[kjellsbells]

Depends on the language and the reason to learn it. Right now its pretty discouraging. I pick up, say, enough Italian to get through a 2 week holiday, but all the people I interact with are under 40 and keen to practice their (excellent) English. English is so much the Common Tongue that I even hear the French and German visitors using it.

But: if I can get thru that, and start to engage with (say) Italy at a deeper level, away from tourist activities, or starting to engage with their literature, then learning the language will have a huge payoff. It's just a bit disheartening when you struggle to reach A2 or B1 but can't use it in the country because everyone switches to English. I guess my accent needs more work than I thought...

[Swizec]

> But: if I can get thru that, and start to engage with (say) Italy at a deeper level

I was at a native+ level of English in high school according to an IELTS test I took for fun. During college my English improved further.

When I moved to USA … ho boy the difference between fluent English and culturally fluent idiomatic English is surprisingly vast. Much hilarity, frustration, and subtle misunderstandings ensued. It’s like an uncanny valley when your language is so good you start being judged as a native who’s a little weird and unsettling.

After 9 years of full immersion (I live here with nobody of my native language to speak with), you could say my English is near perfect. Hell I write and publish books in English! The next generation has started using new idioms I do not fully grok. What the hell is “based”?

Basically feels impossible for to ever fully catch up. Language moves too fast and your cultural background will never be same as the natives.

Edit: One super interesting aspect is that to speak fluent native English you have to do it wrong. Californians, for example, don’t use the plural contraction. You have to say “there’s many options” instead of “there are many options”. Otherwise you sound like a weirdo.

[Tijdreiziger]

> Edit: One super interesting aspect is that to speak fluent native English you have to do it wrong. Californians, for example, don’t use the plural contraction. You have to say “there’s many options” instead of “there are many options”. Otherwise you sound like a weirdo.

You’re viewing it the wrong way around. L1 speakers almost never use formalized grammar rules (especially not in everyday speech). Instead, the rules are formulated post-hoc based on the way the language is actually spoken.

In a sense, there’s no ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ language use, only successful or unsuccessful attempts at communication.

For this reason, I find the topic of input-based language learning interesting. The basic idea is that the only true way to acquire a language is by getting a lot of input (i.e. immersion), not by studying grammar rules.

(Disclaimer: not a linguist.)

[Asraelite]

> never use formalized grammar rules

> the rules are formulated post-hoc

Not sure what you mean by this. This post-hoc formulation is how you define formal grammar rules, at least in a modern linguistic approach.

If the grammar rules you're referring to are nonsense prescriptivist things like "don't end a sentence with a preposition" that you get taught in school, then yeah you can completely disregard them.

It is possible to codify the actual grammar of a language as it is spoken, and reading these rules is very helpful for learning a language, but this kind of accurate description of grammar is something you're more likely to find in academic papers than school textbooks.

[Tijdreiziger]

I’m referring to the way language students are taught, which is usually in a classroom setting involving lots of grammar drills.

As a personal example, when studying German in high school, I had to rotely memorize charts for article declension [1], prepositions [2], etc. Being able to regurgitate these charts helped me pass standardized tests, but they didn’t actually improve my ability to speak German.

Similarly, students of English are encouraged to painstakingly study rules such as those differentiating ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘me’, ‘mine’ and ‘myself’. [3] Personally, I learned English through immersion instead, acquiring these rules subconsciously rather than consciously studying them!

This is what input-based learning gets at. The theory goes that understanding input, and not conscious learning, is the only way to increase linguistic competence. [4]

(again: not a linguist, any errors are mine)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declension#Articles

[2] https://www.fluentin3months.com/german-prepositions/

[3] https://www.espressoenglish.net/i-my-me-mine-myself/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

[quesera]

> Californians, for example, don’t use the plural contraction. You have to say “there’s many options” instead of “there are many options”. Otherwise you sound like a weirdo.

Don't extrapolate too far from a small sample. I don't think anyone would recognize you as a non-Californian just for saying "there are".

Now, if you refer to highways US-101 or I-5 as anything other than "The 101" or "The 5", then you're clearly not from here!

Wikipedia does not back me up on this, however. Apparently the "The" names are SoCal-indicative. This has not been my experience here in NorCal.

FWIW, I learned the meaning of "based" once, but I found the explanation dissatisfying and promptly forgot it. :)

[Swizec]

> Now, if you refer to highways US-101 or I-5 as anything other than "The 101" or "The 5", then you're clearly not from here!

Ah see here's where it gets interesting! Up here in SF, 101 and 5 are names. You say "On 101". It's the weirdos down there in LA who say "On the 101" :)

[iamthirsty]

> Basically feels impossible for to ever fully catch up.

Feels this way whether you're a native English speaker or not, unfortunately — growing old is universal.

[jimbokun]

There needs to be a name for this phenomenon experienced by native English speakers abroad, who actually want to learn a foreign language.

I knew my Japanese was getting decent, many years ago, when my Japanese coworkers started replying to my Japanese in Japanese, instead of replying to my broken Japanese with broken English.