I normally don’t grant interviews for school projects, unless the subject is extraordinary. Lyric was writing a paper about people who learned English as their second language, something I’ve gone through and that is a huge part of who I am. She kindly allowed me to repost our interview, I thought some of you might find it interesting or even relate!
What primary language did you speak before entering the US?
I was born and lived in Russia until the age of 17, so my native tongue is Russian.
What is your competency as a speaker in your primary language and English today?
Right before I left Russia, and I would describe my language skills as well above average, possibly even advanced. I was always fairly well-spoken and loved to write. My written Russian is still excellent, but my ability to speak has suffered over the 13 years I’d spent away from the country. I struggle for words and sometimes will use ‘Englishisms’ in my speech. I did notice that my Russian restores close to 100% when I spend 2 or more days in Russia, which is a miracle!
I began learning English in school when I was 11-12, but didn’t really get into it until I was 16. This was prompted by my interest in Western music, largely sung in English! I was desperate to understand what my idols were saying, so attempted at transcribing the lyrics by ear. To this day I joke that the bulk of my conversational vocabulary came from Michael Jackson songs, and I learned how to swear from Axl Rose, haha. :)
It’s hard for me to be objective about my English skills today. I definitely think in English, but there are days when I feel I still have so much to learn. I’m more eloquent in written form rather than spoken; my vocabulary, which has expanded dramatically due to my living with my native-speaker husband, is rich and am able to express my thoughts freely.
What communication problems did you experience when you first entered the US? How did you handle these?
In contrast to my mother and sister, who knew minimal English, I didn’t experience the frustration of not being able to express my thoughts as acutely. I was hungry for new words & particularly slang (something I’m still extremely interested in today, I collect antiquated expressions such as I’ll be go to hell or Fuckin’ A!). I do remember being jealous of other immigrant girls at school whose English was more advanced than mine. I wanted that level of proficiency desperately, and did everything I could to achieve it.
What significant cultural differences did you encounter in the early stages of your adjustment to this country and/or the English language?
One thing that struck me as odd is the American inclination to ‘tattle’. We were staying with a family who had 2 other kids, and whenever there was a disagreement, they’d go and tell their parents immediately. The same was encouraged at school — if you were being bullied or mistreated, you were to alert the teachers. This was a major cultural shock for us, since in Russia we are taught to sort out conflicts independently. “Telling” on someone and getting the authorities involved is considered tasteless; this may be due to the fact that Russian authorities are often unreliable and corrupt. Since they don’t help you resolve anything, people are forced to take matters into their own hands. It took me some time to realize that this is, perhaps, not the most efficient or civilized way to deal with conflict.
Understanding humor and being able to stick up for yourself (remember, my first 5 months in America were spent in The Bronx, a rather rough borough of NYC) were also a big challenge as an immigrant. You can learn grammar and vocabulary, but humor is something so innately cultural, you have to be living in the country to fully grasp it. in Russia, American humor has a reputation for being ‘dumb’ — and American smile fake — so it took me a while to understand what’s so funny about shows like Friends or Frasier. Getting a hang of pop culture references is something I was learning then, and still am still learning now — the learning never stops!
What messages/suggestions do you have for other English language learners that might make their adjustment and communication easier?
I depends on your level of proficiency, but I think most people would benefit from an ESL course and simply watching TV (turn on the subtitles!). I’ve occasionally wished that I’d taken accent elimination lessons as well, but glad that I didn’t because having an accent helps me stand out and be remembered sometimes. :)
What communication difficulties, if any, do you currently face?
I can’t really think of any, other than that my voice being naturally rather soft — it can be hard sometimes to be heard, especially in loud public places. I much prefer quiet tea-parties anyway. ;)
Doe, loved the interview!!!
I’m Brazilian, and I have learned English because it’s sort of “mandatory” here to get a better job. English taught in schools is usually very poor, so in order to learn it properly people send their kids (usually around 10 years old) to “English schools”. Now they’re more popular then ever, but when I was enrolled in one, in early 90′s, there were just a couple of them in my city.
I had classes twice a week, for one hour and half in the afternoons after school for 5 years (I was able to skip one year :D), and I thought it was extremely boring, but I was glad my mom forced me to study English, because it helped me twice to get jobs (as a translator in a company and then a teacher for children in the same school I have studied!).
