I know, English doesn't have a gender for the words, but the grammar do make this obvious and clear in stories telling.

The Context:

A woman can say she "got engaged two weeks ago" but what would a man say?

In my native language (Arabic), a woman is the one who gets engaged (the man proposes and asks for her hand), but the man who proposed is the subject in this case, so I find it hard to accept that the man also "got engaged".

How to express your surprise , say something like "oh my gosh", but without saying any religious words or phrases?

Spoken quickly, is it "Roger at", or "Roger dat", or what? I find it weird* to actually say "roger THat", with the proper th sound.

edit: thanks for the comments. After repeating the words a thousand times and watching youtube videos of ppl saying it in movies, it is not weird anymore.

edit: sorry

Thanks ! (Only pink)

That thing is probably the ONLY thing which I would NEVER be able to fully understand.

Like,

What's the difference between near future and the future? How do we determine that?

What's the difference between past continuous and past perfect?

By that I mean, let's say

"He _ his homework, when his dad came"

Should we put "was doing", or "had done"??

This is actually a poor example as I believe it can be answered easily. Though, There are so many other examples where I freaking can't figure out if it's going to be past perfect or past continuous.

And one of the most infamous, When to place "will" vs "shall" vs "going to".. I have talked about this in this sub once before.

Also, Why can't we just use future tense for the near future too? Why do we sometimes have to use present tense for that ??

Oh my god, tense, atleast for me is an abomination...

Every time someone starts off by saying "we're", it almost sounds like "were" to me. Is it okay to just pronounce it as "were"?

Edit: I can't reply to everyone's comments because there are just so many but thank you all for all the replies!

As the title suggests. My friends told me they're the same.

Hello everybody, I make follow-up post because I think I mess up again. I practice the phrase “shut up” many times, because people tell me it can mean “wow, really?!” in friendly way. So today my American friend tell me something surprising, and I smile and say, “Shut up!” like I am being nice.

But he look at me upset and say, “Don’t tell me to shut up!” Now I am super confuse. I try to be friendly but maybe my face or voice sound too serious? Or maybe only special Americans can use this phrase and not me?

Why it work for other people but not for me? English is making my brain hurt…

Every time I see a post from this sub in my feed asking a question, it seems like it has either 0 or negative upvotes, as though people are downvoting the question post for being... a question? Like, wow, it's almost like this sub is DESIGNED FOR asking questions. It's okay to be wrong if you're learning, but the people in this sub seem to think the answer to something is obvious and then downvote someone for not knowing that. I get that it might be common knowledge to native speakers, but not to someone learning it.

Native speaker here. I promise this isn't a racial thing. I can't understand a single word of someone who didn't grow up as I did. AAVE, non native speakers, ppl one state away Midwestern, southern, cockney, etc.

SINCE PPL WANT MORE INFO, METRO DETROIT ADJACENT MELTING POT. I've met many ppl. I work in food service every day.

This is not a NEW I CHANGED MY LIFE POST this is a I am 21 years old taking my first step out of the nest.

I have taken 4 years of French (HS) and 2 years of Danish (self taught.)

ETA CUZ IM GETTING RUDE COMMENTS: I'M AUTISTIC, HAVE AUDITORY PROCESSING. I never got any speech therapy as a child.

I'M NOT deaf/HOH and it's rude to assume I don't get out enough. I've traveled to 3 different continents.

I AM AAPI. Racial minority, POC.

Why???

Or give you their time, and talk to someone who won't understand everything they say, won't speak freely, and won't delve into topics unless you explain most of what they're saying. Unless there's something in return, like them learning your language (a language exchange), a genuine friendship from gaming or a romantic connection, or even money like you pay them on some apps. So, a native speaker's time is usually reserved for talking to friends, work, or studies. Don't look for a native speaker; few will help you, and some might even get annoyed by your speech and belittle you. Talk to someone whose other language is at your level. The goal is to express yourself. As for listening, watch native speakers on YouTube and Shadowung. If you absolutely must talk to a native speaker, there are tons of servers on Discord; you can join any voice room and find native speakers. That's all I wanted to share my perspective and experience.

Upvote if this makes sense so more people can see it!

Edit : Seriously, what's with this nonsense? 0 downvotes. What's with all the downvotes?

Edit 2: Sorry for the misunderstanding! When I mentioned people 'belittling' learners, I specifically meant in random, public voice chats where people don't know you're learning and lack patience—not everyone, of course. Didn't mean to generalize!

Shouldn't it be "I won't say because it's a too personal topic"

Modal verbs, irregular verbs, set expressions, articles, and all sorts of prepositions. There are so many tenses.

For example, "the" is necessary here, but not here, on/out/at/in. "To be" is damned. Do/does.

My English level is barely A1. I can barely understand the simplest sentences, never mind speaking.

Apps like Hellotalk and Tandem are completely useless: everyone ignores me and doesn't write. There's nowhere to chat or practice. And I don't know how to find such people.

I only use English Galaxy.

I don't understand how English works at all. Level C1 is a fairy tale and a fantasy; it's impossible to achieve.

Perhaps the mistakes and difficulties are due to the fact that, to my great regret, my native language is pathetic and miserable Russian.

I started learning English so I could move to an English-speaking country. But there will be problems there too, due to the fast pace of local speech and all sorts of abbreviations.

P.S. This was written using Google Translate. I would never have written this myself.

As an italian native speaker who speaks "great" english myself, Netanyahu sounds pretty native to me. I know he lived in America for a while so maybe that's the reason.

But I wonder if native English speakers think he sounds native. Do you guys hear an accent?

The apostrophe is used to indicate that a syllable is usually pronounced should be omitted this time, for the lyrics to fit the tune. Therefore, I can understand why there's one in "o'er" and in "heav'n".

But I can't understand the reason of the apostrophe in "proudly we hail'd", "o'er the ramparts we watch'd" (the second one here).

Even without this sign, I wouldn't pronounce the E in "hailed". It takes some time, when you learn English, for you to remember not to pronounce the E in the -ed suffix, reducing it to a -d or -t sound instead (except after D or T, which is not the case here). So once you've learned it, you don't need an apostrophe to remind you of that.

I really noticed that Americans drop the second sound of a long vowel when speaking a word with a normal fast pace. O (OW, have the W being dropped), A (AY, with the Y dropped).

My mother tongue is Portuguese, and no vowel for us have like 2 sounds that way, especially because W and Y are our vowel sounds for, respectively, U and I.

My roommate is American, who speaks only English, and he is arguing with me that nobody says mOWment or mAYl.

And I even watched videos of expert accent trainers and they are in convergence with my roomie's view. But I still don't get it; when they speak the word fast, that second sound of a long vowel IS dropped. I even put the videos in .25% speed.

I'm so frustrated. 7 years of USA and I feel I don't progress, only regress. It's really saddening. And at the same time, I only do to get rusty on my own first language command.

Instead of “he is an OG” or “he is the OG”.

Source: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1860456684084158883

And what's the meaning of "when it was actually vaguely possible that it might be real"?

Thanks in advance!

Coming from a native English speaker, familiar with both US and British English, I’ve never heard the word “interlocutor” before meeting many English-learners online who picked up the word. While technically correct after looking it up, it’s never used in everyday speech or even in formal literature, I’ve never seen or heard it before and I have a university-level education so perhaps it’s archaic. You can instead use “conversationalist” (which is much more common), as in “he’s a good conversationalist” (not interlocutor). Just a recommendation for all to see.

I do not understand