A Note to Non-Native English Speakers

[Korpraali V]

ORIGINAL: Colonel von Blitz

I bet the major reason for this is the fact, that finnish language differs more than swedish when compared to english.

-Colonel von Blitz-

True, but the other reason is that Finns afraid to speak English. [X(] Too little practising and when you speak, you speak with so low voice that it turns to murmur. And then you are again afraid to speak it...

[Einar Fridgeirs]

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

Of course, Bob. I'm proud to be a West Virginian, and in case you didn't know, my wife was born in Texas. Our daughter has a very interesting genetic makeup -- she's musically talented and very outspoken. She has the best (and worst) of her parents' personalities.
I'm definitely gonna have an interesting time in helping her reach her potential.

Now, back on topic, I'm impressed by guys like Puukkoo and Einar and many others whose native language isn't English. They are easily understood, at least in writing. Talking to them may be entirely different-- you think about it, American English is VERY hard for those who can't say "the" or "those". The "th" sound is damn near impossible for many non-natives. I have the same problem with German umlautted vowels, like ü or ö .

He, "th" is easy compared to attempting to distinguish between "w" and "v". We use those interchangeably. I can never get that right. But overall, I´ve also been complimented on my english speech. Ah, the wonders of american girlfriends![;)]

Bet you´d be stumped by Icelandic mainstays such as "Æ" "Ð" and "Þ". Many americans on IRC envy us for our Þ sound(I´m not even sure this is showing up properly on your screen by the way!) because we can make a cooler version of !

:þ

[Code Talker]

Uhhh....I thought being from West Virginia was one of the states considered "honorary foreign citizen", (another, of course being Texas.)

Who y'all callin' foreign?