Hi everyone :D
I'm a university student from South Korea, and I'm majoring in English Language and literature.
I'm doing a small poll about your experiences about using english.
For now, I'm doing a small research about Lingua Franca.
feel free to tell your own views, your own notions or ideas, or experiences you had, anything is fine.

Thanks in advance for your participation, here is a small giveaway I made.

EDIT - Here's one of my reply from this poll. The poll itself down here, is not even close to important.
What I want to hear here, is your own thinking about yourself on your own English usage.
So don't take this so seriously. It's just a thing with 4 buttons and a small giveaway. :)

I know it's not good for a data, but I'm not doing this for fancy thesis. ;)
I needed the survey data about what people think about their own English skills. To be more clear, what I need is certain examples about how people think themselves, and how people feels.
Thanks for your concern, but if I needed that certain data, I would have done surveys what you might think of. ;)

EDIT 2 - That giveaway is over, so I think I'll make another one.
Giveaway here
And one more small one here
This time it's invite only. :)
Again, thank you for everyone!
Have a nice day!

7 years ago*

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Do you have any difficulties with communicating in english?

View Results
Yes - from English-speaking countries
No - from English-speaking countries
Yes - from Non English-speaking countries
No - from Non English-speaking countries

Aside from my abysmal pronunciation of some words , i dont think i ever had any issue using english .
My grammar is abysmal , tho its not really better in my native language ... so that cant be solved :P

7 years ago
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Thanks your for comment!
My english is not that good either, but I guess still we can talk like this :)

7 years ago
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Your pool isn't good for data. Its not much clear wich may go against your intentions.

For example im the same. I rarely have issues with english.
But my pronunciation.. oh my god.
And this alone makes every face 2 face interchange a complex challenge with its issues. I never had any big issue with it but im at the risk of in some emergency needing to deliver many complex information quickly misinterpretation could occur from the too strong accent.

So i voted 'yes'.

Point is- for me its a issue, for you isn't. Unless the reason behind the pool is aiming at how we feel, any data on subjective definitions is shallow, to say the least, unreliable.

7 years ago
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I know it's not good for a data, but I'm not doing this for fancy thesis. ;)
I needed the survey data about what people think about their own English skills. To be more clear, what I need is certain examples about how people think themselves, and how people feels.
Thanks for your concern, but if I needed that certain data, I would have done surveys what you might think of. ;)

7 years ago*
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I think i wouldnt have a problem communicating with someone at english considering that i dont need to read subtitles when i see a movie (unless there are medical conditions in the movie or a lawer speaking at a court, those 2 could be hard for me to completely understand on my own) .
But i do have a problem with heavy acsents that change the words a lot

7 years ago
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I'm a native English speaker and I have trouble understanding some of the accents so you are not alone in that aspect :D

7 years ago
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hehe also happened once to me at my native language. I own a store and i had a customer with a wierd acsent that was asking me for my products and i was trying to guess what she was talking about while smiling , long story short nowdays i still dont understand her completelly but we manage

7 years ago
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My native languages are Spanish and Catalan and this happens a lot too in both languages. Most Catalan-speaking regions have very different accents and it gets really difficult to understand each other. And when it comes to Spanish, well, the differences in vocabulary between Latin American countries and Spain are abysmal, sometimes we don't get a single word of what the other person is saying :/

7 years ago
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Just going to leave this here.

Fork Handles - Two Ronnies

7 years ago
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watch the video and let youtube do english subtitles....omg LOL

7 years ago
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Yeah. Never really had much success with youtube subtitles but that absolutely takes the biscuit.

