Is English not your native language?

I'm French. I can fully understand what is written in English. I'm used to reading articles from UK or US newspaper. My English skills are actually tested twice a month : an english speaking teacher gives us a text or a recording drawn from The Economist or The New York Time for instance and we have to sum it up, say what we think about what is said, etc.

However I lack fluency during those exams : I have to speak (paper and pen forbidden).

In France people are lazy, in order not to feel guilty they argue French is a wonderful language (actually it's not so wonderful). Ironically they can't even use their own mother tongue properly.

All English TV shows broadcast in France are translated, a very few channels enable people to turn it off and listen to genuine voices.

We also have a terrible English accent as you must know. There are indeed sounds hard to produce : for instance the "th". Nevertheless some like "h" from "have" for example are easy to produce : someone who would pronounce those sounds outside English classes would be laughed at because it "sounds ridiculous". It is as if French people were trying to worsen their English.

It seems that many countries struggle with English, but in India the case is completely different. People here(mostly upper middle class/rich families) use English instead of Hindi, which I find annoying. If you can't speak English then the chances of getting a job is pretty slim.

Well, there's no definite solution since there are more than 60 languages spoken here, with each of them having half a dozen dialects. Only 40% here speak Hindi.

I don't really know the history but, how did English became the international language? Or is it not?

I think it's probably to do with the Empire being so large at one point, the saying "The Sun never sets in the British Empire" meaning there at one point was always a country on the globe under sunlight under British control.

I think it was basically spread that way, and supported to some degree by trade.

Yay for English!

Finnish here but I'm pretty good with English, well okay I admit that grammar mistakes etc. are pretty common but understanding what everyone says is easy.

but understanding what everyone says is easy.

hah so you say! You couldn't understand "owt" ;p

-.- perkele... true true but hey it's not English after all ;) well at least real

English native and passable in QC french.

Swedish, fluent in English. No problem here.

I speak gibberish fluently. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I think it's probably to do with the Empire being so large at one point, the saying "The Sun never sets in the British Empire" meaning there at one point was always a country on the globe under sunlight under British control.

I think it was basically spread that way, and supported to some degree by trade.

Don't forget, there was hard competition <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle"> German was also spreaded around the world until the late 19th century. In fact, when founding the U.S., there was a serious consideration to have 2 official languages, english and german <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle">

How much easier it would be for me, if this would have happened...

btt, I'm german, know a bit english and less french, and whenever I look for a word (which happens quite often) I use Beolingus.

QC french, pretty good in english overall except for the actual speaking part ! I can't formulate anything coherent for the life of me ! <img src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Russian. Where's old topic on this? Also cant find my old posts. Pity :D

woooo, It looks everyone can understand english here!

unfortunately, I'm not native to english and my english is not fast...

If I have chance to meet the sentense that hard to understand, I stare that sentense and try to understand that...

no many cases but accidently if I meet vocabulary that I don't know, I just uses browser addon or search it.

In writting, simple sentences are just easy stuff, but in hard cases to express complecated sentences, first uses google languague tools and trims it because that makes some un-understandable sentences at most times.(the word orders are different between korean and english. kor : SOV, eng:SVO and It looks like machine can't understand structure well...)