shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French
| Message 57 of 61 31 October 2014 at 11:36pm | IP Logged |
Back in the days when I was living in Hong Kong we had 1 English class per day. Most people didn't learn enough to
communicate until their high school years. The first film in English was "Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews &
Christopher Plummer. Fell asleep half way through and didn't remember much about the movie except some well-
disciplined kids who lined up in front of the father.
Took up Mandarin later in school. Didn't get far enough to the conversation level since the amount of homework we
got was enough that we didn't have time to watch TV programs in a foreign language.
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EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4574 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German
| Message 58 of 61 31 October 2014 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
It's surprising how many replies I've got from this thread - almost 6000 views :O
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Xenops Senior Member United States thexenops.deviantart Joined 3824 days ago 112 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese
| Message 59 of 61 01 November 2014 at 5:03am | IP Logged |
I began taking Spanish courses when I was 15, and I continued for three years total. I had three excellent teachers in high school. :) I had summer long excursions in Latin, French, and Esperanto, but burned out fairly quickly. I hope to take up French in the future: not sure about the other two. I attempted to learn Japanese on my own, but was intimidated until I took a college course when I was 25 (yay!). I started Italian and Hawaiian this year, at age 27.
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QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5854 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese
| Message 60 of 61 05 November 2014 at 4:51am | IP Logged |
In Singapore, English is the medium of instruction in all schools regardless of the
language background of families. Therefore, I started to learn English when I first
enrolled in a kindergarten, while my parents practically speaks almost no English. And I
struggled with my first foreign language for the most of my school life. The threats of
not able to go to university, of being denied of good job prospects and of being poor for
the rest of your life has forced me to be fluent in this detesting language. It is until
when I start to learn French in university, that I start to appreciate English, and use
the experiences I have to continue my language studies. I still have not mastered English
, even though it is my L1 but I did tried to improve it by participating in a half super
challenge.
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hp230 Tetraglot Newbie TunisiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3692 days ago 30 posts - 63 votes Speaks: German, Arabic (classical)*, French, English
| Message 61 of 61 05 November 2014 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
My first foreign language was french at the age of 9;but, I couldn't master it before the age of 18; English was next; much easier of course.
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