Ask Lemmy

It varies a lot from person to person among those who are bilingual, and even from era to era. I'm Honduran, for context. I had nearly natively fluent English when I came out of high school and began working at a call center, mostly because I played an MMO for years and spent days and nights in Skype calls with groups of people from all over the world, most of which were native English speakers. Everyone else on the call center was astounded at how good my English was, and it was indeed miles better than anyone else in the office.

Then, I started university, it was predominantly taught in Spanish, everyone spoke Spanish, and I stopped playing MMOs and spending all day on Skype calls. I very clearly remember the transition, where I had trouble speaking Spanish quickly because I was so used to English, to now having to think for a second what I want to say in English before saying it in a less than perfect accent, while my Spanish now flows quite easily. My Spanish and my English essentially swapped places (to where they should've always been, if you ask me). I now believe this had a noticeable impact on my social life when I was young, I was too shy to talk in Spanish but the shyness would fade away completely if I held the conversation in English. Thankfully, spanglish became a predominant way of speaking now and everyone is happy lmao.

Content consumed did little difference, I believe. I never stopped consuming content in English. Still do, I spend too much time on Youtube and 99% of what I watch is in English, but my English will never be as good as it was back in those MMO days. Daily practice with native speakers makes all the difference in the world. I now have friends with better English than I had in my golden years, but since they work for Brits or Aussies, they have that accent, and I can't tell the latino bits out of them at all, they could fool me if I didn't know any better.

Edit: education here is not good. I had classmates on senior year who couldn't read out of a reading book, at ALL. I've heard similar stories from even the most prestigious schools in the city. My school would pride itself on having some american teachers at some point, but that was history by the time I rolled through, so my English was 100% a gamer skill.

Pretty much equivalent, since I was in an English speaking country early enough.

Yes, I watch and read in original language. However you also need some cultural knowledge to get everything. While that seems obvious, the devil is in the details indeed.

I always have a lot of fun with words that split up into multiple in the other language. Recently I stumbled over kind(ness) which you'd split up in German: to act kind (freundlich) and to be kind (gütig) would be different words.

who's

whose

how fluent

:-P

Fluenty enough to know it isn't who's but whose. But not enough to properly understand a movie or a tv show. So the worst of both worlds.

German here, usually fluent enough to understand movies and tv shows unless the characters have poor pronunciation or a heavy accent. Also old english Shakespearean fancy words sometimes give me trouble. I consume most media (YouTube, games, etc) in English.

Germany: I speak english better than many politicians.

And yes ofc i undetstabd tv and movies lol

Native English speaker, but I've visited India, so I have a different, related topic. Of course, there's two caveats: I have an outsider's perspective and the British have a very lengthy history with the region. In major cities, spoken English seems as popular as Hindi. In Delhi, signs seemed to be entirely in English, although maybe I just didn't notice the Devanagari script as much because it's incredibly foreign to me. Kolkata had less spoken English, but still more English signs than Hindi or Bengal (I can't tell the difference). Traveling to rural West Bengal, the advertisements have skewed towards Bengali (I believe) and road signs are dual language, but but I don't think I've seen a single business sign that didn't have English as the primary text.

I thought it was silly that English and Chinese became the main languages in Firefly (which, for the show, was English with Chinese words thrown in). Now I realize, not only is that possible, but it's already here. English is the global standard for air traffic control and imperialism has pushed language influence far and wide. International business has made English effectively a requirement for competitiveness. I was just oblivious as an English-only speaker at the time. I've wondered if Hindi would now be a more accurate 2nd language for the Firefly future, but I'm not convinced because of how prevalent English is there, like it might have already reduced the power of Hindi on the global scale. Plus, there's so many dialects there, Hindi is the most common but it doesn't have a majority

Portuguese. And it depends on the day.

I started picking up english even before being formally taught. I can easily follow a film, a podcast or some other media in full english with no need to dedicate the entirety of my attention to it. I can pick up humour and innuendo, along with cultural cues. Even some degree of lingo and slang.

Speaking can sometimes be challenging as I speak very fast in my native language and I tend to try to achieve to same in english, only to sound like a washing machine full of marbles on high speed.

When can I get a bit lost? Very dense accents, like scotish or some from the US. The Louisiana one throws me off completely. The australians are cool, except for their local wording that can be a bit harder to follow. Took me ages to figure what a sheila was and that calling someone a dingo was an insult.

And by the way: why can a kangoroo be a wallabee and just to rub salt on the wound most people will call it a 'roo?

I'm Dutch and I speak fluent English. Not because "all Dutch people speak good English" but because I have a Master's in English language and I lived in the UK for 30 years.

My job is fixing terrible English written by Dutch people who think they speak good English (and that includes government ministers).

French, I watch and read almost nothing in French. I never use French dub.

Irish accent kicked my ass the couple times I went there. Scottish accent was tough too. I worked with people speaking with an Indian accent without much issues.

No issue in US, Canada, England.

I've been consuming English media for many years. My computer and phone have used English since the 90s. I got used to it, so today, even if I could switch my phone to my native language, I don't, it sounds strange.

