English as a second language: a personal account

DaveWalters wrote...

English is my native tongue, but I have been in China teaching it as a second language for a few years now. I think I have probably learned more than my students :-) The subtle and detailed nature of langauge is something we often ignore when we never had to spend time learning it. Learning a language is such a dense undertaking, I can truly appreciate those who learn another language.

Posted June 12, 2009

Brahim wrote

english is my second language i have been learning it for ren years ago and amlooking forward to master oral aspect

Posted March 07, 2009

Evelyn_Saenz wrote...

Though English is my native language, I lived in Costa Rica for several years. While there I had an operation and learned some words to go with that for the first time. Now whenever I have to explain it to a new doctor the Spanish words always come to my mind first.

Posted September 12, 2008

a_willow wrote...

You're right! I started writing in English for Squidoo after years of no writing at all. Now, when I started to write my first lens on Croatian, I was so confused! ;) More and more often when I think about something, English words come to me first! Crazy, I know but truth! Blessed birthday to you my friend!

Posted May 31, 2009

dc64 wrote...

Here's a poem by T.S.Watt (1954) which describes English perfectly:

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, through, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead--it's said like bed, not bead.
For goodness's sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat:
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five.

Posted May 15, 2009

tandemonimom wrote...

I have, sadly never learned a second language (though I did study Latin in college). This is a cool lens topic! Again, congrats on making the 100 Club!

Posted January 15, 2009

Evelyn_Saenz wrote...

"What we call a black berry (zwarte bes: two words) is more like a black red berry (no idea what rode bessen are called in English)."

I wonder if those are Black Raspberries? Another possibility is that they are a different berry all together. The berries from Costa Rica that are translated as blackberries (mora) certainly are a totally different berry than blackberries here in the States.

Posted September 12, 2008