7 years ago
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Lmao, that's insane! But pretty much sums it up, some situations can get really awkward :D

View attached image.
7 years ago
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But... the medical terminology in english is originated from your language :D

7 years ago
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most of it yes but not all , for example when someone says "your father had a stroke" the stroke word in greek is completelly different. Even tho a stroke is not a hard term and i know about it there are many medical terms that dont originate from greek. I tried to watch House without subtitles to practice my english but i had hard times understanding

7 years ago
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Of course you are right. But on the other side, as a greek you can get a lot of words that are used in english in medicine (science, etc) terminology that the average native speaker probably wouldn't know their exact meaning / definition, unless they are familiar with that specific field.

7 years ago
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7 years ago
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I think I make mistakes then I communicate here in English.
I think that I don't understand some subtilities and I have difficulties to solve nonos from the tread of nonos cause some words aren't natural for me.
I have luck that I'm French, so English isn't so far from my language ;)
I can imagine for a Corean....

7 years ago
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I think in English most of the time even though it's not my first language so I'm gonna go with "no difficulties". Well, unless you want me to talk about something that people rarely talk about and I can't find the words to describe it the way I want to... but I do that in Bulgarian too so I guess the problem is with me rather than the language. XD

7 years ago
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I frequently have trouble finding appropriate terms in my native language as opposed to English. I suspect this has a lot to do with the topic and it would be the other way if the communication were of a more social kind, if that's a understandable way of describing it.

7 years ago
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Since English is one of the easiest languages, I haven't encountered any big issues yet. I use the vocabulary more often than I would need it just to express myself like I'm used to in my native language (synonyms etc). And it's important to write/talk regularly in English.

Bad phone lines and accents are rather obstacles for comprehension. ^^

7 years ago
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I'm a native English speaker and I can hardly understand someone on the phone :P

7 years ago
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"since English is one of the easiest languages" I find that hard to believe-english is a franken language with thousands of stupid rules and exceptions...I don't have any troubles with it because I'm a native speaker but I do admit its a mess.

that being said getting your point across in English is not as hard as correctly using grammar and structural conventions.

7 years ago
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That probably depends on the native language and personal appeal. There are some similarities between German and English, so for people from origins with Romanian or even Asian languages it's surely more difficult. For me personally English grammer was easier to learn than French or Spanish.
A few reasons why I think that it's easier:

  • There's only one definite article in English. This is not only easier regarding the vocabulary, but also for using grammatic cases.
  • Capitalisation is only used for names.
  • You don't compound words in English.
  • Adverbs are just built by adding the 'ly' (only very few exceptions).
  • Lesser subordinate sentences and even lesser comma placement (though that has been already - and unfortunately - reduced in German a few years ago).
7 years ago
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7 years ago
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It's always hard for some people. XD
Many people from South Korea have that problem too. In Korean, we don't usually use the English 'R'sound, so many people here says "R" but it sounds like 'L' rather than 'R'.

7 years ago
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Why I have immediatelly to think of Monkey D: Luffy...
In my country he is called Ruffy. xD

7 years ago
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Funny thing is Japanese people cannot pronounce the "L" sound, so they use the "R" sound as substitute.

7 years ago
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Not really having trouble with English when it comes to typing. Even get comments that my English is better than most English natives.
I do have little trouble speaking it though. I have a heavy accent and I have trouble pronouncing the TH sounds like 'things' 'thinking' etc.

7 years ago
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Yes, I talk it in an abhorrent way and I have several faults too

7 years ago
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It's hard to recognise english speech for me sometimes, especially if non-english person talking. I had no problems talking with girls from Scotland, but my attempts to use english in Thailand were a disaster, i was able to understand only 1-2 out of 5 people there.
edit: you've just posted about "L" instead of "R", same problem was in Thailand =)

7 years ago
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7 years ago
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<3
no particular reason, just saying hi :3

7 years ago
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I'd like to think that I'm already at a point where I can communicate in english without any major problem, at least in written form as long as it's just a casual conversation. When speaking however I must admit my accent is still quite thick, it gets specially tricky with the vowels that simply don't exist in my native language: for example I can't really pronounce "steal" or "still", I say "steel".
Thankfully vocabulary is not that different from spanish so I was able to bruteforce my way through the learning process :P

7 years ago
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But "steal" sounds just like (is a homonym of) "steel" in English.

