A blast from the past....

JessieAddick said:

In the early 2000's I signed up a football forum. I read and posted a lot on there and started to use those ridiculous spellings under the influence of the English posters. I was about 13 and although my English then was already much better than my peers', I had only been learning the language for three or four years, apparently not able to tell what was good and what was bad regarding the usage of the language/spelling. And a couple of years later when I joined cafc-fans, I used 'Curbs4eva' as my nickname

I must say Charlton Life is the most civilised online community I've ever seen concerning the language. My English has been improved a lot since I became a regular Lifer a few years ago.

Jessie your use of both formal and informal English is incredible. It was already good when you first came here but has improved leaps and bounds since then using the correct phrases and word combination in the right places, you even seem to have mastered the dreaded phrasal verbs!

How is your spoken English? I am sure it is good.

JessieAddick said:

In the early 2000's I signed up a football forum. I read and posted a lot on there and started to use those ridiculous spellings under the influence of the English posters. I was about 13 and although my English then was already much better than my peers', I had only been learning the language for three or four years, apparently not able to tell what was good and what was bad regarding the usage of the language/spelling. And a couple of years later when I joined cafc-fans, I used 'Curbs4eva' as my nickname

I must say Charlton Life is the most civilised online community I've ever seen concerning the language. My English has been improved a lot since I became a regular Lifer a few years ago.

Jessie you speak English just like wot we do.

Covered_End_Lad said:

I genuinely thought Jessie was American until this thread! The fact she only started learning English a few years ago is incredible.

Agree. There’s hope for nla yet ;0)

@JessieAddick
Just listened.
First off, I think the most important thing is that you can make yourself understood and you’ve got that sorted.
Second, I work with a couple of Chinese girls and there are a couple of characteristics of their speech that I recognise with you:
The main one seems to be a tendency to drop the last consonant of a word - a bit like a glottal stop, but noticeable because you do it with letters that we wouldn’t. For example, English people often replace a ‘t’ with a glottal stop (eg ‘butter’ becomes ‘bu’er’, ‘Idiot’ becomes ‘Idio’ ’), but rarely do we drop a p or a d. I’ve noticed with my Chinese friends and with your recording that words like ‘stop’ or ‘good’ become sto’ or goo’. It’s interesting because glottal stops are notorious for making native English speakers difficult to understand, so it’s bound to have that effect for a Chinese person too! Incidentally, another thing is pronounciation of letters - and it’s particularly interesting because some English people do these too - I’ve noticed my Chinese friends pronounce th as f (think becomes fink) and sometimes L as a kind of w, but only at the end of a word. I noticed this a bit in your recording too. An interesting word is ‘help’ because there’s a tendency to both drop the p at the end and also pronounce the l as a sort of w, meaning it gets pronounced “he-w” or something like that!

As I say, I could understand you perfectly, but these are just observations of common traits that I also recognise in friends. I think the little things like these sometimes contribute to misunderstandings.
By the way, I’m no linguist, so if you find my observations patronising, inaccurate, rude or unhelpful, I apologise - it’s not meant to be. I think your English is astonishing and I am and always have been a bit envious of people like you who are able to master other languages.
Keep it up!

JessieAddick said:

Cordoban Addick said:

JessieAddick said:

In the early 2000's I signed up a football forum. I read and posted a lot on there and started to use those ridiculous spellings under the influence of the English posters. I was about 13 and although my English then was already much better than my peers', I had only been learning the language for three or four years, apparently not able to tell what was good and what was bad regarding the usage of the language/spelling. And a couple of years later when I joined cafc-fans, I used 'Curbs4eva' as my nickname

I must say Charlton Life is the most civilised online community I've ever seen concerning the language. My English has been improved a lot since I became a regular Lifer a few years ago.

Jessie your use of both formal and informal English is incredible. It was already good when you first came here but has improved leaps and bounds since then using the correct phrases and word combination in the right places, you even seem to have mastered the dreaded phrasal verbs!

How is your spoken English? I am sure it is good.

Thanks! I haven't had many opportunities to speak English in recent years. Can't say I speak more fluently than those who use it on a daily basis (like interpreters etc.) but I'm quite confident I only need a couple of hours talking to a native speaker to become totally fluent.

I just recorded myself reading a random article on the club's OS (too much time on my hands.... I've never done this sort of thing before ) Anyone interested in having a listen and see if my accent/pronunciation is alright (Sorry I'm going totally off-topic )
https://www.cafc.co.uk/news/view/5b3cedf5ee3d5/jake-forster-caskey-on-charlton-working-hard-in-portugal

@JessieAddick, the pronunciation is very good but the inflection and intonation are a bit off, although that's not surprising given you haven't had lots of chances to converse with native English speakers.

Edit. I've just seen romford's comments, above. He describes it more exactly.

JessieAddick said:

MrOneLung said:

Cant believe discussing glottal stops !!!

Actually I didn't know what a glottal stop was. I had to look it up... I think I've probably listened to too many interviews with English footballers and managers and unconsciously picked it up in the wrong way!

I thought it was on the Northern Line

MrOneLung said:

Cant believe discussing glottal stops !!!

Do you mean “Glo’-al”?

AFKABartram said:

I’ve never heard of a glottal stop Jessie and I doubt most on here have either!

Charltonlife is, and always has been, a place of learning AFKA!

I've lolled this, but I had to look it up myself.
I will nick that though.

ShootersHillGuru said:

JessieAddick said:

In the early 2000's I signed up a football forum. I read and posted a lot on there and started to use those ridiculous spellings under the influence of the English posters. I was about 13 and although my English then was already much better than my peers', I had only been learning the language for three or four years, apparently not able to tell what was good and what was bad regarding the usage of the language/spelling. And a couple of years later when I joined cafc-fans, I used 'Curbs4eva' as my nickname

I must say Charlton Life is the most civilised online community I've ever seen concerning the language. My English has been improved a lot since I became a regular Lifer a few years ago.

Jessie you speak English just like wot we do.

She's speaks English betterer than wot I do.