I feel like non native users are often better at both formulating themselves and spelling, compared to many native speakers

Especially the part where people replace 'have' with 'of'. (Would of instead of would have / would've)

Non native speaker here too btw

I always cringe when I see native speakers confuse "it's" and "its", "their", "they're" and "there" and all the other subtleties of their language. But then again, I'm a pedantic German and maybe Americans are so anti-education already that they're cool with that.

I learned the basics from Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage. Ready... Start! Time up! Game over! Marble zone! All useful phrases when abroad.

I just spend too much time on the internet

I learnt it since I was 3. I was literally forced to do it instead of playing outside with my friends. And always out was hard...

Then I found the language Esperanto, that is supposed to be 10x easier to learn and use. I tried it and I can conform that to be true 😊

But I needed English for my (volunteer) work in a social movement, so I slowly learn it. But still had big problems to understand spoken English. Then I found English videos about topic that was very investing for me. I was trying hard to understand and finally I did.

Long story short, I still prefer to speak Esperanto, and much more people should, IMO.

I learned english because i'm deaf and french subtitles were scarse. Futhermore, i always wanted to read the latest scans :)

I'm Russian, I started learning (school doesn't count) chatting playing pool at Yahoo.games in the beginning of 2000s.
Then I stopped getting translated versions of games (when I got Morrowind, my head literally hurt due to the amount of "foreign" texts I had to read). So, Internet and games taught me in the beginning.
Then, I was asked to translate at business meetings in my (quite small) company, I did some contract translations as well.
Then I got into IT (like 2012 or so), where you use English in many situations. In 2019, I got into an international company, where I spoke English as a main language for three years. Along the way I moved to Denmark, so now, in addition to my kinda broken English, I have a really shitty Danish.

I'm Dutch, but due to the large amount of English content I never really had an issue with English. While I struggled with German and Fr*nch, I never had to pay attention or study for English lessons. I just did what felt natural and ignored the homework etc. Not that I'm a great English speaker or anything, my vocabulary is sometimes a bit limited which makes me have to search for the right words to use. But when watching or reading I can follow pretty much anything. I also sometimes feel like I'm more resilient to accents than native English speakers, maybe because we get exposed to British and American English and therefore kinda learn a more generalized representation of the language? Idk, maybe that's not a thing

German here.

Basically 80-90% of my media consumption is in English.
I search (mostly) in English, read documentation in English and document my own stuff in a mix of English and German (we call this Denglisch in Germany (compound of (D)eutsch+Englisch)

I'm a non-native English speaker, learned it by watching cartoons without subtitles when I was a wee little squirt

I'm from Spain and English is my third language (currently trying to learn Portuguese)

I've learn it with music (Judas Priest🤟), movies and series.

I'm German. Back in my day, we had 9 years of English classes in school and from what I've heard it's even more now. I was lucky to have a teacher who had spent a couple of years in the UK so he had much less of a German accent than most other teachers at our school and was also able to give us a lot of insight into how people actually speak, compared to the rather formal and stilted examples in our textbooks.

Between social media, movies, shows and a job in software engineering, I would say that on most days I read and listen to more English than German.

I am Nepali. I am probably the only Nepali using such obscure platform. And I say it proudly to others. They think I am ninja, and ignore me. 😝

I'm from germany. I watch a lot of YouTube. Also I work as software developer, so I need to read many english manuals. Wich don't means, that my english is great. But it could also be worse.

Not a native speaker. I learned mostly from American TV and reading Internet discussions. I have also absorbed a lot of more technical language through the native speakers at work. I made sure my coworkers know that I want them to correct my English, and working with a bunch of pedantic nerds, I sure get a lot of helpful corrections!

I'm non-native (native German, learned English in school). Nearly everything I read or write is English, though, and I've probably read more English books than most of the native speakers.

I had to learn English from a young age because it was the primary language used from kindergarten to high school, and even in college.