7 years ago
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Huh, I thought "steal" was supposed to sound the same as "still" and "steel" was the different one. Doesn't change the fact that I can't tell these three apart and need to deduce which one is being used by the context.

7 years ago
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I suppose with a certain rural accent, "steal" might sound more like "steal," but the canonical pronunciation is like "steel."

7 years ago
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7 years ago
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I experienced the same when I was learning Spanish abroad.

7 years ago
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I experienced the same when I was working in France. Attending a long, chaotic meeting was particularly draining.

7 years ago
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Do you have any difficulties with communicating in english

Only grammar part..
bumP! :3

PS: I'm from Non English-speaking countries

7 years ago
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I cluond't bilevee taht I cluod autclaly unednsrtad waht I was rdaenig.
Unisg the ilrcndeibe pewor of the hamun biarn, aoccdring to reserach at Cbmairdge Utvinresiy, it dseo'nt mttaer in waht oedrr the ltteres in a wrod aer, the olny iopmtrant tnihg is taht the fsrit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pcale.
The rset can be a tatol mses and you can raed it whtiuot a pborelm.
Tihs is bacesue the hamun mnid deos not raed erevy ltteer by iestfl, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Azamnig, hhu? Yaeh and I aawlys tuohhgt slepilng was itopmtran!

7 years ago
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I'm not from an English speaking country though it is an official language in order to bridge the gap between the various local languages we have. I personally use English a lot and it is my preferred language for communication (many times even with family) so I have little issue communicating in it. I consider myself fluent but I'm probably not as proficient as a native speaker in certain aspects. I do have issues understanding certain accents and probably have one myself.

7 years ago
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My biggest difficulty is the pronunciation. I have no problems using english but sometimes I just can't spell a word I want to say OR I don't understand that word if someone else is spelling it.

For example, this happened last night. I was listening to Paramore's Playing God and the lyric was:

"It's just my humble opinion
But it's one that I believe in"

I couldn't understand the word "believe" :(

7 years ago
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I understand English as my first foreign language very well and I'm probably able to express myself somehow, but my grammar (especially punctuation) skills could be a lot better.

7 years ago
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Yeah, it's really hard to adopt the different language when it doesn't share any common letters and grammars.

7 years ago
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I speak english goodly

7 years ago
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if you are majoring in english you should know that your question should start with are not is, because difficulties are plural ;)

cynicism aside - I do have big problems with speaking, simply because I have no opportunity to use it in everyday life, so even if it used to be good years ago, now it's very poor. I write, read and listen to english on everyday basis, so my skills remain not too bad, but I almost never speak english, so my prononciation is critically bad and I make the simplest mistakes.

7 years ago*
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That was a mistake :P and it always happens lol
Thanks anyway :)

7 years ago
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*cynicism

7 years ago
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fixed ;) Luckilly I graduated in IT, not english so I can be excused :D:

7 years ago
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2 to too two
they're their there
b be bee
dear deer
come cum
Also some words can be a noun, verb, or adjective.
They can have 5+ meanings.
Context clues is tought very early on in schools because without the 3-4 words around specific words, you'd be fucking lost.

What do you think a fecal occult test is?
Maybe something a priest has to do to determine if someone is possessed?
No, it's a test to see if there's trace amounts of blood in your poop.

Wtf english.

View attached image.
View attached image.
7 years ago
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my english level is pretty high i'd say, problem is i hardly practice speaking it, just typing or reading, so whenever i try to communicate i stumble here and there, just need to use it more often and i'd be fine.

7 years ago
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Bumpy :3

7 years ago
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I am a Taiwanese. Because of our education, we are better in English reading than talking or listening, and it's hard to find a place full of English unless we go abroad .

7 years ago
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