Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Calling all non-english natives!

Elenitsa

writing as Marina Costa
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 20, 2011
Messages
976
Reaction score
766
Location
Bucharest, Romania
Website
caribbeandawn1720.jcink.net
I am Elena, also from Romania, an economist working in the field of EU Affairs, so working in English every day.

I haven;t written literarily in English before discovering roleplaying games - an interactive story several people are writing together. As I am into historical fiction and swashbuckling adventures, of course my site is about pirates, Navy and privateers... We have here people from Europe who aren;t native English speakers too.

In Romanian I have written several novel-length stories. And I am glad to make international friends!
 

Kriegskanzler

Registered
Joined
Feb 21, 2013
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Hi there! I'm Kriegskanzler and I'm a Filipino who currently lives in the Philippines. I learned English ever since I started schooling, as English is part of the Philippine basic education curriculum. Regardless, English still isn't my first language and I still struggle with tenses, particularly perfect tenses as well as the use of active and passive voices. :)
 

LongevityLetter

Registered
Joined
Feb 5, 2014
Messages
17
Reaction score
1
Location
Bucharest
Hello, I am from Romania and I started learning English when I was 7. My parents speak only Romanian, even though I tried pressuring them to brush their English :)
I always found readily available English music and later on books, so I got to use this language more and more - I am now writing in English because frankly I am unable to think creatively in any other language...
It started with writing my diary in English - it was a form of ensuring my privacy since nobody at home understood it :D
 

Moont

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2014
Messages
143
Reaction score
12
Location
Barcelona
Hi! Awesome thread! Thank you! I see no new posts since February!
I'm Moont from Catalonia, Spain. What I love from my country? I don't really know. Maybe its diversity - we have four official languages here, Castillian Spanish, Catalan in Catalonia (north-east), Euskera in Euskadi (North-west) and Gallego in Galicia (west, above Portugal, and quite similar to Portuguese). I dislike the chauvinism of some narrow-minded monolingual Spanish speakers against us bilinguals (since we speak Spanish and our native languages practically since birth, though sometimes we are discriminated against because of our accent when speaking Spanish or because of our non-Spanish surnames, an ugly- lurking remora from Franco's dictatorship times, I'd say) I also dislike the incompetent, corrupt politicians leading our empoverished country and their cheeky disregard for justice among other things. I don't know if I want to become independent, but whenever I hear those bigots speaking so hatefully about us, I wish we were. Though I don't trust Catalan politicians, either, and I can't visualize a Catalan Republic finding its acceptance in Europe. I don't understand this separatism - Aren't we all inhabitants of a single planet? Why not unite, instead of dividing? Maybe I'm a Utopian dreamer.
I love paella, our wines, our cheese, and sangria, and typical dishes from everywhere. I love our traditional dances and music like sardanes, jota, flamenco, bagpipes... Our beaches, our mountains...
I studied Anglo-germanic Philology (but I'm fluent in English and a bit less fluent in German), French and Italian at university, specializing in Comparative Linguistics. I love languages and travelling and meeting people from everywhere. My family are multilingual, too, and we travelled a lot all over Europe in the summer, on holidays, in a caravan. My dad spoke perfect Italian, Mum was our French interpreter, me and my 4 siblings spoke English and some French (but only I could speak some German) and I recall how weird we looked at the camping in Austria singing German songs in Catalan and Spanish! I recall how people stood listening to us sing as if we were some sort of foreing von Trapp Family, because we loved singing and one of my sisters used to play the recorder or the harmonica, as the rest of us sang... and we had a great time singing in any language we knew at the time.
Like LongevityLetter, I also used to write my diary in English to ensure my privacy cos my parents didn't speak English, but alas, my bros and sisters did, since it was compulsory at school, so it was not much use... Until I decided to learn German!
Alas, my daughter is not as language-oriented as I am, but she can get by in English and some French.
Great to learn about all of you!
 

Amanda Harper

Lurking fish.
Registered
Joined
Dec 27, 2009
Messages
29
Reaction score
1
Location
France
Definitely an excellent thread. Also, the three people from Romania on this page just reminded me of a Romanian in my class at uni who speaks English (and French) with a lovely accent. I just thought I'd put that out there for no reason at all.

I'm Amanda and I'm from France. English is my second language but I learned it in the States as a child and consider myself bilingual. I almost always write in English; French appeals to me a lot less and feels too wordy and clunky. I don't know for sure why that is, but it may be because I read mostly in English. Whenever I find a book in a bookstore that I know has been translated from English, I go online and buy the original version just because I'm snobbish like that.
My all-time-favorite book is French, though (Les Misérables), and I consider myself very lucky to be able to enjoy writers like Dumas and Hugo in their original language, because I can't help but feel that some of the beauty of their writing gets lost in translation. Hugo is probably the first reason I would cite for you all to learn French.:heart: I'd like to learn every language there is to enjoy the literary gems every language has to offer.

As for France itself, well, I can't think of anything to say except that there are a lot of things worth seeing, a lot of French accents worth hearing, a lot of food worth tasting, and a lot of wine and especially champagne worth drinking.
 

slashedkaze

Smutter
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 1, 2011
Messages
224
Reaction score
14
Location
Bonn, Germany
Hello, I am from Romania and I started learning English when I was 7. My parents speak only Romanian, even though I tried pressuring them to brush their English :)
I always found readily available English music and later on books, so I got to use this language more and more - I am now writing in English because frankly I am unable to think creatively in any other language...
It started with writing my diary in English - it was a form of ensuring my privacy since nobody at home understood it :D


Heheh. I get you on the monolingual parents. I'm kind of glad my mom speaks only German because it keeps her from reading my fiction. :D
 

Wurm13

Registered
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
27
Reaction score
2
Location
On an island in the South Pacific
Hi All, or Ia Ora Na, which means "May you live!" in our island language. I was made in Holland but have been living the majority of my life elsewhere. Of all the countries I have been able to call "home" while studying and working, it seems I could always hear the islands calling…

I am happily writing my first book with the company of my dog named "Xmas," found on the garbage dump on Christmas day, and at present my most trusted and faithful companion.

Happy to have discovered this community, hoping to learn a lot and maybe even contribute some!