How easy was it for you (non-native) speakers to pick up English?

[Admiral Yi]

You're right.  By the Dirty Old Man rule the minimum age for a 16 year old is 15.

[Liep]

Even Danes find it hard to learn Danish. Not a joke.

I find English almost impossible to understand. And trying to express myself is a nightmare.

So would Swedish be easier?  Icelandic sounds prmeval to English ears.

Easier to learn? My guess is yes. Easier for a Swede to learn English? My guess is no.

FWIW when I'm watching a Swedish TV program I can hear the majority of words that are being said and could have a go at repeating them. This, however, is not the case when listening to Danish, except for a few basic words.

I felt a weird sense of achievement when I first distinguished between Danish and Swedish in the Bridge

Danish is a very intuative language I think, we don't really have any pronunciation rules and many words are said so fast that syllables become nothing but a nasal sound.

Also there's no rules for what gender a noun is, but it's no problem for a native because it sounds wrong to say "et hamster" instead of "en hamster".

[Monoriu]

All I did was to prepare for the exam.  I did a listening session once a week.  Wrote an essay once a week.  Spoke English in front of the class once a week.  Did 2-3 written tests once a week.  This went on for 5 years.

I still don't think I've picked up English. 

Sounds like what almost every kid in Japan does.
Yet you know English. They don't.
Do you think English's status as a very common/official language in HK helped you out?

The exam method works for some people.  For me, English is a bunch of rules, and I like to obey very specific rules. 

[celedhring]

English wasn't too hard for me. It's a much simpler (in a good way) and flexible language than Spanish or other romance languages. It's true that as a geek you *had* to learn English to access all the geeky stuff that wasn't published in Spanish, so I was very motivated at the time.

Pronunciation is way trickier, as native speakers don't seem to be able to agree on how stuff needs to be pronounced to begin with.

[The Larch]

English wasn't too hard for me. It's a much simpler (in a good way) and flexible language than Spanish or other romance languages. It's true that as a geek you *had* to learn English to access all the geeky stuff that wasn't published in Spanish, so I was very motivated at the time.

Pronunciation is way trickier, as native speakers don't seem to be able to agree on how stuff needs to be pronounced to begin with.

You're totally right about the utter need of English proficiency as a geek in Spain, back in the day a friend of mine taught himself English by reading AD&D manuals and Marvel comics. 

[celedhring]

English wasn't too hard for me. It's a much simpler (in a good way) and flexible language than Spanish or other romance languages. It's true that as a geek you *had* to learn English to access all the geeky stuff that wasn't published in Spanish, so I was very motivated at the time.

Pronunciation is way trickier, as native speakers don't seem to be able to agree on how stuff needs to be pronounced to begin with.

You're totally right about the utter need of English proficiency as a geek in Spain, back in the day a friend of mine taught himself English by reading AD&D manuals and Marvel comics. 

Hehe, I pretty much passed my English exams by studying the Star Wars RPG manuals too.

[Ed Anger]

NERDS

[Admiral Yi]

nerdos

[Ed Anger]

Rubbed on the bitch.

[Razgovory]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRsPheErBj8

[Josquius]

French was a wholly different beast, though. The vocabulary was harder, everything sounded the same (en vs. on vs. an), the grammar and tenses were a nightmare ... so I only was a B student, even though my tests were always covered in red ink when I got them back.

Schools in the UK really should stop teaching French. It turns generation after generation utterly off foreign languages.

[Vricklund]

I think I've learnt my three languages in pretty much the same way - pick up enough of a vocabulary to start reading books and then you're off. I never bothered learning grammar of any sorts, I just wing it.

[Duque de Bragança]

When I was at school studying French it always remained something theoretical and abstract. It might as well have been Latin. It had no relevance in life whatsoever. English in the world however....

Seems like the study of English in French school according to critics. 

Schools in the UK really should stop teaching French. It turns generation after generation utterly off foreign languages.

Again, the way the language is taught sounds extremely bad but the English in Paris are not necessarily like like Tyr, specially the girls.

As for me, I never had trouble with marks in English but the real progress for  only started after watching on FrenchTV the CBS Evening News the following morning, watching original versions (much easier in Portugal in the '90s), videogames (in the beginning even PAL releases were not translated) and music.

German could have been much better had I picked it earlier over Castilian whose biggest problem for me was trying to avoid mixing it up with Portuguese. Back to German, without Latin, I would be completely lost...

[Duque de Bragança]

French was a wholly different beast, though. The vocabulary was harder, everything sounded the same (en vs. on vs. an), the grammar and tenses were a nightmare ... so I only was a B student, even though my tests were always covered in red ink when I got them back.

Typical German mistake Easily explainable by the fewer nasal vowels in German.
I'll grant you an and en are pronounced the same most of the time though but not always cf. Le Pen and blanc.
Tenses are simpler than in Portuguese, Castilian or Italian, unless it's literary French i.e not the French you're supposed to learn at school. As for grammar, the past participe is a bitch unless you go by the more formall iterary tenses.
Spelling is tough but it's the same in English, if not worse. They imported some Normand spellings which have not evolved since the eleventh century or so, unlike standard French.

[Eddie Teach]

And all that was off one coors light. Oy vey.

Doubtful.

I likwe miller lite!!!!!!!1111

I suppose he could have forgotten what he was drinking.