English as a second language.

[procyonlotor]

English is pretty damn cool. It has the most fucked up relationship between spelling and pronunciation ever, but its flexibility is absolutely wonderful. You can switch word classes, constantly come up with new words and expressions via prepositions, and you can effortlessly steal words from other languages. You should see how some European languages, Italian for instance, struggle to integrate anglicisms into every day speech. How do you count English words in a language where the singular and the plural are marked by specific morphemes? If you add the English s, you're being barbaric, if you don't, you sound silly anyway. It's hilarious.

 

[vehystrix]

Yeah, I'm fluent in both my native and my second language (which is english). I switch between the 2 effortless, and often catch myself thinking in english.

Also, I have patchwork-conversations of the 2 languages with the brother of my girlfriend, who's also an avid gamer, since the english terms are so much more natural and easier to understand in the context.

 

[trollnystan]

Well, Swedish and English are both mine so to speak. But I find it embarrassing that though I was born and live in Sweden I speak English more and better than I do Swedish...

 

[eggmiester]

English is my mother tongue, but I've actually caught myself thinking in japanese so...

of course you have. japanese is awesome.

... not that other languages aren't awesome, just that japanese is more awesome.

... gonna shut up now.

 

[Trivun]

Languages change and evolve all the time, there's nothing wrong with English words being added to other languages like Bangla, just as there are foreign words in English. Sushi and tsunami, for example, are Japanese words, and Phobia is a Greek term. I speak English as my first language, being raised in England itself, and although I joke about hating the American terms for things (like replacing chips with 'fries' and crisps with 'chips'), I really see it as a new sub-language evolving from the original (and best ;D) English language. Hell, even the English we speak now is nothing like it once was, with spellings changing and terms becoming outdated and disused. Wherefore, for example, means 'why', though everyone seems to think it meant 'where' - which can lead to a lot of confusion when watching Shakespeare...

I'm teaching myself Japanese at the moment, after failing to learn German or French or Spanish at school - I was crap at those, yet I'm actually interested in Japanese. And though I haven't gotten very far yet, I know that there are a lot of Japanese words that are originally English or other language words - pretty much anything written in Katakana is a foreign import word, at any rate, that particular syllabary being used for syllables in foreign words...

 

[DRSH1989]

I think in English too although I've never been to a country were english was a native language.

 

[ChocoFace]

I have a similar problem with my native language, estonian.
A lot of new words are simply borrowed from the english language anyway, (the government even holds events where people who create the best new estonian sounding word for an already existing english version get prizes) so including the fact that the english language has probably more than 10 times more ways to express oneself than estonian, i'm torn between the two.