Cazzy wrote: »

Congrats on your future wedding!

LOL

JamieAubrey wrote: »

ZOS_DaryaK wrote: »

When is the wedding? I'll be happy to provide sweetrolls.

Did someone say Sweetrolls

Yup

Tandor wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Acrolas wrote: »

Well, technically, it's Lord Fengrush and I; me is reserved for a post-verb object.
And took because it's a past event.

Oh *** look over there. Shiniraer just stole some guy's sweetroll...

*runs away*

It's all good, this way I learn something as well, english is not my native language. I use it since a long time though, but I am still making mistakes - for example "if" and "when", I mix them often, because they are in german the same word "wenn", even in the case of the meaning of "if" it is more the word "falls", but not always - german is complicated at times.

And where I am born, the locals do not even use "falls", even if it would be correct, but say "wenn" instead - and this is why I often write "when", when the correct word would be "if". It is hard to suppress that, especially, if I write something very quickly and post it before having thought about the correct grammar - but I try to correct it afterwards, if I recognize it.

I had no idea you were not a native English speaker, @Lysette , I honestly would never have guessed !

I've found over the years that the most common mistake European non-native English speakers make tends to be not the choice of words but rather the order in which they are used. For example, if someone is asking for help they will say "Someone can help me" rather than "Can someone help me". I have huge respect, however, for those who write on forums in a second language - I'd struggle these days with stringing a single sentence together having last studied French and German some 47 years ago! By contrast, I have absolutely zero respect for those who use "leet speech" on forums (such as "I will help u m8 lol") !

I had a few advantages, Tandor, for example my dad is an english teacher (even he never lost his german accent totally) and so I had from the beginning an affinity towards this language, even I wasn't raised bilingual. Well, not at young age, later I was told that I have to learn it, if I want to get anywhere in life, because more and more universities started to teach in english, even they are german universities (at least in the technological area this is more often the case than not). And my parents were right with this and I was happy that I listened to them, when I started to study.

After I got my masters in Biochemistry, I got a quite well paid first job in my new profession in London - and so I moved to London and lived and worked there for a year. My work turned out to be less research than I had hoped for, and so I decided to study again in a similar area, which was Bioinformatics and allowed for speed study due to that I already had a master in a similar area. I met my partner there, she started her 3rd study as a speed student in Bioinformatics at the same time.

After we graduated and got our master, she suggested that we should have a look at south africa and especially the Capetown region, because a new biotech hub would develop there - said and done, we went to south africa and after about 3 weeks we fell in love with this country and another week later we started the process to live and work here. We decided to apply for business permit and due to the wealth of my partner we invested into this country founded biotech companies and bought a couple of farms and a vineyard. We are here now for a couple of years and english became my main language.

But even it is now my main language, this habit to use a german order of words to express something is still there and I have a hard time to suppress it. This is basically the reason, why especially Germans use english words in the wrong order assuming that the inherent meaning of this order (which it has in german) would as well be in the english sentence - but it isn't. I do not see english as a foreign language anymore, it is my main language now. Among others, I can understand afrikaans meanwhile and a few phrases and words in Xhosa. Afrikaans is mainly used by the people in the country side, so I'll have to learn it.

This is my story how I became an english speaker without to be a native one. I love and adore the language, it is so efficient and nevertheless of high expressiveness. The history of how it came to be is an interesting one as well, many languages have influenced it, got assimilated into the english language and over time it became what it is now - understood by the world.

Edit: using your example with "someone can help me" and "can someone help me" - the inherent meaning with this order of words in german would be - the first is asking if anyone is willing to help at all, whereas the second one asks for if someone is able to help and not if he is willing to. This would be the difference in the meaning, if it would be german - "willing to help" versus "able to help". The second one is actually that one, which is the least likely seen from a german speaker, because it is a meta-question, asking if someone is able to for something what the one cannot decide yet, because he does not know if he will be able to without specifics. So if someone asks for help like this in german, he would most likely not get a reaction at all - this is why they rather ask in the wrong version "Someone can help me".