Now there are schools that promise you’ll learn English in one year or just six months, but I don’t believe it! Even after studying for five years, I felt my English very raw, and I had to practice IT A LOT by myself to reach an average level. Usually after completing the English course families with a bit of money send their kids abroad to be exchange students, but unfortunately I never had the chance to practise my second language in a English speaking country. :(
So I did pretty much like you: music and television. :) Before the internet we’d have magazines sold only with lyrics of pop and rock music, but the net made it so much easier!! Slangs and humor are indeed difficult to get, and it really takes an everyday practice to learn these things, and I feel like everyday I learn something new in English!!
I quit teaching when I got my current job in December 2007, and now I don’t need to work with English for a living, but it’s a language I love and respect very much, and brings me loads of good memories! Thanks for posting about this and allowing all these memories to come back! :)))
Interesting article! I wish I could pic up a second language that easily, but I always struggle with it in school. I was wondering if you felt that your cross-cultural identity influenced your unique aesthetic in any way.
Is English your second language? How did you come to learn it?
Well, I’m Portuguese, I started learning English in school in the 5th grade, when being 10 years old.
I didn’t liked it much because on the beginning I really didn’t knew anything and the homework would be just copying the verbs quite a few times. Which was boring. So I had bad marks.
But latter on my mother told me that if I learned English I could understand Björk’s songs. Latter on I realized that wasn’t the point. Learning English opened a zillion doors for me, specially wile using internet. And Björk sometimes doesn’t speak just English, so…
Anyway, I started being able to talk in English on the 9th grade. That’s when I started trying anyway…
Nowadays, in 12th grade, and months from university, I think I can talk fairly fluently, though I write much faster. And it takes me a wile to TALK, as I’m shy, only after a wile…I notice that when talking to tourists, you see, I live in a place that has tourists the hole year long (Cascais), so sometimes I get asked about..randomnesses.
My main issue nowadays is maintaining MY language. As I don’t read much in Portuguese, I end up forgetting how to write, and I end up giving allot of orthographic mistakes (which is embarrassing). And sometimes when I talk I forget the word I want, and I end up only having in mind the english translation…which is annoying.
In the battle of Portuguese vs English, in terms of beauty, portuguese wins. But in terms of versatility english wins.
English doesn’t have genders for objects, nor has 4 verbs for the verb To be (we do), and a zillion of rules and exceptions, and having almost as many irregular verbs as for regular ones, and so on.
So, simple saying: if you’re a poet, Portuguese is awesome; if you’re a software developer, go for english (you would need to anyway).
My native language is Spanish so yeah, English is my 2nd one.
I studied it many years, here we have lots of English institutes and is taught in every school.
My dad used to say you know you’ve learned a language when you get to think in that language, and since I consume English language all day long -TV shows, movies, music, websites- at the end of the day I can’t remember if that article I read was in English or Spanish -that makes me feel I’ve mastered the language, even though I’m learning everyday.
I don’t really know whether or not to consider English as my second language or not. My father’s English was very poor, so at home I learned to speak German with him. However, my mother’s first language was English (second was German), so I started learning both languages when I was very young. Currently, I don’t speak German as much as a used to because of my deceased father. Right now, I’m verging on fluency in Spanish because of schooling. My English obviously fluent from my friends and America. The next language I’m working on taking on is Russian (!) because my best friend and her family are from Russia, and we’re very close, so I feel that I shouldn’t try to make them speak English around me when they feel more comfortable talking in Russian. But at the end of the day, it always makes me feel kind of special when I’m reading or listening to something, and I don’t really know whether it was in English, German, or Spanish :)
Spanish is my first language and being Mexican, English is necessary because of all the trade that is made with the US. I started learning English when I was like 2 or 3 years old, my sister used to sit with me and do her English homework and she would recite things and read to me, shes 7 years orlder than me.
Both of us went to a private school (elementary, middle and high school at the same school) that is very famous because of it’s English level. The school was founded by a rich British woman who worked as a governess for rich families in Mexico City and decided to start a school (this was almost 100 years ago). We had half of our classes in Spanish and half our classes in English since kindergarden.
I actually, learned to read first in English and then in Spanish. I’ve always loved English and I’m really passionate about it. In my school it’s a requirement to pass the First Certificate in English and pass a small Young Learner’s Teachers Course in order to graduate High School. I’m a certified ESL teacher but I’ve never worked as one.
