I learned it from these guys.
School gave me a serious boost in grammar. It would have taken me ages otherwise. That said, the majority of my vocabulary is still from games. I might still not know how to call that rolling painting brush thing but I know at least 10 words for different kinds of swords. You can never know.
I might still not know how to call that rolling painting brush thing
Oh, boy. You’re not gonna believe this.
Ahhahaha, I had the feeling it was some combination of some of those words, but wouldn’t have bet more than 20p on my guess.
This makes me feel so fucking old lol.
None of the apps shown and only one of the companies behind them (Disney) even EXISTED yet back in 1980s Denmark where I started learning English by playing the family Commodore 64 😄
You too, eh? I could type before I could write! I loved our VIC 20 and C64.
Come with me on a journey of nostalgia! Do you remember any favorite programs?
Never thought about it that way, but that’s wild. I was pre-school and already learning BASIC with our VIC-20. One of the earliest we bought was a dual-sided cassette of Math Hurdler and Monster Maze, but my dad spent all night on Christmas Eve typing in Killer Comet from some magazine so we could see it do something when we woke up to it at Christmas. I’d say my favourite of the magazine games was Tank vs UFO, though I still remember the frustration when one of those programs wouldn’t run! How about you? Programmed stuff like Rocket Command or was VIC Avenger more your speed?
I started young with the Muppet Learning Keys and Discovery Disk. I loved the AD&D games: Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Champions of Krynn. We didn’t have an NES, so there was… The Great Giana Sisters. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar was great.
I might like CRPGs.
Ah, those sound like (mostly?) C64 games! We traded out the VIC-20 for a C64 around 1983. Much easier to get software for that. Everyone seemed to have them and a myriad of copy utilities and blank diskettes. I too remember getting a copy of Giana Sisters instead of the alternative for those with the NES. But we had just Mario Bros. where you got to whack turtles coming out of sewer pipes! I wish I had the AD&D games. Would have loved them, I bet. By the time those were released, I was rocking an XT when dad wasn’t using it for work, and using the C64 with a 1200 baud modem in the cartridge slot to play door games on BBSes when he was.
Book goes brrrrrrr
That’s gotta be tough, learning entirely through written words without a verbal component.
Entirely: yes, I was given a good start by school, games, and programming but I really wanted to finish bleach. I ran out of my native language dubbing, so I watched with subtitles english dubbing, then just japanese dubbing with English subtitles, and I wanted to finish it leaving me with only manga in English. This again happened with Honzuki no Gekokujo and I just kept on reading and reading and reading to this day. I remember often using a dictionary on my phone during that time. Passion is the strongest force for learning, though my vocal skills stagnated until I made international online friends
I have to say, you’re incredibly impressive to have come as far as you have. And you took a unreproducible passion path completely unique to yourself.
I wish my special interests as a kid were anywhere near as useful for myself as yours turned out to be for you
I didn’t have streaming services when I grew up. I leaned from TV (in my country everything has subtitles, nothing is dubbed) and downloading movies at 20kb/s with Kazaa that didn’t have subtitles. I had English, French and German in school for 13 years. I don’t speak a word of French and German. The only French I know is “omelette du fromage” thanks to Dexter’s laboratory, while I have French family. But since they are too proudly French that they refuse to speak English, that I will put zero effort into learning any French.
Omelette du fromage is actually wrong, it does mean “cheese omelet” but it’s not how you say it. You say “omelette au fromage.” (Funny: the Wikipedia article has a chapter containing an analysis of the various viewpoints on what to drink alongside a cheese omelet.)
I actually know that, as it has been pointed out before, but in Dexter it’s “du” and I love to annoy chauvinistic Frenchies. So I’m sticking with that haha 😈
I learned English though movie piracy.
watching on tv or through legal means would be translated to my local language, but thanks to piracy, I got all my media in English and learned through it.
That’s pretty fascinating if true.
Don’t hear people talk about languages “spawning in their head”
happened to me the first time I ate a whole bag of “definitely only CBD in here wink wink” gummies
My guides
Learned it from PlayStation X games
I severely hope people don’t learn English from c.ai now…
Colonization and Michael Jackson
I share colonization, but for me it’s more the subbed cartoons we had than music
It taught me that a college is not a co-worker.
I really like the German voice acting culture but having everything translated doesn’t help improving your English
Programming for me. Those textbooks are rarely translated well.
I’m American and yeah definitely the “it spawned in my head.”
Also the same happens for other languages too, though I’m not around them enough to attach meaning to it. But I’ll dream different languages or hear Russian and French in my head sometimes and have no idea what it means.
What’s crazy is that everytime I’ve remembered and been able to type them out, they are legitimate phrases not just nonsense. I guess my mind just picks up phrases it hears and doesn’t attach the meaning to them fsr just repeats them.
Video games 95% for me. Later it was sitcoms or other television series, and some film. Cartoons and donald duck comics were not in English.
Cartoon Network for me. And Linux manuals.