I improved my comprehension by reading articles and online discussion forums, as well as by watching movies, series, broadcasts, and YouTube videos.

I'm a non native speaker. First learned it while playing Minecraft, and since I've spend multiple hours a day writing and speaking English.

Hungarian here, learned in school and through games/videos

I'm Indian, specifically Sourh Indian.
We learn English in our schools and it is the main medium for school and college education.

I’m not a native speaker but in Sweden we do learn it from a very young age. We don’t dub anything, we watch shows and movies in English with Swedish subtitles. English is also mandatory from 3rd grade up until you finish college. Now, combine that with social media.

I don’t consider myself a native speaker but I am extremely proficient.

Dutch, we don't dub our movies (luckily) and prefer easy trading over valueing our own language. My biggest problem is finding an accent that fits me. Should I go for posh British, 'Murican, or Dutch "steenkolen Engels"?

Swede in France. My grades were quite bad in the language domain, but I read loads of books when I was younger, uni books were in english, foreign tv is subtitled in sweden, worked with foreigners so English is often a given, guess it all adds up.

Second, or rather third. Games and media taught me English.

Me. Non native

yup

Native French speaker. I like to learn new words both in French and English to extend my vocabulary.

I learned English mainly by playing video games. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. in English while still learning to read French.

English is my secondary language, but I've always been drawn to it. I live in Denmark and we don't dub TV shows, but subtitle them instead. Also I started reading novels in English at a young age, so that has surely helped.

English is my 4th language. I mostly use it online and in professional settings.

Italian here, I had luck with my English teachers and my parents and then the internet encouraged me to learn extra

English is my second-ish language, but perhaps I have an unfair advantage for this question since I spent nearly all of my childhood in the US and started learning English at age 5.

It wouldn't be outwardly noticeable, but the remaining non-native element for me would be the alphabet. I learned the English alphabet well before learning English itself, so the sounds of the individual letters are in my mind still part of my first language. In other words, whenever I recite the alphabet or spell words out loud letter-by-letter, it feels as though I am switching back to my first language.

Considering the high overlap between Lemmy users and internet savvy people, I would say that we are not a good representation.

German and Russian native speaker here, so English is my third language.

English is my third language, but I read a lot of English books as a kid and spent a lot of time in English-speaking circles. I don't feel disadvantaged compared to a native speaker as I'm fluent and have been speaking English for a long time.

Native Indonesian and Javanese. Almost all Indonesian speaks one of the local languages + Indonesian as the country has 700+ of unique languages.

English is technically my fourth language and I started learning it at age 12. However I really got good around age 16 when I started watching a lot of Hollywood movies with subtitles. Even now when I speak fluent English, with dare I say some "elegance", i prefer my movies with subtitles, because it's just a happy place in my mind.

I'm German. Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit oder so...

Mostly taught myself English, since our educational system sucks so much.

Second language here

I don't know how good my English is, but it's my third language. Bengali and Hindi are my first two. I speak a couple more languages closely related to these (e.g. Urdu, Punjabi, Assamese, Odia, Sanskrit etc. Also been trying to learn French). But I can't read or write in them.

I learnt English from two sources. My reading and writing abilities mostly come from school. I had some pretty good teachers, who encouraged reading newspapers to learn English. At least in my case, it really helped.

When it comes to speaking and understanding spoken English (with all its irregularities due to accents and whatnot), watching movies and cartoons helped. I used to download and watch all kinds of movies during high school, possibly some that I shouldn't have watched at that age. My love for movies is basically what made me somewhat competent in the spoken aspect of English. (It also got me into piracy, and ultimately into FOSS, so I guess I owe a lot to the great directors whose movies were hard to find legally lol.)

I'm danish...

I'm Argentinian. I began studying English early in my childhood and I love learning languages.

I am, my spelling and grammar are rusty as hell, so I'm here to practice. I've found that people are too nice to correct my mistakes (which I make a ton of), so I usually catch them myself re-reading my comments :s.

Italian here...