Worldwide Demographics

[SteveD]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Yeah, I find my English good (I don't know if you guys thing the same though...). I'm aware I commit some mistakes while writing, but I can write big, formal texts without any external support. And as I've never lived in an English-speaking country, I think it's fine, specially as writing is the most difficult competence. I have one of those C2 level certificates too and I renew it once in a while.

About French, as soon as you reach the Intermediate level (where I'm right now), French seems as close as Spanish. You can speak it, understand it, read it very well, but writing or speak very correctly, it's still challenging. Maybe I should visit Quebec's section and take some risks there. It would help to improve my writing. I hear my teacher talking, with a perfect accent, going very deep into complex grammatical structures, with all those French mannerisms and vocalizations and I think, "damn I'll never get there".

I studied German when I was 18-19. I can still hold short conversations, have a very decent vocabulary, but it's a bit useless right now. Next year, I intend to resume it at Goethe as I did with French last semester after 10 years without studying it.

I'm not a big fan of learning languages per se. When I was younger, I was. Today, it's only a productive way to distract me from my job that not includes burning money on clubs, restaurants, bars. And of course, it's nice to travel using the local language.

I would never know that English wasn't your first language.