I think in English most of the time and I write in English a lot, just to be able to keep my skill a little sharp. I reackon that since I stopped taking formal classes, my level has declined a little. I watch all my TV in English (I hate translations), listen to most music in English and read a lot of blogs and books in English :D.
Although I was born and raised in America, my first words were not English- my parents came from Taiwan, so I grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese. I was put into summer camp and I picked up my English from there. As elementary school went by my English got better than my Chinese, so it became one of those things where I had to balance and go back and forth between both English and Chinese.
I think learning languages has always been fascinating, but I truly believe the best way to learn is to immerse yourself in a country that speaks it and bring a language book and a notebook. It’s amazing what you can learn in as little as a week there! =]
I really like your accent! It’s kind of an interesting blend of Russian AND New York!
When i was in kindergarden and we all sat in a ring on the floor and the teacher ask us what we wanted to do when we grow up. All the girls wanted to be a princess and the boys wanted to be a police. I answered that i wanted to live abroad and not in Sweden. So when i started school and began taking my first lessons in english i was only 8 years old. I pacticed my english alot when i started to travel. All togheter i spent backpacking around the world twice togheter it is 1,5 year. Then i lived in Paris and now Barcelona, so its an ungoing process…
I’m Norwegian and Norwegian schools today teach English as a second language from first grade, already, which I have absolutely no recollection of, as a matter of fact :P
I had no interest in language at all until I was 10, in 2001. I saw “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and the language mesmerized me! Particularly the posh, British accent. So then I set out to learn this incredibly sexy language. Since then, my language has advanced into fluent, stiff upper lip. It is my mission to sound as British as possible :)
This autumn, I’m attending fashion/costume design in England, so my dream of being allowed to talk this language all day, every day :D YAY!
In Holland everyone starts learning English at high school. I had a great and funny teacher, which I think helped my interest in learning. I was always okay at it, but got better once I started having penpals from all over the world. Then the internet came along, I met my English ex, and then my American/Danish current boyfriend, so I started speaking English on a daily basis. Now I’m like you, I think in English, and I have no problem communicating with my boyfriend or expressing my feelings in English at all. According to my boyfriend my accent got better too. He said I sounded like a farmer when we met 6 years ago. Ouch! I can’t blame him though, the Dutch accent IS horrible.
Really cool interview!
A related question; do you have any fave Russian comedies?
English is my first language, being from England, and I have to say I don’t envy anyone trying to learn it as a second language! There are so many exceptions to rules in the English language and a lot of grammar to remember. I enjoy learning languages and can speak a little German, French and currently mastering Spanish :) The best way to pick it up is to do what Doe did and immerse yourself in the TV programmes, music and books of the language you’re trying to learn.
Great article :)
English is my second language. I’m Swedish, and started to learn English in third grade when I was nine. I watch English speaking TV-series without subtitles every day. American pop culture is completely overshadowing anything Swedish here so it is quite impossible not to learn English. Sometimes when I speak, I’m lost for Swedish words because I can only explain something with an expression in English.
I’m from Finland, so Finnish is my first language. I started studying English at school when I was about 11, but the first many years I sit at the class just because I had to, I wasn’t so interested and didn’t realise that I’ll REALLU need that language. That changed when I was 15 and started to listen to my current favourite bands (like Boy George), and wanted to read their autobiographies.. They weren’t translated so I had to try to understand. Soon I also travelled to London for a gig, and fell in love with the city. Since that my dream has been to move to London someday after graduating, and I’ve been studying English much more seriously now .. I didn’t learn much at school though, I’ve improved my skills at home, reading English books, writing in English to my friends from abroad, watching interviews etc. on youtube without subtitles …
I can write and read well, but pronounciation is my problem, and my shyness doesn’t make it any easier to actually speak out loud to people in English. :D But I’ll get better when I have a change to practise it a lot… x
I learned English at school starting in third grade, but what really helped me was to write down U2 song lyrics by ear with help from the dictionary when I was twelve, and then watching the Simpsons when I was fifteen. My native language is French. All the music I’ve ever listened to is in English.
I love this article! I can relate so much :D
I grew up in Mexico, and I lived there until I finished the sixth grade. Even though I’d taken English classes throughout my education in Mexico, moving to the U.S. was definitely when I really started to learn. I was in the ESL classes at school, but that only meant that I had 3 classes with other kids like me and a teacher who didn’t know much Spanish, and the rest of the classes were regular, with all the English speaking kids and teachers.
