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emile · #1 (**permalink**) Dec 7th, 2006, 07:55 pm

Hi all,

I heard once that different mother tongue speakers learn English at much different rates due to the similarity/difference between L1 and L2. Apparently, German speakers pick up the language 5 times faster than Chinese/Vietnamese speakers.

Does anyone have any info on this or personal experience?

livinginkorea · #2 (**permalink**) Dec 8th, 2006, 08:24 am

Well I would imagine that Germans or French would learn English a lot faster than Korean, Chinese and Japanese simply because we use the same alphabet.

To be honest I know quite a few Canadians that are not totally native speakers in English but can "pass" as an English teacher in Korea and although they might make a couple of mistakes here and there, they are the next best thing to a native speaker and I believe that a lot of people in Europe can speak English far better than the majority of Asians can.