I was just wondering about all the Europeans (excluding UK)… like do y’all understand… say, an American movie or TV as well as those in your national language?

  • I was more of thinking of like people who learned English in their non-English country simply because its Lingua Franca, not as in immigrants.

    As in: a someone that just learned it from going online and like browse social media / forums, and watching movies but never stepped foot inside a native-English-speaking country

    Cuz that really would be impressive

    • Mika@piefed.ca
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      3 hours ago

      I’m in the English-speaking country now and it was one of the reasons to emigrate there specifically, cause I’ve learned the language over the years at home, first by playing games & reading lyrics & browsing internets, then by watching movies with subs, then by forcing myself to switch subs off and catch the spelling. Also work calls.

    • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      As a native English speaker foreigners often have better technical English because they have to learn the actual rules of grammar properly

      We don’t actually get a thorough education in America for our own language. Some people do but most just get the basics and the rest is on us to absorb

      • Meanwhile, my mom still says: “I today went to the store” (from 我 今天 if you don’t change the order it’s “I today”, lolz) and she changes between “he” and “she” between sentences for the same person lol, it almost sounds like misgendering someone

        And like “Why you no [do X thing]” (because it’s 为什么 你 不 --> “why you no”)

        Whatever, doesn’t really matter, it’s understandable, abeit funny to hear; immigration officials approved citizenship so it must be good enough. Good enough to do bussiness here… so… whatever

        • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          It’s funny how sometimes one word changes the entire sentence and other times it has basically no effect at all

          Can actually mess up quite a few words and still successfully communicate which I think is just great

          Not sure how flexible other languages are about that kinda stuff

    • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      My wife did lean it in her home country I’m the one that moved to a non English speaking country.