These days I consume most media in English (US, UK, AU) - movies, tv shows, YouTube, websites, books (paper, audiobooks). I have no trouble understanding content, but I do keep subtitles on out of habit, and that helps when there's a stronger accent.

I've been using English at work exclusively for more than 10 years, and where I live now, I hang out with an international crowd. We speak English to each other, even though it's not anyone's first language most of the time.

I take notes and journal in English, even privately. I sometimes even think in English.

I still have an accent and I'm missing some vocabulary and the occasional grammatical rule, but I consider myself fluent in English.

Written ? It’s actually better xD

Spoken ? Nah, we ain’t doing that

Answering your question: I think that I understand spoken English better than one of my mother tongues.

Not European, although I live and work in Europe so the official language at my company is English, so I can give some extra insight there.

English is my third language, I learned it in part because the school teaches it (albeit very badly), but mostly because games and movies weren't translated back then, especially those a young teen without money but with internet access could have access to. I watch English content regularly (in fact I think 90% of the movies and TV shows I watch are in English). I do watch them with subtitles (in English), but that's because I sometimes have trouble hearing things (I also watch content in my native language subtitled when possible).

I communicate daily in English with my coworkers, some of who also have English as the second language. We've had some minor misunderstandings because of things that sound a certain way in one language, e.g. I came out harsh on one discussion because I said something I can't remember now, luckily my manager is also a native Spanish speaker and explained what I meant when the other person responded harshly. Speaking of my manager, we usually talk in Spanish, but sometimes you get a technical term or something you're so used to say in English that you just switch and start talking English, until randomly you switch back, so on and so forth. I think someone would have to be fluent in both languages to follow our conversations.

Fluent enough that Americans think I'm Canadian, Canadians think I'm British, and brits think I'm Texan.

I'm pretty much a fluent English speaker. My native tongue is Dutch

There are certain sayings, phrases or slang that I may not be intimately familiar with. And sometimes I can't think of a word that I really should have known and I need to look it up (but I get that in Dutch too)

But generally my thoughts are in English, when I speak English, which I think is a decently good sign of fluency.

Following movies is no problem, but I still prefer to have English subtitles under them in case I miss anything. Watching with subtitles is just something I'm used to anyway, because most movies in the NL are not dubbed, but rather the OG language (often English) with Dutch subtitles

I also speak a bit of French and German, but I'm nowhere near fluent in those.

I probably won't pass as a native speaker because of the accent, but other than that it's probably better than the average native speaker.

I do understand English very well, but still use subtitles in case the audio is muffled etc. When speaking I have a bit more trouble remembering certain terms and mangle grammar which i realize a second later. There are some terms or phrases that I haven't encountered yet, had to have my american coworker explain some of those. In terms of being able to communicate it is totally fine but there is still friction that i feel coming from not only the language but our different backgrounds.

I also notice it is easy to learn a more niche word with the wrong pronunciation, or one that doesn't fit with the rest of what we learned. We basically end up with a mix of british and american english with random accents.

I can understand without any issue most of the time, when it comes to speak because of lack of practice, not many opportunities to use it, I'm not as fluent as I would like to but I can manage, specially after a few minutes.

I used to actually be more fluent in English and russian than Ukrainian until the 2022 invasion. Lots of people in Kyiv used russian for day to day conversation, and that, sadly, included my friend group. At the moment I think I've restored my fluency in Ukrainian, but I still sometimes have easier time finding the correct word in English.

As for my fluency in English, I can usually watch shows, play games and read books in it without any issues, tho at times subtitles help (like when parsing an accent I'm unfamiliar with).

It's pretty good. I normally consume all english content in its original language.

I can sometimes come across as a native speaker. The accent goes all over the place, australian, south african, brittish.

An American movie or TV show I would probably have the same level of understanding as my native language, even on references, puns, etc.. English from any other nation, not to the same degree, but I'd say comparable to an american. Speaking I would say I would be quite far off. I'd say I speak a sort of "Erasmus English", meaning I have almost exclusively had conversations with Europeans, none of which native to english. That means we borrow words which may be common to us, but not english, or accidentally apply our native grammatical rules to english.

Pretty fluent I guess. Most of the media I consume are in English and I never have issues understanding things (at least for US and UK content). I also think in English about half of the time. The main problem is my accent, which is terrible and trips me up a lot when trying to speak. This is one of the parts you don't train too much when most of your communication in English happens with other non-native speakers.

English is my third language.

I'm dyslexic and socially awkward, so when it comes to speaking all three are pretty bad.

Writing, reading, and listening (if I've got my glasses on) is easier, so also about the same, but better than speaking.

I watch and read mostly English spoken media (at at least 1.5x on youtube and 1.33x when it comes to series and movies, so I'm fairly fluent, I suppose, though sometimes it's hard to find the right word or phrase (that's probably the dyslexia, though), and I'm quite certain I tend to accidentally mix English with whatever they speak in the US, since the majority of the media I consume tends to come from there.

