough Spanish to pick up a Standard-Grade in that too (that's a GCSE to you Sassenachs!).

Went to uni, studied engineering but kept up a few hours a week of French. Did an exchange year in France in my 3rd year.

Graduated, took an engineering job, ran a project in France for a couple of years and kept my hand in translating documents and liaising with the locals.

Finally packed in the job and moved to France to start my own business. Been here 5 years and speak/read/write French every day.

I'm happy to call myself fluent and do occasionally pass for a native speaker (often get asked if I'm from Quebec/Corsica/Pyrenees/other weird-accented locale!). Not perfect though, especially written as I don't do much formal writing in French.

I can happily listen to the radio (definitely the hardest thing!), chat on the phone, read a book, watch a film, etc. in French. Being in the tourism business, there's a lot of documents floating around which have both English and French side-by-side. I often find myself switching from one to the other half-way down without realising!

mein deutsch ist relativ gut. ich bin hier schon knapp vier jahren. ich habe eine deutsche freundin, die ich seit fast zehn jahren kenne, aber vor ich nach deutschland kam, konnte ich kaum deutsch. ich konnte nur ein bier und brezn bestellen, und hallo sagen.

zuerst war ich für zwei monaten in einer sprachschule - die freundin hat studiert weiter norden und ich wollte in der nähe der berge sein. in der schule habe ich nur beschissene deutsche grammatik gelernt. nach die zwei monaten bin ich oft mit jungs, die viel auf radfahren stehe, rumgehängt. die konnte meistens auch englisch aber haben fast nur deutsch gesrochen. mit denen hatte ich meinen wortschatz (literally "word treasure") nachgerüstet. nach einiger zeit hatte ich einen job als zimmermann gefunden. da konnte ich nur deutsch reden und habe schon wieder viel gelernt.

ich denke, der beste weg, um eine sprache zu lernen, ist in dem land, in dem die sprache gesprochen wird leben.

jetzt habe ich kein problem mit irgendwelche leute zu quatcshen. manche leute aus nord deutschland denken, dass ich ein baier bin. ich kann auch leute aus dem alpenland gut verstehen, etwas, das viele nord deutsche nicht tun kann....

falls du in südtirol und österreich unterwegs sein will, dann am besten lernst du dort dein deutsch. ich habe in bayern mein deutsch gelernt und es hat sich sehr gelohnt....

viel sapß dabei!

Nothing will hel like living in the country. Having already studied it once you should pick it up a tad quicker, adopt their accent, there are a lot of good online resources now. The letters are all familiar which will either help or hinder. Good luck and don't beat yourself up if you fail.

Have you tried flash (anki) cards?

I can read the Korean alphabet (Hanguel) and know a few words but struggle with sentences and most words.

1st lang english, good grasp of Nepali (was better 5 years ago) lived there for 3 years, sadly not much use for it in Cumbria

Fluent in French, and I speak excellent Braille.

T'es con mdr.
Use to be fluent in english du to spend 4 years in the UK. Speak spanish too due to my origins

my Hungarians fairly strong orally but i can barely read a word.. picked it up working for only 6 months in a Budapest supermarket!!

I guess I'm not strictly on-topic but substitute English for another foreign language and the principles still remain valid. English is my third language, my parents were Latvian and Russian and as far as I remember I've always spoken to each of them in their language, so that definitely helped with other languages. Learned German in school which was long ago (graduated in early 90's) but I can still understand it quite well, for example all that alpin wrote is easy, even picked up on a couple of his typos 🙂

That being said - if you don't use it, you definitely lose it. Trying to speak German now is very hard, the brain spitefully throws too many English words at me and it can take a long time to remember the correct term.

Never really studied English, just picked it up from watching (many!) films with Russian translation - in the 80's films in Soviet Union were not dubbed, you could still hear the original soundtrack under the translated voice-over. After a while I noticed that I've started picking up some translation mistakes 🙂 and the rest is history, started speaking English to some Americans and it just simply became gradually easier. That being said I doubt my spoken English will ever be mistaken for native, I'd have to try very hard. Even simple words such as 'no' are very hard to pronounce in a clean Queen's English for me, it would probably be easier to say it with a Scottish accent 🙂

For what's it worth I agree with others saying that learning by immersion is the most effective method, at least in my experience. If you're aiming for conversational fluency movies might help more than textbooks as they contain more daily speech than many academic materials. That being said German grammar is far more structured than English and you'll only get so far without learning it properly.

Mrs MFL is fluent in German, did O & A levels, then degree. Spent one year in Germany at uni. If she is speaking a lot of German it gets to the point where she forgets to revert back to english if she try's to explain or include me in conversations.
She taught German for several years after uni, now is a lecturer in teacher training. I'm quite proud of her abilities really.

