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J. van Deijck
On 7/15/2022 at 11:00 PM, vin3g4r said:

I stutter in every language :')

Same here, and if I use proper grammar, that's just by accident :lol:

 

On 7/15/2022 at 11:00 PM, vin3g4r said:

Exactly! It's something that I wasn't expecting, since only younger generations (from mine on I'd say) speak English in my hometown.

I guess it's more prominent in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, maybe also in Central Europe, but things seem to be slowly changing for better :D

 

Although I have two Romanian friends who are in their 50s, and they speak English pretty well. They've learned it all by themselves, by watching movies. It's pretty impressive, but it's the same way older Belgians learnt English, too :D

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26 minutes ago, Piotrek said:

I tried learning Italian and Spanish at the same time. Big mistake, although in my case it was vocabulary that was tripping me up. Now I've ditched Spanish and am working on revising my Italian. I also learned (or rather had lessons of) French at uni, but only for passive use. 

That's kinda funny because Italian and Spanish are the two Romance languages that I speak. Italian is my native language while I learnt Spanish in school. My mom has a Spanish certificate so she used to speak to me in Spanish when I was a child.

My dad is fluent in French, I tried to learn it as well but at some point it was too hard for me. Probably that's why I'm having a hard time with Portuguese, everything gets mixed up in my head... 

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8 minutes ago, godverdomme said:

Same here, and if I use proper grammar, that's just by accident :lol:

 

I guess it's more prominent in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, maybe also in Central Europe, but things seem to be slowly chqanging for better :D

 

Although I have two Romanian friends who are in their 50s, and they speak English pretty well. They've learned it all by themselves, by watching movies. It's pretty impressive, but it's the same way older Belgians learnt English, too :D

Exactly! Sometimes I realize when my grammar is wrong and correct myself. Sometimes I use the right form but I doubt myself and I correct my "mistake" a couple of times before realizing I was right the first time 😅

 

Speaking of the geographical area, yes, you're probably right. I'm from Southern Italy, in my country everything is dubbed and not many people are interested in watching content in its original language.

They don't really teach English properly in school, so the youngest generations learn primarily from the internet.

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J. van Deijck
39 minutes ago, vin3g4r said:

Exactly! Sometimes I realize when my grammar is wrong and correct myself. Sometimes I use the right form but I doubt myself and I correct my "mistake" a couple of times before realizing I was right the first time 😅

 

Speaking of the geographical area, yes, you're probably right. I'm from Southern Italy, in my country everything is dubbed and not many people are interested in watching content in its original language.

They don't really teach English properly in school, so the youngest generations learn primarily from the internet.

So it's kind of like in France, if I remember well. Everything dubbed and nobody bothers :o here in Flanders everything is in original language, but with Dutch subtitles. People just pick it up subconsciously, and then you can see they can speak better than they write :lol: not the younger ones, though. Both English and French is mandatory here.

and that's so relatable about grammar :lol: and speaking of similar group of languages, now I'm questioning my English because subconsciously I want to write in Dutch. Some words are really similar :lol: so I have to think twice because typing about the train station, I want to type treinstation. Speaking about apartment, I'm almost typing appartement. And the list goes on :lol:

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Interesting!

 

Yeah; I don't feel it's good for me to learn two languages at the same time because when I tried doing that my brain, also, mixed up some of the words (e.g. thinking and getting most words in one language, correct, but then, thinking of a word or two in another language).

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On 7/19/2022 at 9:46 PM, godverdomme said:

So it's kind of like in France, if I remember well. Everything dubbed and nobody bothers :o here in Flanders everything is in original language, but with Dutch subtitles. People just pick it up subconsciously, and then you can see they can speak better than they write :lol: not the younger ones, though. Both English and French is mandatory here.

and that's so relatable about grammar :lol: and speaking of similar group of languages, now I'm questioning my English because subconsciously I want to write in Dutch. Some words are really similar :lol: so I have to think twice because typing about the train station, I want to type treinstation. Speaking about apartment, I'm almost typing appartement. And the list goes on :lol:

Yes, I think so. I've never lived in France but two friends of mine have been there and in Spain in Erasmus and apparently it's the same, from what they told me at least.
I think watching  content with subtitles is a good way to learn a language, especially for the sounds and for learning new vocabulary, that's why I suggested it to my dad. He's trying to learn English through several apps but finds it kinda hard, he said something about "sometimes it's so simple it's confusing".
English is mandatory in Italian schools as well, but weirdly that doesn't change the situation. At least it didn't work with my generation, I can't be 100% sure with the youngest ones.

I feel you for the writing thing 😅 every time I have to write an email in Portuguese I double check with a translator because many words are either written in Italian or Spanish.

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On 7/21/2022 at 9:10 PM, vin3g4r said:

think watching  content with subtitles is a good way to learn a language

That's assuming the subtitles are actually a faithful representation of what is being said. They may well be condensed, especially if there's a lot of dialog/narrating, or they may be done independently, especially if it's one of the available language versions on DVD. My favourite example was watching a Spanish film with Spanish subtitles (just as an experiment, because I found spoken language to be too fast to follow) and when the actor said "Bueno", the subtitle said "vale" :D (both mean the same thing, but apparently "vale" is more common in Latin America)  

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I’m native English and near native Spanish, I think in whatever language I am conversing in.  I dream in English mainly, and I curse people out in whichever language they understand best. 😎😉

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fooledbysecrecy

my native language is finnish but i mostly use english in daily life, i'm not sure i think in either of them alone, they're so intertwined in my mind.

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20 hours ago, Piotrek said:

That's assuming the subtitles are actually a faithful representation of what is being said. They may well be condensed, especially if there's a lot of dialog/narrating, or they may be done independently, especially if it's one of the available language versions on DVD. My favourite example was watching a Spanish film with Spanish subtitles (just as an experiment, because I found spoken language to be too fast to follow) and when the actor said "Bueno", the subtitle said "vale" :D (both mean the same thing, but apparently "vale" is more common in Latin America)  

And that's also true! For a moment I forgot about it 😅

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SpaceDustbin
On 7/24/2022 at 5:40 AM, Piotrek said:

That's assuming the subtitles are actually a faithful representation of what is being said

I indeed found out that was not the case with the Spanish version of Disney's Hercules :lol:. For some reason the subtitles are more of a literal translation of the original English version than the spoken language, which seems to have been adapted to flow better in the film.

So for language learning purposes, at least having in mind to listen and read at the same time, it doesn't work in this case, unfortunately :lol:

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On 7/25/2022 at 11:54 PM, SpaceDustbin said:

I indeed found out that was not the case with the Spanish version of Disney's Hercules :lol:. For some reason the subtitles are more of a literal translation of the original English version than the spoken language, which seems to have been adapted to flow better in the film.

So for language learning purposes, at least having in mind to listen and read at the same time, it doesn't work in this case, unfortunately :lol:

Really, I never watched it subbed. Wonder if the French translation's good.

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Elizabeth Bennet
On 7/25/2022 at 11:54 PM, SpaceDustbin said:

I indeed found out that was not the case with the Spanish version of Disney's Hercules :lol:. For some reason the subtitles are more of a literal translation of the original English version than the spoken language, which seems to have been adapted to flow better in the film.

So for language learning purposes, at least having in mind to listen and read at the same time, it doesn't work in this case, unfortunately :lol:

To be honest, subtitling and dubbing have mostly different purposes, restrictions and conditioners, so there's a reason both versions are normally quite different.

(I've worked in the industry for years hehe)

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