I'm fluent enough that it irks me when people mix “its” and “it's” or write “could of” or things like that, so there's that, I suppose.

I also know what each of the words in the phrase “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” means, if that counts for anything, but only because I looked it up the first time I came across it.

Like nearly as fluent except when I get lazy and stop thinking of "fancy" words to write. English has a lot of fancy words: vocabulary synonymous to other elements of the lexicon. I don't know those types of words in Portuguese lol.

I can understand movies fine but prefer captions regardless of the language being spoken unless I am in a very quiet room.

I'm brazilian and my family thinks I am really smart for knowing another language but really I just watched YouTube when i was a kid so uh yeah I'm not sure how fluent I actually am since I've only met other second language speakers.

I'd say I'm quite fluent, however since I mostly learned from computer related internet forums my vocabulary is quite limited.

My wife is from a non English speaking country and her English is better then my Australian English.

I am able to follow an American movie by just listening to it, but if I do turn on the subtitles, I get a lot more out of it! I need to spend less of my brain capacity interpreting the foreign language and can use more of it for understanding the social context shown in the film. Or the scenery. I understand more meanings and can read better between the lines when I can see a decent translation into my mother tongue in the subtitles.

But also: Netflix and one of the Finnish TV stations save extremely much in their translations. That means the translations often contain gross errors or leave things outright untranslated. Even then the subtitles often help, because if my understanding of what was said and what I can read in the translation are about the same, then everything is probably fine.

In any case: My English is not all that bad, as you can see, but I still turn the subtitles on whenever I can, and I am much less interested in watching a foreign film without them.

I am largely unable to enjoy song's lyrics in English if I cannot read them at the same time. In song lyrics the difference is much more noticeable than in movies. I can get about 75 % of the enjoyment of a movie even without subtitles, but lyrics in songs almost become just another musical instrument if I cannot have the lyrics in text format to follow while listening to a song in a foreign language.

Also, if I try to write something beautiful, it is usually best that I write it in Finnish and then translate it into English, because I can express myself so very much better in Finnish than in English! Takes more than twice the time compared to just outright writing the text in English, but the plot of a story becomes much better if I've written it down in my mother tongue. There will be more nuances in the people's behaviour, and that translates into a more interesting text overall. Even after translation.

Not european but I'm pretty fluent. (My spelling and grammar have declined a lot since I've not actively studied the language though). And I've found that it's easier for me to think in english about certain topics and to organize my thoughts in general, so do it often. My mind is much more chaotic in my native language, and english allows me a sort of window into other ways of structuring and processing information (idk if that makes sense to anyone else.)

Also I've consumed so much english language media through out my life that I'm familiar with a lot of US and UK colloquialisms, and politically and culturally the US has a lot of relation to and influnce in my country so I'd say 90℅ of the time I undersand, unless it's some crazy new gen alpha shit XD.

I can communicate with native English speakers very well. I have difficulties following an English-spoken movie or series tho.

I’d say I understand most, except maybe some specific terminology that is less common. And things like sayings might sometimes throw me off-guard because while I can translate them, I can not always figure out what they mean. Accents and dialects can be tricky sometimes, just like when the speech is a bit faster than I’m used to. But overall I’d say I’m fine. I’m also lazy though, so I just read the subtitles whenever I can 🙂

Small note though: my high school offered bilingual education, so about half of the subjects was given in English by native speakers and I did IB English exams, that helped a lot and I’m certain my English level is well above average because of that

I understand perfectly. I can read it, I can hear it, I can write it. The only thing I can't do, even if my life depended on it, is speak it. But that's the fault of English and its non-existent pronunciation rules. That shit is based entirely on ✨vibes✨.

Now I get why spelling bee is such a big deal in the US, jeez...

I speak, write and understand English as if it were my native tongue, but I was married to an English-speaking woman for many years and spoke exclusively with her in English for over 12 years. And I'm really drawn towards language/math/music/programming, etc., so I don't think I'm very representative.

But my country is well educated in English. In fact, some parts of the country seem to be forgetting their native language because of all the goddamn foreign (American) influence in popular and global culture.

Very annoying if you ask me. Just, anglicisms everywhere, shit that doesn't sound idiomatic to our language at all. Expressions that sound like they were run through Google Translate when it first came out in 2006, basically a word-for-word, 1:1 translation. Sounds stupid af.

Anyway, /rant.

I'd say I'm at a very fluent level when it comes to understanding and writing. Most of my media consumption is in English and I can understand it just as well as German. I even think in English sometimes.

Speaking is a slightly different story though. I can still communicate just fine, but my English becomes much less eloquent compared to my writing. I just don't get to practice it very often and even when I do, it's usually talking to other non-native speakers, so we'll both be talking at a relatively basic level.

I probably understand movies in their original English better than if I was watching the German dubbed version because I'd constantly be translating back into English in my head and pop a vein about who the fuck fucked this up again by not understanding this obvious reference.

I may not be on a native level, even just considering I mix up UK and US terms all over the place, but if German vanished tomorrow, I'd have no trouble switching to English full-time.