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Ask HN: How to learn vernacular American English?

3 points by phipz ↗ HN
Hi all,

i'm from Germany and i'm 24 years old. I learned English early in school and as i started to code at the age of 12 i speak nerd-English well. As long as we talk about programming and business related topics(or stuff?) we can do smalltalk up to deep talk.

Next year we want to take the big step to move from Germany to San Francisco. I can do this easier now than tomorrow and i would regret to not have tried it.

What bothers me a bit is the fact that i don't know how to speak English as a native would. I can write and talk fluently but it will be hard to understand deeper conversations, culturual differences, sarcasm, irony, idioms/phrases, get emotions right, etc.

Also i would like to learn miscellaneous vocabulary... how do you call the border of a pizza? Pizzaborder or Pizzaedge? It sounds not important but i want to know these things.

Last year we've been there for 1 months. The feedback to our product and also to our way how communicated it was great. But i know how it is to have friends from other countries. You understand them but they could do better.

Is there any chance to improve this upfront without living there? How would you recommend to prepare for the culture and better native understanding?

Thanks in advance.

Best Philipp

6 comments

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Living there will be exponentially faster than any other method (Immersion in languages always is, right?) Same goes for if I wanted to learn German.

In the meantime you could watch a lot of American TV, which might help, but I'm not sure how much.

You are correct that this comes up--I knew a German person that said the "Air bridge" in conversation. My friend and I took a couple minutes to realize he was referencing what we call the air-lift (as in the Berlin Air-lift) then we were on the same page. It really isn't a big deal. I still know what you mean by Pizzaedge (crust)

rmxt
I would also add listening to music, browsing Reddit (default subs, not technical ones), watching YouTube (viral videos and similar things, again, not technical videos) to the list of things that one can do before taking the leap and moving to an English speaking country.
taurath
Watch Seinfeld. While some of the things are dated almost every single meme from that show has been fully integrated into american culture, so much so that its become cliche. But as a person who used to be diagnosed with Aspergers, I've had to learn all the same things you're learning now. Seinfeld is one of the best at teaching the subtleties of the culture.

See: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Seinfeld (warning: tvtropes link, do not click if you need to be productive)

phipz
Thanks for the advice
proveanegative
Don't forget The Simpsons as well. It's likely the most quoted television show in the English-speaking world.
lixardz
"border of a pizza" === "crust"; if you can watch american news broadcasts, those help, they are geared towards the average native speaker. there are websites you can go to and find a speaking partner, you help someone who knows english and wants to learn german and they help you, via something like skype.

other than complete immersion it's difficult to learn and even within america things are said differently in the North east/new england than they are in the "South"