In which Pez wastes space on your friends list!

[pez]

I was just thinking how many people around here don't actually speak English as their first language. On my flist, I have Chinese (Mainland/HK, and I don't know if Taiwanese and Singaporeans like to call themselves Chinese), Filipino, Brazilian, Portugese, French, German, Norwegian, Finns (is that the right word?), Argentinian, Vietnamese, Indonesian... and others I can't think of right now because I lost some brains through my nose this morning. XD

I know we all mostly write in English because that's the language most understands around here. My question is, how come everyone's English is so good? Is it because you live/lived overseas? You learned it in school and keep practising online? You love reading English books?

Don't mind me, I'm just curious. XD Here, watch Roy dance.

Comments

[celen.livejournal.com]

Hee, for me, it's probably through fandom that I've learned most of my English words. I mean, it's hard not to learn anything when you read fics, watch anime, read manga, other English books and talk to friends in English, right? ;D But it's true that most people are better at writing that speaking, myself included. It's the lack of practise, of course - we don't have many exchange students or anyone here to talk to.

Of course, the school system in Finland is pretty good, too, so that's why we keep learning new things and grammar and all.

By the way, are you native speaker or from some other country and just live in UK? I realized I actually don't know. D:

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

Ee! You're from Finland also! That makes two of you on my friends list :D (one day I should draw a pie-chart!)

It's surprising how far one can get even outside an English-speaking environment. I had no idea your native tongue isn't English, for one. XD I'm from Hong Kong, but I've lived in the UK for very many years now. My Chinese and English are equally bad, both sort of half way there. It's very frustrating!

[celen.livejournal.com]

Heh, yep! Finland is a nice country to live. ♥ (Awwww.)

Mm-hm, true. And honestly, you didn't? That's...kinda amazing. I was sure you'd have noticed the fact I'm no native speaker, because there are moments when I just can't remember the words or grammatic stuff or something else. Well, you'll notice that in the end of this month, because I'm not a fluent speaker, sadly so.

From Hong Kong? Ohh, that makes sense! I mean, I saw a pic of you somewhere around your journal and I thought you didn't look like European and I just thought that maybe you have Asian blood (like, the other of your parents would be Asian etc).

AND! Don't say your English is bad, because it is not. You sound exactly like a native speaker, I honestly thought you're originally from UK. :3