Asklemmy

Italian here, I had luck with my English teachers and my parents and then the internet encouraged me to learn extra

I'm non-native (native German, learned English in school). Nearly everything I read or write is English, though, and I've probably read more English books than most of the native speakers.

I am Nepali. I am probably the only Nepali using such obscure platform. And I say it proudly to others. They think I am ninja, and ignore me. 😝

Considering the high overlap between Lemmy users and internet savvy people, I would say that we are not a good representation.

Native Indonesian and Javanese. Almost all Indonesian speaks one of the local languages + Indonesian as the country has 700+ of unique languages.

German and Russian native speaker here, so English is my third language.

I'm danish...

German here.

Basically 80-90% of my media consumption is in English.
I search (mostly) in English, read documentation in English and document my own stuff in a mix of English and German (we call this Denglisch in Germany (compound of (D)eutsch+Englisch)

I'm Dutch, but due to the large amount of English content I never really had an issue with English. While I struggled with German and Fr*nch, I never had to pay attention or study for English lessons. I just did what felt natural and ignored the homework etc. Not that I'm a great English speaker or anything, my vocabulary is sometimes a bit limited which makes me have to search for the right words to use. But when watching or reading I can follow pretty much anything. I also sometimes feel like I'm more resilient to accents than native English speakers, maybe because we get exposed to British and American English and therefore kinda learn a more generalized representation of the language? Idk, maybe that's not a thing

I always cringe when I see native speakers confuse "it's" and "its", "their", "they're" and "there" and all the other subtleties of their language. But then again, I'm a pedantic German and maybe Americans are so anti-education already that they're cool with that.

I'm from germany. I watch a lot of YouTube. Also I work as software developer, so I need to read many english manuals. Wich don't means, that my english is great. But it could also be worse.

English is my 4th language. I mostly use it online and in professional settings.

I feel like non native users are often better at both formulating themselves and spelling, compared to many native speakers

Especially the part where people replace 'have' with 'of'. (Would of instead of would have / would've)

Non native speaker here too btw

My first and mother tongue is Farsi but I haven't spoken it out loud in any sustained fashion in actual decades at this point and I learned English when I was very young so I guess at this point while English might not be my "native" language, it is my primary. I noticed some time ago I think in English and when I go to speak Farsi I stammer, it is kind of a bummer but I'm more focused on Spanish than learning how to speak a language I am not around.

I'm German. Back in my day, we had 9 years of English classes in school and from what I've heard it's even more now. I was lucky to have a teacher who had spent a couple of years in the UK so he had much less of a German accent than most other teachers at our school and was also able to give us a lot of insight into how people actually speak, compared to the rather formal and stilted examples in our textbooks.

Between social media, movies, shows and a job in software engineering, I would say that on most days I read and listen to more English than German.

Swede in France. My grades were quite bad in the language domain, but I read loads of books when I was younger, uni books were in english, foreign tv is subtitled in sweden, worked with foreigners so English is often a given, guess it all adds up.

I learned the basics from Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage. Ready... Start! Time up! Game over! Marble zone! All useful phrases when abroad.

I just spend too much time on the internet

I'm Russian, I started learning (school doesn't count) chatting playing pool at Yahoo.games in the beginning of 2000s.
Then I stopped getting translated versions of games (when I got Morrowind, my head literally hurt due to the amount of "foreign" texts I had to read). So, Internet and games taught me in the beginning.
Then, I was asked to translate at business meetings in my (quite small) company, I did some contract translations as well.
Then I got into IT (like 2012 or so), where you use English in many situations. In 2019, I got into an international company, where I spoke English as a main language for three years. Along the way I moved to Denmark, so now, in addition to my kinda broken English, I have a really shitty Danish.

English is my secondary language, but I've always been drawn to it. I live in Denmark and we don't dub TV shows, but subtitle them instead. Also I started reading novels in English at a young age, so that has surely helped.

I learnt it since I was 3. I was literally forced to do it instead of playing outside with my friends. And always out was hard...

Then I found the language Esperanto, that is supposed to be 10x easier to learn and use. I tried it and I can conform that to be true 😊

But I needed English for my (volunteer) work in a social movement, so I slowly learn it. But still had big problems to understand spoken English. Then I found English videos about topic that was very investing for me. I was trying hard to understand and finally I did.

Long story short, I still prefer to speak Esperanto, and much more people should, IMO.

I learned english because i'm deaf and french subtitles were scarse. Futhermore, i always wanted to read the latest scans :)

Dutch, we don't dub our movies (luckily) and prefer easy trading over valueing our own language. My biggest problem is finding an accent that fits me. Should I go for posh British, 'Murican, or Dutch "steenkolen Engels"?

Native French speaker. I like to learn new words both in French and English to extend my vocabulary.

I learned English mainly by playing video games. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. in English while still learning to read French.

Hungarian here, learned in school and through games/videos

I'm a non-native English speaker, learned it by watching cartoons without subtitles when I was a wee little squirt

Not a native speaker. I learned mostly from American TV and reading Internet discussions. I have also absorbed a lot of more technical language through the native speakers at work. I made sure my coworkers know that I want them to correct my English, and working with a bunch of pedantic nerds, I sure get a lot of helpful corrections!

I'm Indian, specifically Sourh Indian.
We learn English in our schools and it is the main medium for school and college education.

I'm from Spain and English is my third language (currently trying to learn Portuguese)

I've learn it with music (Judas Priest🤟), movies and series.

I’m not a native speaker but in Sweden we do learn it from a very young age. We don’t dub anything, we watch shows and movies in English with Swedish subtitles. English is also mandatory from 3rd grade up until you finish college. Now, combine that with social media.

I don’t consider myself a native speaker but I am extremely proficient.

I had to learn English from a young age because it was the primary language used from kindergarten to high school, and even in college.

I improved my comprehension by reading articles and online discussion forums, as well as by watching movies, series, broadcasts, and YouTube videos.

Second, or rather third. Games and media taught me English.