How Many Of You Use English As Second Language? And where are you from if it...

[csp4.0 1]

English is my second language, my first is Mandarin. I hate writing in mandarin (no spelling a word is a word you can't spell it out).

[petsecia 0]

English is only my 3rd language. My first language is portuguese. My second language is french. And now I'm trying to learn english. I can read and understand, but to speak and to write is harder... But I'm trying...

[de4thpr00f 0]

Hi i'm from Portugal, we speak portuguese in here =P, i can speak portuguese, italian, spanish, french (not to much) and english. i learned english at school but i apply it much more over internet. And i think it's a basic language compared to french or portuguese. But at the same time it can be hard to express yourself.Greetz~Jo?o Lopes

[bthaxor 0]

i have no idea how, but when i began school at the age of six, my english was quite fluent.right now, i probably speak english better than most people actually born in australia.at home, we still speak bulgarian. no english.i guess a person's ability to talk a language comes from their surroundings: if they talk to other people etc. for me, the main place where i learn english, and the only place where i speak english, is school.to me, english is a more prominent language than bulgarian, however technically it is a second language because my native language is bulgarian.however, when i write it is always in english. i can neither read nor write in bulgarian.

[Liam_CF 0]

English is my first language. When I first joined Xisto, I was amazed at the number of people who did not speak english natively. You can always tell when they are, not because it is wrong, but because it is structured differently and different words are used.However, I can always (99% of the time) understand what they're saying, this is in no way a criticism.

[jimmyln2004 0]

My parents are from China, but I am born in Singapore, so I can be considered to be a native Chinese speaker. However, being in Singapore, everything is taught/explained/written/whatever in English, so I guess I use English as my first language.

Edited December 11, 2007 by jimmyln2004 (see edit history)

[leeindia 0]

I am from India and in my part of the world Hindi is the most prominent languageHave studied English in my school from the beginning and as a result of all the hard work, I can say now that English is my second language

[Strikee 1]

English in my case , just as many people around here is my second language. I've been "confrunting" myself with it since I was in kindergarden.. ) and been evolving my skills ever since. I had the pleasure to visit U.K a few months ago and I was surprised how beautiful their accent was , not as the normal American accent we see everyday in the movies. Their accent makes them seem very smart (very nice people though , talking to them is always a pleasure).I'm curious about what native English speakers think about of our way of expressing ourselfs in their language and wether we sound funny , weird or some other way.A contest would be interesting where each contestant could write a story or something like that , in English of course , others could vote and we could find our most fluent non-english , english speaker )Since this is a huge comunity it could get pretty fun.Edit: I'm from Romania , I forgot to mention.

Edited September 18, 2010 by Strikee (see edit history)