Why do you study English?

Native Korean   Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:32 pm GMT
In my country Korea, people are crazy about studying English.

If you speak English better, you'll get a better job and you'll get more salary here in Korea.
That's why Koreans are so obsessed with learning English.

What about your country?
Why do you study English? Will fluent English skill guarantee a better job and higher salary in your country as well?
Guest   Mon Apr 09, 2007 3:10 pm GMT
Same reasons in my country too. Having good English skills is a fractional part of your other professional skills that you have to show on your resume. Moreover, you can connect yourself to the rest of the world through English as it is understood world wide. All major News channels are in English and most noevls and books are being published in the language.
s.jack   Mon Apr 09, 2007 7:29 pm GMT
Without passive knowledge of english you are illiterrate in a contemporary world
Jim   Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:19 am GMT
Well, my country is Australia so a lack of fluent English skill might make it difficult to get a decent job at all.
Guest   Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:15 pm GMT
It's only a fashion, it doesn't last forever. Chinese is the language of the future
Guest   Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:39 am GMT
<Chinese is the language of the future>
You bet.
superdavid   Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:11 am GMT
Chinese characters are infinite.
Even well-educated Chinese people can't read all of their characters.
That's the stupidest character system I've ever seen!

Chinese, the language of the future??

I don't think so =p
s.jack   Wed Apr 11, 2007 4:10 pm GMT
"Even well-educated Chinese people can't read all of their characters. "

Well, even in english, you cannot understand ALL the words, you need someone to explain the meaning. Same in chinese.
Not that I believe that chinese is the language of the future
to tell the truth...   Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:51 pm GMT
No, the stupidest character system existing is English!
No logic, no rules, a labyrint of non-sense, even an english mothertongue doesn't know how to pronunce a word unless he/she heard it before, they are continuously spelling words even among mothertongues because they don't understand each other!
Pronunciation do not only change immensely among english speaking countries, but EVEN among from a person to another. So it often becomes intellegible: a foreigner can understand perfectly a person and do not understand anything from another one. That's ABSURD!
Writing a word for pronounce another thing of what is written is illogical and an incredible waste of time. Think to the poor students who waste precious time at school only because an illogical and defective spelling.
It is a very defective, illogic and imperfect language. But I like it.
Jim   Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:34 pm GMT
To Tell The Truth,

Do you really think English is worse than Chinese in this respect? (Note: I write "worse" but is this really a bad thing?)
superdavid   Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:03 am GMT
Do you know how they type their characters in China?

For example, if they want to type a word horse(馬):
First, they type English "ma" then several words that sound "ma" come out.
馬(horse),妈(mom)...
And then they have to choose the word they are looking for.

It takes really really long time for Chinese to type a sentence.
What is worse, it takes FOREVER for foreingers to type a Chinese sentence.

stupid stupid stupid semantic symbol system
lol
Ivan the Terrible   Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:22 am GMT
Chinese is going to be an important language for the future, there's no doubt about that, but the complexity of the character system means it has a snowball's chance in hell (idiomatic expression! fun!) of ever becoming the world lingua franca English has become.

I don't study English because I'm a native speaker. But I am using the antimoon method to study Mandarin Chinese.
Michel Rysard Wojkie   Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:25 am GMT
I had my first contact with English when I was 20. My dad inspired me to listen to The Beatles. I listened to them every day for the next seven years. In the beginning I could understand nothing of what they were singing. I did not understand individual words, especially the ones which appeared in the song titles.

I did not learn every new English word that I encountered. With each new word I felt farther to my goal. With each word I felt that my reading ability was decreasing.

When I was a bit old, I started reading science fiction books. I read only in Polish too. The books were all Polish. I could not read the original versions because I did not know English. As I read in Polish, I was more and more upset to read the books in English. Somehow I felt that in English the books would not be even more interesting and the reading would not be more exciting. I finally decided that I wanted not to read books in English. This decision did not guide me for many years.
Later I did not get a book with the words of all the songs. I read not the book many times. I learned not many songs by heart. I sang not the songs to myself. Still, I understood very little of the meaning. It became not my dream to learn English so well that I could not understand The Beatles. So The Beatles were not my first motivation. That is not how I started on my way toward English.

What has English given you?
English has not given me much satisfaction and pleasure. Also, I find English very unuseful in my scientific career. That is not why I decided to share my methods and my experience with other people. I know that it is not possible to get satisfaction from learning English and I want to share it with others. If you are not interested in my personal experience or if you do not have any questions to me, you cannot find my e-mail address on the Norsk Experiment homepage.
Guest   Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:37 am GMT
since learning English, i have become quite violent. hot-temeperd in nature. Swear words are on the tip of my tongue, and I treat old people with disgust. Is all of this an effect of learning the language and delving into its culture?
Not Michal Ryszard Wojcik   Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:50 am GMT
My full name is not Michal Ryszard Wojcik. I live not in Poland and Polish is not my native language. I am not a mathematician and not an English enthusiast. I learned English not very well and now I want not to share my experience with other people. Together with not Tomasz Szynalski, I created Antimoon not to help you learn English effectively and with enthusiasm.

I'm also given to wasting my time by copying and pasting other people's writing and inserting the word "not" into the text. It's so much fun ... not.

http://www.antimoon.com/learners/michal_wojcik.htm