so i realize this question may sound somewhat odd (i guess it could), and i also understand that this forum is english speaking pretty much only; but alot of people here i can tell dont use some form of translator but just plain know english almost flawlessly

i mean, i come in here and see flags and put my mouse over them to see countries i've never even heard of before, yet 99% of everyone here types nearly perfect english (well according to forum standards with few punctuations etc.), and im curious how often most of you people that live outside of canada, america, or england and wherever else english is the major language, how often do you speak in english daily (in the real world that is; not on the internet)

:riceboy: HARRO!

I learned to speak english when I was as little as eight years old. TV helped a lot with it. Then when I was 12, my sister had an english speaking boyfriend, speaking with him really honed my skills at daily english conversation. I think my english is pretty fluent these days. I do make couple mistakes here and there when I'm not paying 100% attention while typing, but re-reading what I've written usually fixes the biggest typos and mistakes.

I huv horriblo bad grammur skliss but jsut as my mom used to tel me "'u ur specul my dear spanksy mohmy lubs u so dont let anyon tel u difrrunt'

I'm better at reading or listening to English than producing it myself.

7 years of english studying is mandatory here, for every child. 85% of them will continue for 3-5 more years. TV and movies also helped a lot when I was a kid and practised spoken english, not to mention Internet, voip programs and some Britts I barely could understand at first (still struggling :P).

Quote from CSU1 :

:riceboy: HARRO!

I'm with CSU!
I've worked in European Tech Support and most "Continentals" have much better languages skills than we do. I have colleagues here who are fluent in 3 or 4 languages, and it's no big deal! I think a lot of it boils down to exposure, the more you hear the more you pick up!

Vocalisations in the english language are but a quotidian occurance around here my dear sir.

Luckily not in the form demonstrated above.
Around were I live it's more common to hear ingeniously eloquent variations of: "Hello my friend, come try mama's cooking! Mama cook! Come try! Good food! Very best!"

I'm English but my girlfriend is Dutch. She speaks PERFECT English :o. I was very surprised when we first met. Recently her English has got even better, at times i'm worried if it will be better than mine hehehehe.
Her sister is 14 (girlfriend is 18) and she has picked up English very quickly with me being around alot .

I am exposed to Dutch alot, I am in The Netherlands every other weekend now! I can speak more Dutch then i ever thought i would, but my writing of it is nothing to be seen .

I am amazed at some of the guys on here speaking so much English, yes it is the world language but it is still impressive at how correct it is by alot of you! Would be good to have VOIP in LFS (in game), then we could see how well you can speak it .

Quote from jamesrowe :

then we could see how well you can speak it

Yeah, just hook up a gabograph and you're set. :P

Lmao!!! did one of the mod's just rename this thread "You Can Speak English" from "Can you speak English" or "Who can spaek English"??? or am I goin nuts???illepall

I started learning English at 6, but it wasn't mandatory at schools until 10 or so, going to about 17. They start earlier now, but most people here in Spain still manage to go through 10 years of mandatory English education without actually learning anything.

I didn't learn much at school. Satellite TV ,computer magazines and finally the Internet did it for me. 90% of what I read is in English now, I buy my games from the UK to get the English version instead of a poorly translated and more expensive Spanish version and tend to watch movies and TV shows or read novels in English, to avoid missing all the funny jokes and wordplay.

It's sometimes a bit silly because, for example I might give someone a book or a link to some website, and he will look at me funny and say "Man that's in English"... I just don't notice or really think about it anymore

I have a horrid accent though, because I dont' get to actually speak a lot.

I learned english from cartoon network many years ago :P
I don't think i have learned anything new on few english classes i had.
I don't have occasions to speak english so i'm sure my talking skills are much worse than my writing skills...

I Tell England Best

Quote from kamo2000 :

I learned english from cartoon network many years ago :P

Me to

I started to learn English when I was 6 (I'm 19 now) in school. But I learned alot just by waching cartoons and trying to figure out what are they saying. I can speek and read with allmost no problems at all, it's the speling part I'm bad at

I am learning english, cause i'm 15... and in italy is very difficult to find person who speaks english...
i can speak english only whit english teacher and mother-town teacher (american)..

I started learning english in school. Over at forum.sunflowers.de I'm part of the moderator-team and that's where I learned most of my english skills.
(It's a bunch of people from all over the world, though only few native english speakers. So we helped each other with english and pretty soon most of us became pretty good at it.)

