What is your native language?

Thanks teacher, I done.

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Hello everyone,

it is very interesting to read your comments and see where everyone comes from.

I am from Ukraine and came with my mother to Germany when I was 3. I grew up with Russian and German at the same time. When I was little I didn’t understand that these are two different languages and I often spoke a mix out of it, which was really funny for my family and sometimes a bit disturbing for my little friends. :smiley:

In school I learned English and French for years but both with less motivation and fun. Until my father send me to California a year when I was 17, my English was terrible.
In the USA it become fast better because I wanted to communicate and to hang out with friends. So my motivation was clear.

Now I am already 31 and I am very happy to speak Russian, German and English, because I can travel the whole world and communicate with a lot people. Also I am a German teacher now and languages are a big part of my life. I startet to learn Spanish now. Btw, I am looking for a training partner. Maybe someone who speaks Spanish wants to learn German? Let me know, we could meet weekly online. That would be nice :slightly_smiling_face:

Bye Daryna

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Hello Every one, I am Indian and my native language is Hindi.

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Hi Sonu, welcome to our forum and thanks for sharing your language background with us. Can you please also tell us when you started learning English and how often you use it?

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Death is inevitable - for languages or for any living or non-living things - Though it is not a good thing to be felt.
New things take birth (it maybe language people sand rocks etc) and old certainly will die.
Maybe a myth though - Some say that Native Americans came from Indians (or the people now being
called as Indians). Sanskrit is the oldest language which is almost dead - this was spoken by old Indians (may not be the same Indians who exist now)

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My Native Language is Telugu (which will disappear in 50 to 100 years). I live in India.
Not related to this Topic though - Thanks to this Forum - From many people I have learnt a lot! To name few - @Alan, Torsten, @Anglophile. Apologies if I forgot other names!

This Forum is more user-friendly - unlike StackOverflow where Admins, without any deliberation or conversation - ruthlessly delete Topic or mark them based on their rigid policies.

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I agree with you, and we have already begun to exterminate our own species by following the ideology of infinite economic growth. If we do not reverse this harmful path, the number of new generations of human beings will be extremely limited.

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I’m afraid I cannot agree with you,@msn.
A language which is current, widespread and active in a country like India will only flourish. Don’t be pessimistic. Telugu is one of the Dravidian (South Indian) languages known for its culture, heritage and literature. Each State is vying with one another to enrich its own language and retain its status. Your language, believed to be used by more than 75 million people, is one of official languages in the country. The Union Government is constitutionally obligated to envision measures and postulate policies for the development of Indian languages especially the 22 languages that now stand recognized. Do you think the Telugu populace will disown the language that they have inherited over ages? To be living in a multilingual region of the earth with Hindi and English as the official languages for a billion plus population is something which we need to be proud of! That’s why India is known for her unity in diversity! Contribute to the growth of your own language as well while you are evincing interest in the English language.
Avoid making such disparaging public statements lest you should be labelled unnational!

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The biggest problem now I see is - Creating the reality using “Progressive Liberal Secular Journalism / Media”.
These Parasites create Reality which they like, they disrupt anything which they do not like.
Whatever you said is correct - As per your understanding and which is not a direct-knowledge. You created this based on your assumptions + some facts which are from Media (news papers etc).
(Most of the Journalists = Parasites - FYI I worked as a Sub Editor for 3 years, so I know how these parasites live. And I am not against any Nation or Religion etc. And I believe in One Energy (that is what Hinduism tells) regardless of Religion etc crap. In fact, that Single Energy (Goddess I assume) does not have any Religion or Sex or Color etc. This crap is created by Human-beings which is another Cruel species. Especially, Male Human-beings are Dangerous to all other living things. If these are eliminated completely, other species live in peace (Source: By seeing the male human-beings every day + observing their filthy intentions + numerous Rape related news in news papers every day).

Gradually Telugu is being spoken less and less. The current generation even do not know 30 percent of language which I know, And everything in here is now in English - for Education, Jobs, Media etc.
In this pace, after 2 to 3 generation, Telugu will be diminishing slowly. By the way, I like Telugu Literature very much, but the Reality is Reality.

Apologies, if my writings are disturbing, but this is the reality!