It was definitely a struggle, but now I can speak English very well. And my Spanish has been kept nicely too, because it’s the only language I speak at home, and I’ve kept friends who speak Spanish.
Never actually learned it, still feel I am a total looser when I speak english, even thoug I spend a lot of time in London.
my first language is russian- and i’v never even even to russia.. my parents and brother came from there. second is hebrew- because i live in israel and it’s the language i speak in school and other places…. and the third is english that i’v studied from school, music, books, movies…. and i think my speaking abilities in those 3 languages are great… but i have a foreign sounding accents in all of them hehe :)
While it’s good to become proficient in speaking another language, accents can be very endearing. I love yours. My father worked hard in the 1950′s to lose his German accent because it would have stigmatized him. That was a shame.
I´m brazillian, and I learned english in school, and playing video game mostly.
I guess my writing is very poor because the teaching in school is poor. But I can unsderstand talk and write very well.
My speak is weird because I don´t really use it dayly, but I think in english sometimes…
The thing is, Brazil went throw dictatorship, and after that it was obligatory for every school teach english. Before that, it was possible for kids or parents choose the language (spanish, french, italian, or the language that the school had to offer). I really hope that it change someday.
English is my second language also, and my native language is Russian. I’ve been learning English since I was 18 (I’m 24 now). I’ve been in the US for two years now and I finally understand everything people say and can express myself, but I still struggle with vocabulary and my own accent annoys me alot, it’s a serious issue for me. I often don’t want to start the conversation because I feel like ppl will hear my accent and begin laughing at me or will be rude (cuz they were before). But I’m working on it :)
And you write very well, really, I read alot and your writing stands out.
English is my mother tongue, but German followed shortly after and Russian is my third. Ever since I started intensively learning other languages, my English has suffered. Often when I would study Russian for 6-8 daily, I would end up thinking in Russian for a bit after I stopped learning and as at the time, I worked in a book store, I read capitalized English letters as Cyrillic sometimes! A title such as ‘CHOP’ would read as ‘SNOR’ to me and it made finding books for customers a chore, but was just an indication of how well I was absorbing the language! As far as humor, in college in my second level Russian course, I was also taking a Russian culture class and reading whatever cultural articles I could find. My professor, who has lived here for just over 20 years and learned most of her English from I Love Lucy reruns, said that humor was very difficult for her to first grasp and at one point in class, she made a Russian joke, in Russian and only about two of us actually saw the humor in it. At work sometimes when someone complains if they’ve jumped the line and we force them to the back, I’ll say something like “I’m Russian, I’m all about equality!” and many guests will laugh at that if they understand the reference to the Soviet Union. I love cultural humor, because it makes it that much more special! =)
I don’t know if English can be counted as my second or third language.
I come from Finland (yay! neighbours!) and since I’m part of the Swedish-speaking minority here I technically have two “mother” langauges – Finnish and Swedish.
However, my family moved to Texas when I was three-years old and we then moved back when I was eight. For that reason I’m fluent in Finnish, Swedish and English (and a few other languages I’ve picked up along the way…). When I speak English I sound very American (except if I’ve been somewhere else where there’s a distinct English accent… I don’t know why but a pick up English accents pretty fast after hearing them a few times), my Finnish is spiced with English sounding prunounciations and my Swedish sounds very… Finlandssvenskt, let’s call it that (it’s kind of a Swedish dialect).
Do I regard English as my second language? Definitely. I speak, read and write in English better than I do in Finnish. To be brutally honest the bureaucrats may say what they like – but English and Swedish are the languages I feel at home with and are the languages that I am most profficent in.
Lovely article, Doe!
Yes, English is my second language- I’m Polish. I started learning English at 11 – what I now consider quite late as most of children start at 7. Just like in your case, it didn’t immediately catch on, I began interested in English at about 17-18 when I discovered British comedy–various types of it, Monty Python, Keeping up Appearnaces, Fawlty Towers, stand-up comedy and loads and loads of other things.
I think it is safe to say that I learned English thanks to the invention of DVDs, which allowed me to listen to the Enlish originals while looking at Polish subtitles (films in Polish TV are done with Polish voice-over). I never had any professional lessons and my formal English education was confined to school lessons only- but if you care a lot about something you’re able to learn a language to access it.