So to answer the original question:
Practically never. I only speak english on TeamSpeak an average of once a month. But I can lead a discussion in english just fine with just a few mistakes. At least when I get a few minutes to get the pronounciation going.
My opinion is that you should try to get as many languages under your belt as possible. I'm currently having a go at italian, swedish is next.
Two languages is an absolute minimum these days. Better three and more.

Vain

Movies, computer games/forum/etc, school, and most of all an U.S. Air Force base at 1km from my house helped me on UNDERSTANDING english.
My pronounce it's just terrible but it's also because english uses totally different sounds than italian (and viceversa) spanish it's much more simple...
I found U.K. english much more easy to understand than American (i'm speaking about TV) i saw "Blackadder" show and almost understand everything; cant say the same for some American films i have.

Quote :

I started learning English at 6, but it wasn't mandatory at schools until 10 or so, going to about 17. They start earlier now, but most people here in Spain still manage to go through 10 years of mandatory English education without actually learning anything.

Pratically the same in Italy

Yo no hablo ingles. Solo lo leo. Y si lo escribo, lo escribo fatal...

as you read i have a an ugly english LOL

Quote from bendem :

Yo no hablo ingles. Solo lo leo. Y si lo escribo, lo escribo fatal...

LOL

I started learning english at 6, but until I was 14 and started listening music in english, I wasnt really interested in understanding it. It was The Pixies and Ramones who really got me interested, just to see what the hell they were singing about. It wasnt my teachers who taught me english, it was Frank Black, Eddie Vedder, Maynard James Keenan and Robert Plant...among many many others.

Then at university I signed up for the Erasmus program (studying abroad) and spent 10 months in Dublin.

Now at work I use english every day, researching, reading, googling...but I hardly speak it, only with my racing mates through TS, and they can tell you how dreadful my accent is...LOL

I don't speak english, but when I'm thinking I'm using english around 50% of time, almost everything is in english in my hobbies and also I'm using english versions of software as for example keyboard shortcuts are much better, also translations are using weird words so hard to understand at times.

So after many years I have started to think with English instead of Finnish.

However I don't speak English, I have not much of opportunities for that and I can't do that so well so I don't speak it usually over internet either, it takes also lot of thinking how to say words right as we speak same way as we write but in English that is different.

Few month of intensive practise and speaking should be ok, but I'm too lazy I guess
I also learned France once, got basics in two weeks, but then I had other interests and now I don't even regonice simpliest words, speaking bit difficult too then, lol.

Some day I wish to be working in England or some other country that suits better to my interests, so need to train my English too

Don't speak it much because there isn't just any opportunities for it, I hope that in the future I could use it more because I just love it and feel more confident and fluent than in finnish...which is weird, and I've also noticed that I think in english occasionally, kind of scary really. Last time, and one of the few times, I talked to real native speaker was over Internet with my teammate Johnathan (everyone in OLFSL know Johnathan right :P), we talked a lot about everything for hours. Was nice to notice I was understandable, and not like the flying Finns of the real motorsport

I lived in England, Harlow from aug. '97 until aug. '98 so I've learnt the language perfectly but since I didn't use it too often in Hungary I forgot a lot (mainly fluency)

Quote from Blackout :

Don't speak it much because there isn't just any opportunities for it, I hope that in the future I could use it more because I just love it and feel more confident and fluent than in finnish...which is weird, and I've also noticed that I think in english occasionally, kind of scary really. Last time, and one of the few times, I talked to real native speaker was over Internet with my teammate Johnathan (everyone in OLFSL know Johnathan right :P), we talked a lot about everything for hours. Was nice to notice I was understandable, and not like the flying Finns of the real motorsport

You know, I'm just waiting that day when I accidently reply in english to finnish forum or say something in english instead of finnish, only matter of time I guess

I've learned English mainly from school and games/internet, and apart from bad days with vocabulary blackouts I think it's quite decent.

At work I frequently have to speak English, because my colleagues come from all over the world (USA, UK, Serbia, Romania... to name a few). Though some of them know German, it's often easier to speak English exclusively so you don't have to switch languages all the time. Although all that talking is certainly better than no talking, the learn effect is quite limited IMO, because not only is the communication often focused around very technical/programming things, but also the English pronunciation and overall skill is only really better when coming from the native speakers