Hi Fediverse! I’m writing this post to ask you to share your experience on learning your native language through your fundamental education or your private life.
As a non-native English speaker but currently using it as working language, I can survive in my daily life e.g., technical terms, talks with customer services or so. But when I really try to watch movies, series or read literature books, it is so discouraging that many words, which are essential to native speakers, are strange to me. Let me show you some words that are recently added into my learning list: paranoid, cursive, intricate, ameliorate… There are thousands of them not even including words from fantasy novels or those D&D things.
I believe that a random six-year-old wouldn’t know those higher level words (in terms of comparing to ‘hello’ or ‘nice’) either. Even a native speaker acquires those vocabulary gradually. So I am curious what is your language education look like? Since when do you realize that you understand most content in your native language and what have you done before that?
I do have English as an example but any other language is also welcome. Feel free to share anything. Thank you in advance : )
My mom was my 1st and 2nd grade teacher (admittedly a great one) and I feel like this helped me understand how my native language works pretty fast, as she’d motivate me to study and thoroughly help me out whenever I needed/wanted to. I was also into reading books so that helped me advance my vocabulary a lot. Now, as an adult, I believe I speak the language better than the average person in my age range but I may be lacking in more advanced vocabulary.
As far as English goes, I started learning at the age of 7 (we typically start learning it in third grade) but it was hideous as I could barely understand or memorize anything. The thing that helped me tremendously was listening to music, reading the lyrics and translating them into Greek. Also, I think the fact my mother tongue is Greek helped me learn English vocab faster/easier to be honest. Moreover, I started talking with a bunch of people whose native language is English during my early teen years which helped me advance a lot. My English is still nowhere near perfect but I’d like to think I’m fairly good at it haha
Reading books, watching movies/series with English subtitles and communicating with native speakers are all great ways to improve your skills in English