Was fluent in french but have let it slide now.

9 months intensive language school, native speaking tutors, 9-5 mon-fri inc a month at a language school in france tends to get you upto speed!

Wow - Thanks for all of the replies. I'm just catching up on all of them.

Alpin - I understood most of your reply without looking too many words up, so that's a bonus! 🙂 I really need to re-review my masculine, feminine and neuters. Can you recommend any online radio stations or websites which would be a good start?

All of your replies are interesting. You forget that because this forum is in English (ish), how many contributors speak different languages and natively speak others.

lardcore - I think you're right. Immersion is going to be key. Unfortunately I can't take trips across to Germany that often, so will need to do my best from Scotland.

My biggest worry is that my job is technical, so not only am I learning a new language, i'm going to have to convert my technical knowlege in English to the equivelant words in German which might not be part of every day conversation. There are some worldwide forums though relating to my work so I might see if there are some Germans out there who wouldn't mind a couple of calls a month on Skype to help me with industry terminology in German.

I found a really good way to learn was to "relax" in the language. Watch films Id like anyway but in french with french subtitles on, read translations of my favourite books, listened to french music in the car etc etc. The more like work it is the harder you'll find it.

satnav and phone/pc displays etc mean it's with you all the time as well.

Double post.

Originally Austrian, grew up there actually, and have spent a few years at a time in Germany (specifically around Solingen, Dusseldorf and Cologne) working so I'd say I'm fluent... got a lot of grief at work due to the slight austrian dialect, so was forced to adopt the "hochdeutsch" the northeners speak, I now reserve my austrian slang for trips to Bavaria, Tyrol and of course Austria.

I found that people from the north of Germany, have genuine difficulty understanding austrians, I found the same with a Bavarian colleague who also got a fair bit of stick for his accent 😛

Learnt English from a young age as my dad loved to spend time over here, and became obsessed with the culture. So much so he forced me to go to uni over her and I spent 3 years occupied with that. Though looking back, time well spent 😉 I've spent the past 7 years living 'full time' over here and have had no problems integrating, and I found my accent completely disappeared aswell, so could pass for an (albeit eccentric) englishman.

I think Alpin and lardcore put it rather well, the best way to learn a language is to live there, and essentially interact with the people as well as the culture... of course a bit of prior knowledge is handy (grammar especially) for interaction initially but you really do learn the most talking to people, not sitting behind a desk. My dad made us watch english programs and read us english children's books as kids and somehow, part of it stuck! Made life a hell of a lot easier as a student, and I did find that movies and reading daily newspapers helped a great deal!

[b]Now, to translate Mr Alpin! 🙂 : [/b]

"My German is relatively good. I've been here for nearly four years. I have a german girlfiends, who I've known for almost ten years, but before I came to Germany, I could hardly speak any German. I could only order a beer and a "brezn" (no real translation for it :P), and say hello.

Initially I spent 2 months at a Language School- (my)/ the girlfriend studied further north, and I wanted to to be closer to the mountains. At school, I only learnt the "bloody" (to put it nicely 😉 ) german grammar. After the two months, I spent a lot of time hanging around with chaps that were "into bikes" (sorry no proper translation). Most of them could also speak english, but almost always spoke german. With them I could consolidate my vocabulary. After some time, I found a job as a carpenter, here I could only speak german and have again learnt a lot.

I think the best way to learn a language, is to live in the country in which it is spoken.

Now I have no problems chatting with anyone. Some people from North Germany think that I'm from Bavaria. I can understand the people from the "alpenland" (guessing you mean to include Austria in that?), something that many north Germans cannot do... (so very true 😉 )

In case you're going to be out an about in South Tyrol and Austria, then it's probably best you learn your german there. I learn my German in Bavaria, and it has paid off."

Hope you don't mind [b]alpin[/b] 🙂

But to Mr Grim, enjoy yourself whatever you do... and good luck.

Chris

I learned bugger all German when I was there for 6 months, but that's what you get for hanging out with your family all the time and working in an English speaking workplace. Likewise Finland. Didn't learn any German there either.

I'm also an ex pat living in Germany. Have been for the past ten years. My German is pretty good and I can also speak a fair amount of Chinese as I used to live in Taiwan before I moved to Germany.

Like it has already been said total immersion is the quickest way to learn a language. As far as the OP is concerned I wouldn't worry too much about technical words in German as most of them have been 'eingedeutscht' from English anyway. Depending on what part of Germany you are looking to move to a high percentage of Germans have a good command of English and are more than happy to practice it on you too!