Welcome People

Welcome, People-who-want-to-improve-the-English-you-have-already-learned-in-the-hopes-of-learning-to-love-it-and-therefore-actually-wanting-to-learn-even-more!

How did you get here? Well, you're obviously one of the People-who-want-to-improve-the-English-you-have-already-learned-in-the-hopes-of-learning-to-love-it-and-therefore-actually-wanting-to-learn-even-more. You saw my intriguing, yet smart and cleverly funny flyer, read the first blog post, and actually wanted to learn more - or you were looking for porn and made a shitload of typos.

Whichever way, here's "more":

You are here, because you find the notion of "learning to love English in order to love to learn more English" intriguing. Or confusing. Because what does that even mean?

Too often, learning English only happens in classrooms, whether it's school, university or some language course. Because it's never just "English", it's "English Lessons". Lessons lead to pressure, pressure leads to fear, fear leads to anger, and anger... leads to your English-learning-experience suffering. You learn it because you have to - not because you want to.
You have to, to pass whatever tests there are, after all, and nobody really likes tests, do we? Fine, okay. Maybe there are people that do like tests, but we don't like those people, do we?

As such, it is not uncommon for people - like you - to run away screaming as soon as someone mentions something like "Shakespeare" outside of those lessons. "Shakespeare" is pretty much synonymous with "terribly confusing English lessons (and they're not even talking fracking English but some weird medieval bullshit)", and you just got out of those gorram lessons, so why the Fuck are we even talking about it?!
And it's a completely natural reaction. Whether it's school, university, independent language lessons or, even worse, actual work, we all do what we have to do. But once that`s done, we want to do what we want to do. And nobody really wants to do more of the things we have to do than we actually have to, do we? Fine, okay. Maybe there are people that like doing "work" in their free-time, but we don't like those people, do we? No, we hate them, because they will all end up having better jobs and more money than we ever will, so "Fuck 'em!"

The thing is, though... when it comes to English - and yes, even Shakespeare - you're missing out on a lot of... well, awesome shit!

But more on that later. First, why should you want-to-improve-the-English-you-have-already-learned-in-the-hopes-of-learning-to-love-it-and-therefore-actually-wanting-to-learn-even-more? Being able to say "Me", "You", "Beer" and "Fuck", and then form sentences from these words should be enough, right? And maybe it is, but it's not really impressive, is it?

English is also the primary secondary language of the world. Which means that pretty much anywhere people don't already speak English as their first language, they do speak it well enough. In some countries they speak it perfectly, in others they speak at least enough of it, to give you directions, flirt with your girlfriend, or distract you while their buddy steals your stuff. So, it's both useful when globetrotting, and when waking up on a freight ship somewhere in the open ocean after a mind-blowing bender - again.

And yes, okay, apparently it's also the "official" language of stock brokerage, IT and computer stuff, the internet, space flight and... well, truth be told, most international business, science, and even politics is conducted in English at some point.

It's all good, as long as you don't wear your hair like that...

Also, if you're ever stuck in a plane to some country you never even heard of, and everybody including the pilot gets sick because of some twisted terrorist plot, and you're the only person who can save everyone, and you take out seven terrorists in Hand-to-Hand Combat because your Kung-Fu is stronger than their Kung-Fu, and you sit down in the cockpit and hope to God that the operator can talk you through landing the plane, and you don't speak English? You're shit out of luck. Because World Wide Language of Aviation? English.

So yes, it will be useful. Even for work, if said work will cross language borders. But that`s work. And it's called "work", because "shit" was already taken, so, despite what your teachers and parents might say, it's not really the reason why I want you to want-to-improve-the-English-you-have-already-learned-in-the-hopes-of-learning-to-love-it-and-therefore-actually-wanting-to-learn-even-more.

I want you to get good enough, so that you can enjoy all that awesome shit you're missing out on, the awesome shit I was hinting at before. What kind of shit might that be, you ask? Well, it's shit like this:

From The Boys #7, Dynamite 2007

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or (especially) this:

And if you ever thought to yourself, "Wow, that sounds like a really shitty translation - Go, Google Translate! Am I paying for this shit?" while watching one of the many awfully dubbed (that means "translated") movies, or while reading a translated book, comic or otherwise, playing a dubbed video game, you know exactly what I'm getting at. What I would respond if you said: "Isn't that what German Translations are for?"
Things get Lost in Translation. Important things. Like flair. Charisma. Atmosphere. Fun. Cool. And it's getting worse. There was a time when German translations were fun and clever and creative. That time is not now. And I don't even want to talk about all the things that are deemed "too small" - which usually means "too small of a profit margin" - to even be translated.

What I'm trying to say here: Improving your English to the point of being able to fully enjoy original English Entertainment, will open up a whole new world of fun. Movies, TV-series, books, comics, video-games, all of it will become so much more when experienced in the original.

And it is this very fact, the fact that there is so much amazing English-speaking shit you are already missing out on because you have to resort to translations, that sets English, as something to be learned, apart from other classes, like, say... Math. Improving your English will bring you more, and more often than not, better and smarter fun in your life. Immediately. It's not just something for your possible career, not just something that has no use outside of work or school or university or Marine Force Recon Sniper Training (that last one is where you'll need Math). It's your first step into a bigger world... of Awesomeness.

So, now that we know that we should all improve our English skills so we can enjoy watching movies and TV-shows, reading books and comics, and playing video games even more, and thus waste even more of our lives doing it, where does "learning better English to further your career" come in?

Well... it's a perk!

Yes. That's it. It just happens.

Awesome, isn't it?