Nirbhay A
New member
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2013
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Hindi
- Home Country
- India
- Current Location
- India
Greetings, everyone.
I am an 18-year old engineering undergraduate from New Delhi, India. As you may observe from the tag right above my post, I am quite new to this forum, and I am unsure of the general conventions regarding its usage; please feel free to redirect me to a different part of the site if needed.
My question derives from my recent obsession with achieving a so-called native level of English speech. How does one do it?
While my family is not, for the most part, English-speaking, I have studied (and, to an extent, used) the language since primary school. It is the language of choice for college instruction in India. By the standards of my country, my linguistic ability in English is quite adequate. I do not tend to make major grammatical or syntactic errors. I can speak the language with a fair degree of fluency.
Despite all of that, I find my own writing and speech to be somehow distinct from people who speak English as a first language. While I understand and acknowledge that no two writers write the exact same way, I cannot account for the fact that pieces written by native speakers of English just 'sound' so different from anything that I can come up.
What is the root cause of these differences? Are they purely idiomatic in nature? Are they the result of 'thinking in different languages', so to speak?
Or are they a mere figment of my imagination?
Any responses would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Nirbhay A.
I am an 18-year old engineering undergraduate from New Delhi, India. As you may observe from the tag right above my post, I am quite new to this forum, and I am unsure of the general conventions regarding its usage; please feel free to redirect me to a different part of the site if needed.
My question derives from my recent obsession with achieving a so-called native level of English speech. How does one do it?
While my family is not, for the most part, English-speaking, I have studied (and, to an extent, used) the language since primary school. It is the language of choice for college instruction in India. By the standards of my country, my linguistic ability in English is quite adequate. I do not tend to make major grammatical or syntactic errors. I can speak the language with a fair degree of fluency.
Despite all of that, I find my own writing and speech to be somehow distinct from people who speak English as a first language. While I understand and acknowledge that no two writers write the exact same way, I cannot account for the fact that pieces written by native speakers of English just 'sound' so different from anything that I can come up.
What is the root cause of these differences? Are they purely idiomatic in nature? Are they the result of 'thinking in different languages', so to speak?
Or are they a mere figment of my imagination?
Any responses would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Nirbhay A.