I was just wondering about all the Europeans (excluding UK)… like do y’all understand… say, an American movie or TV as well as those in your national language?

  • Humanius@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I’m pretty much a fluent English speaker. My native tongue is Dutch

    There are certain sayings, phrases or slang that I may not be intimiately familiar with. And sometimes I can’t think of a word that I really should have known and I need to look it up (but I get that in Dutch too)

    But generally I think in English when I speak English, which I think is a decently good sign of my fluency.

    • WaxRhetorical@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      There are certain sayings, phrases or slang that I may not be intimately familiar with.

      This says nothing about your fluency. There are tonnes of English slang that Americans are unfamiliar with, and vice versa.
      Hell, there’s a lot of Singaporean English that doesn’t exist in the minds of Brits and Americans, but Singaporeans are still fluent in English, it’s just different from what people consider “true” English.

      • Humanius@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Just a regular Dutchman from the Netherlands, actually. I got all four languages in school, and got quite a bit of exercise in French as a kid, so some of it stuck with me.

        German is similar enough to Dutch that you can mostly bluff your way through it after highschool.