Now English is slowly becoming my whole life. Not only do I teach it but also I live with a guy from Newcastle upon Tyne who speaks with the loveliest Geordie accent (and also teaches English), so my English education is getting fuller and fuller :)
I’m brazilian, and I started to learn english when I was about 6 years old. Because I was interested in elgish language, I turned to be the best in my class. But then I noticed that everything that I was learning in english classes at school I had previously learned by myself. My family had to move, so I was new in town and I thought it was time for a change, and I decided to attend the only bilingual school of the region (because in Brazil public schools are not good, and we have to pay for a particular schools) and finally I was going to have an english class apart from the main one (we also have just one class, we all have the same classes together) and this english class was at my english level. I got Intermediate 2 as my class, which is the penultimate level, and I got the highest grades of the class, so next year I’m going to Advanced level, the last one. I’m so excited about it, and after all this years studying english I hope I can move to New York one day, it seems to be such an interesting city, and as I have been to U.S. it will be double fun! The brazilian accent is not a problem, because we have all kinds of phonemes, but you have to work somethings to make it better, but I think that watching english tv shows and listening to english music is a good help because you hear it and learns how to pronounce it :)
I’m Brazilian, but portuguese is not really the first language I learned, as my gradparents came from Spain and use to talk only in spanish (or some kind of freak mix of both languages), I learn to speak in portuguese and spanish at the same time. Learning english was pretty natural, I became interested in music and just like you I needed to understant the lyrics, so I took an old dctionary and started learning the words, then I got english classes at an english school, where I worked as teacher for almost two years.
Now I’m learning german and romanian by myself, using some ‘teach yourself’ books, in english, of course.
English is technically my second language; my first language was Polish, and I was sent into playschool when I was about 2 and a half, not knowing a word of English. Unsurprisingly I apparently found it hard to communicate and apparently reacted violently to other children, though I grew out of that fairly quickly and picked up English in no time at all. I’m no longer fluent in Polish though – I stopped using it when I learned English and although I understand nearly everything said to me in Polish, my speech, reading and writing aren’t nearly as up to scratch as my English…
The shoe’s on the other foot with me – I’m English but have lived in France for the past 7 years so am trying to master french. I find it really difficult as I rarely need to speak french on a daily basis. It’s horrible not being able to understand everything people are saying or being able to express myself fully. One day though :) xx
Does American English count as a Second language? :D
Haha I doubt it but British English is fairly different to American, our spelling and grammar are different. But as are our words. As a young child and watching hollywood films you’d find it odd when certain words would come up that didn’t make sense in the context. But as I’ve got older I’ve got used to the lingo, mainly because I’m in love with the TV show Friends.
Most recently I was watching Friends on DVD and nearly fell off the sofa when I heard the word ‘fanny’. It wasn’t until I googled it that I found fanny means something VERY different in America. This word is edited out when they show it on British television…
I am not ESL (though technically English was my second language despite being born in America :P I didn’t speak a word of English until I went to school) but not being able to express yourself completely is really frustrating! I am in Taiwan now and even though I can speak Chinese (my “technical” first language, though I let it kinda get worse as I grew up….) fine, the more elaborate expressions and high vocabulary evades me ;_;
Good job to you for being such a god learner and then starting your own company in a new place!
English is my second language too. I live in Quebec, and here, even if most of people are French speaker, it’s almost mandatory to also speak English to have a job. I struggled a lot to learn it (and I still have much to learn) because it was kind of against my will. Now, I am learning Japanese for no others reasons than I love it, and even it is a very different language than French, I find it much easier because it is my choice and I do it for fun. I am very impress by how well you speak and write in English, I would love to some day be as good as you.
I’m Israeli, so English is my second language, with Hebrew being my mother tongue. At my school we started learning English in second grade, but I never paid much attention to school; I got my English from watching Cartoon Network all day long! My brother, who’s two years older than me, always wanted to watch CN, but since it was in English and without subtitles I couldn’t understand. Since we only had one tv at the time, I ended up watching with him- and so I started to understand English. I started reading English in fifth grade; My favourite book at the time was The Princess Diaries, but since only the first two volumes were translated to Hebrew- I decided to read the rest in English! Plus, I discovered two years ago that I have a family in the states, so talking to them is definitely good practice.
Here is a question for you (or any esls) what language do you think in?