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My native language is Dutch, actually Flemish and both differ a lot where pronunciation is concerned. You could say that is the same thing as native British speakers and American and Canadian speakers. The Dutch and Flemish Belgians understand each other very well, but this has to do with our country’s history. To explain this to you now would take me hours, especially because it is so complicated. And then our local dialect…Ooooooooooooh. A few years ago I was in Spain with a few friends. We spoke in our local dialect when we were on the beach. Suddenly, a German woman, who’d overheard us speaking, came up to us. First she asked if we could speak English. We said ‘Yes’ and we also told her we could speak German. She said she had heard us speaking in our local dialect and she thought we were Swedish.
I don’t dare to post a recording of my local dialect, because you’d fall flat on your back if you heard it.

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I didn’t even know that there could be so many representatives of different languages. I live in Canada, my family has Ukrainian roots, so apart from English and French, I know a little Ukrainian. I was in Ukraine once and had the opportunity to practice Ukrainian. I liked it, I want to learn Ukrainian more in future. I really like that there are so many languages ​​in the world, it creates cultural diversity. We studied it in college and I used resources on cultural diversity to prepare my assignment. I liked this resource, I recommend reading it, there is a lot of interesting content on various topics.
I want to know more about the participants of the forum and what languages do they know.

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Actually, my native language is Vietnamese. I was exposed to English when I was a kid. However, school have just brought students English grammar and basic vocabulary, so it just crossed my mind that I had to self-study. That was uneasy and I ocassionally felt panic. When i was older, my fear has receded a little. I am trying step by step to improve my knowledge, especially foreign language like English.

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@minlin,
DON’T PANIC!
You have a huge advantage having been exposed to a foreign language as a child.
Just composing the paragraph above shows you have a good understanding of the language. It could use some touch ups here and there, but the basic structure is solid.

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Hi Mnlin, welcome to our forum and thank you for sharing your experience. The fact that you have reached this level in English is a much greater achievement than for someone whose native language is French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish or any other Western European language. I lived in Germany for a long time, and although there are so many Vietnamese speakers here, I can’t say much more than just “hello” and “thank you” in Vietnamese, so it’s great to have you on board!

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My native language is Portuguese. Portuguese is spoken in Portugal and “Brasil”, with “s”, South America, where I have lived since I was born. I started studying English when I was a child and took a University degree both in English and Portuguese. I got retired but I love watching films, especially with American accent. I have not been abroad so far.

Portuguese is a lovely language . It comes from Latim, that is why those who speak Anglo Saxon Languages may find it difficult to learn. Inside our country there is a variety of accent but we can understand each other.

Brasil ( Brazil in English ) is a beautiful tropical country, with wonderful nature and delicious food. Brazilian people are very friendly, too. Lots of teenagers take exchange programs. One year abroad with previous study of the language is enough to speak English with good fluency.

Hope you come and visit us anytime.

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Remember one thing:
To speak English, we do not need to be intelligent (Don’t take this in a negative way). That is purely based on our environment (language I mean).

I live in India, and I do not know Hindi properly, and I can not speak Hindi, even now properly, there are numerous mistakes. However, when I observe a vegetable vendor, she speaks very good Hindi.
The environment is the primary factor.
Maths is difficult to learn for me at-least, maybe it needs little bit intelligence.

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Hi there! My native language is English. But now I am trying to learn Spanish. And you know I will try to do it using the advice that I found on forums. Honestly, I was considering learning English, but I hope it will work out with any language. So, I will read books in Spanis :relaxed:

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My native language is Russian, but since I was in kindergarten I learned English. I took English classes and started watching a lot of movies, tv shows, and videos in English. To be honest, sometimes, I feel more inclined to speak it rather than my native language. I also think in English in my brain. I feel bad that I don’t have the same admiration toward Russian. Recently, I started to learn basic Portuguese and hopefully later I will manage to understand a little bit of more complicated grammar.

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Hi, where in Russia did you grow up and why is your name Stewart?

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I like cultures, languages and people, so if I meet someone who say, speaks Greek, I would ask how to say hello and a few other things. I think people appreciate it because Americans are often quite myopic when it involves foreign cultures.

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