Cyprus-Forum.com

[Stephanie77]

For those of you who had to learn English at school in Cyprus, what were some of the challenges you faced when you moved to an English-speaking country?

[Sotos]

For those of you who had to learn English at school in Cyprus, what were some of the challenges you faced when you moved to an English-speaking country?

Why do you assume that people moved to an English-speaking country? I think learning the basics so you can communicate in English is not very hard. But to really learn any language you need to use it on a daily basis. One think I found difficult in English is that some words are slept very different than how they sound like.. "beautiful" for example ... why not "butiful" or at least "beutiful"!

[miltiades]

English being a non phonetic language presents difficulty in learning written English, although not as " ilogical" as the French which is by far the most " stupid" written language in the world, letters written just for the sake of it, Les garcons comes to mind, or grand prix !!!

I often wonder why on earth do you have a k in front of nife and not a k in front of life, it just does not make sense.

However English is by far the most useful language in the world , a very rich language that is able to " borrow" words from many languages the world around, mostly from the Greek language. English grammar is relatively easy compared to the Greek language, it is therefore a much easier language to master.

[Stephanie77]

For those of you who studied English in Cyprus and went to an English-speaking country, did you have trouble understanding the locals and did they have trouble understanding you? Thanks.

[DrCyprus]

The only difficulty I ever found when learning English, as I learned it in Cyprus by Cypriots, was the pronunciation. Being around English people during my studies in Britain fixed that to a certain degree. People hardly ever had a problem understanding my accent. On the other hand I did have problems understanding certain Scottish accents and the Geordies. I found the Scouse funny to hear but could understand them. I had to get used to the East Midlands accent to start getting it (Nottingham) but the real pain there were the Brummies.

My friends would make fun of my long vowels. Instead of hug I say huug for example, both cut and cat come out the same from my mouth and milk and ship become meelk and sheep. Some people thought I was American for some reason whilst my best friend thought I had a near Schwatzeneger accent. All in good fun.

It's good to note that approximately 1 year after I left Britain for good my accent turned super Cypriot again, and my English friends who I contacted through skype noticed it. Having said that, when I returned to England for an 1 month gig (job), by the second week my "faux" accent was back.

I never managed to pronounce the "schwa" in everyday speech though I really tried

[Cap]

mostly from the Greek language

??

I think it's like 5%

English keeps evolving.
Greek remains stagnant. ( thanks to those imposter Balkans who call themselves 'Greek' )

[miltiades]

Apart from....aids most if not all of the medical words derive from Greek !!
Even descriptive words such as ethnicity, politician, diplomat, megalomaniac, mega this and mega that, not forgetting ....homosexual, heterosexual, hydraulics and all of the terms used to denote a phobia.

Recent inventions such as ....telephone, answerphone , megaphone, not ...mobile though !!

The English language is full of words deriving from the Greek language, nothing annoys me more than a word spelled Xenophobia pronounced as ...zenophobia, or pseudo pronounced as ,,,soudo!!

Just cant make it out, its all Greek to me!

[GreekIslandGirl]

mostly from the Greek language

??

I think it's like 5%

English keeps evolving.
Greek remains stagnant. ( thanks to those imposter Balkans who call themselves 'Greek' )

Thank goodness your stupidity can be attributed to you being a white South African.

[Pyrpolizer]

For those of you who studied English in Cyprus and went to an English-speaking country, did you have trouble understanding the locals and did they have trouble understanding you? Thanks.

yes and yes.

[Sotos]

For those of you who studied English in Cyprus and went to an English-speaking country, did you have trouble understanding the locals and did they have trouble understanding you? Thanks.

Nobody had trouble to understand me. I can understand most American dialects. I can also understand "Queen's English", but I have trouble with most British dialects and some of them... like Scottish, I can understand very little. I need subtitles (in English) to watch some British films!