I am not going to make any assumptions on the basis of prejudice. I don't know the guy, neither do you. Maybe he is not a practising Muslim at all. There is a chance that he is higly secular, maybe he comes from a Kemalist family. If not, living in Sweden surely has made him more open and tolerant. If he is a second-generation immigrant, that is. Women abuse is not only restricted to Muslims.


But as I implied earlier, marrying your "own" is the best. If you want to avoid assimilation as far as possible.

The guy could be the most progressive person you'll ever meet, sure. But I don't think that the kind of people that emigrate from Turkey are the wealthy urban intelligentsia.

With the prevalence of honour killings and other "traditional" views on behaviour towards women in rural Turkish areas, I don't think it's worth the risk, even though he's a "Muslim brother".

I studied English for 10 years, from fourth grade to second middle school grade. I had A and B, that was my lowest and highest marks, when i'am relaxed i can speak and read it good without using google to check is it correct.
When it come to my cousin after that Turk, she had one Bosniak footballer working in club wich is owned by my uncle , i mean he is president off it. Bosniak footbaler was her fiance but it ended bad, cause she have tough mother.
Before that Turk she had another one. What to say, it is hard to settle for her.
And by the way i think she is to young for you.

Well done, just keep at it. When it comes to languages, the old adage of "use it or lose it" definitely applies. At the very least you have to actively read/write (preferably speak as well), just to avoid any knowledge decay.



Sounds like she gets around a bit (the "Live. Love. Laugh." lifestyle). Good on her!



Come on man, there's no need for that. I thought we were going to keep this discussion civilised. Stop being such an ageist.

It is nice to speak a foreign language or a few of them, but one who doesn't need to communicate with other foreigners does not need it.Finger pointing will do.

She is twenty years old that is twice less than you i think.
Ok she have older sister than her, but her sister is married.

Ok, what the... You came down on the man like a ton of bricks. Now I'm really just showing off my idioms. But, really there is no need for that.
Even though I agree with you and I'm even a little bit worried because we start teaching our children foreign languages before they have the time to acquire their first and native language fully.
Scientists found no long-lasting harm but there was some immediate.

We are not as good as the Scandinavians, that's true. But we have, on average, great English teachers and a long tradition in teaching the language.
But the fact that there is no subtitle in our media helps too, The research had been conducted and it was proven that this was a major contributing factor.
Finally, you must put the Internet into the equation, popular music and so on.
When I compare my generation to those of my parents , you can see and feel a difference and we had the same teachers.
Globalization has taken its toll. This time for the better. Just one generation previous to mine, behind the Iron curtain the world and the language map looked totally different.
Today not knowing English equals being handicapped because, if that's the case, you are cut off the Internet and then you don't exist.
Taken all into account, English wouldn't be what it is if it hadn't been for two things: the Fall of the Wall and the Internet.
The global world wouldn't have kicked in as hard.

Did you mean - the fact there are subtitles on our televisions, helps Croatians very much?

Did you mean to say that there's no dubbing (voiceovers) of foreign movies? I think that helps somewhat. Besides, listening to domestic (German or French) voice actors, instead of the actual Hollywood star is retarded.

For example, how does a German voice actor decide to portray the dialogue of say Arnold Schwarzenegger? Arnie's English with a thick German accent is a part of the total experience. Does the guy doing the voiceover for his character then speak German with an American accent?

Then again, maybe the subtitles aren't as useful as we think they are...have people learned any Spanish or Turkish from watching their TV shows on Croatian TV?

That's true for basic conversation or buying food in a deli when you are abroad, but that's mostly it. It's a different story in terms of trying to do any serious business in English.

The problem is that everyone in Croatia thinks they've mastered English, when that is usually wide of the mark.

Judging by Facebook, close to 50% of Croats (worse in BiH) haven't even mastered Croatian, let alone a foreign language.

I think you can navigate the Internet just fine without English, as long as you speak one of the other major European languages (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian), there's enough domestic and global content available in those languages that one doesn't need to even visit an English language website.

Unfortunately, I have to agree.

He couldn't be a native English speaker because English isn't his mother tongue. It's unclear why he pretends to be a native speaker?

No pretending whatsoever. I think I explained how the process of total immersion (especially if it takes place before a formative age) can wipe your default OS programming (we are only really wired for one main language in which we express our thoughts and emotions). The only people I could speak Croatian with were my parents, for maybe half an hour a day (and 5 mins every second day once I moved away from home) over a period of 20+ years. I graduated in the 99th percentile in English, in what was a reasonably elite private High School of 95%+ native English speakers.

English "wiped" the original "Serbo-Croatian" language base to the point that I had trouble speaking fluently (lengthy pauses while searching for the right word/expression). It had to be rebuilt (this time as Croatian) slowly and painstakingly by reading books, print media, writing and taking every opportunity to converse in Croatian.

I am somewhat satisfied, but writing anything remotely sophisticated is still a challenge that has me reaching for a thesaurus reasonably often (and proofreading the finished product several times).

All my thoughts and pretty much anything that is said as a reflex/reaction is still in English.

I think swe need to define the terms "native language" and "mother tongue" for this thread, because I think some of you are confusing the terms.

Native language can be defined as the language you speak best. It doesn't have to be the first language you learned or your mother tongue.

Mother tongue can be defined as the language of the ethnic group you belong to, and it may be your native language and it may not be depending on how well you know it or how much formal education you had in it.

Wikipedia kind of says the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_language

"Mother tongue" in the context of the Balkans is meaningless anyway (for us peeps born prior to the mid 80's), because the first language we all learnt has ceased to exist (for all intents and purposes).

It would be more accurate to say, the above-mentioned language fell apart into four new languages.

http://testyourvocab.com/result?user=5440451 - My result is 10,600... not bad.

I learned English as a kid, thanks to cartoons, and later my curiosity. I doubt you can learn much in schools. I learned German for eight years, and all I know are the basics. I began learning English in the high school, but then my English was already on an advanced level. Only at the University I began learning English for real, mostly legal terms. Other then that, I learned all by myself. Though, I still have troubles with academic literature, so I keep my dictionary with me when reading something. And clearly, I'm still far from speaking like a native.

Where is our forum member Snowflake? She doesn't come often to the forum.

Oh, this might come in handy, if I ever decide to finish my story.

In the circle there are 114 words. Most of them are descriptive and very useful in everyday communication.