Most of the Bloodshedverse members come from English-speaking countries, which is kinda obvious considering the fact that BtVS and AtS are American series. But we all now that it's such a great show that it's popular all over the world and for many fans English is not a native language.

And despite this fact, some of them attempt to write fanfiction.

Since I'm one of them and I've also got the impression that there are more people like me on the Bloodshedverse I decided to start a new thread, where we could share our experiences and talk about all the difficulties. 

Okay, truth be told, in another thread Maddy, who appears to be from Poland like me, said about the nasty for Poles lack of many commas. It made me just curious how many of us are not native English speakers and how many of us write anything in English. And how are you doing  that? (Personally, I wouldn't get anywhere without my beta, FetchingMadScientist - yay for her and her unbelievable patience for me!)

So, where are you from and what's the most difficult thing in English for you?

Kate-

Personally, I love commas, and so do some very respected authors.  Don't worry, I'll tell you when you've gone overboard. :)

Im Swedish.

Basicly general chatting in chats has ruind my spelling and grammar its very annoying i used to be very good and top of my year. *annoyed* anyways the more i make friends online the worse it gets *haha* I tend to type words in shorter typical chat format and not bothering to do it properly.

And i once picked up a lot of buffy lingo and general BTVS lingo and thats never good, and it does make the brits around be stare. I tend to do the comma thing aswell since im worse at punctuations and the sort. Right now im stuck inbetween american english and brit english and general tvseries wierdness, which leaves me where? I pretty much have to do everything in english these days since i moved to England last may, talk about shock to the system.

I think what the most difficult thing atm is to assimilate my accent and venture away from american english into brittish english, cose people always pick up on how "american" i sound, makes me a bit skittish. Alsow makes me struggle to think of things to say lol always feeling their listening to my "exotic" accent.

Anyways.. hi :D

Jo

I am from Canada.  Technically an english country but I'm from the province of Quebec.  I live in a town where english is almost never heard.  We have an english school but only people who were born from english people can attend it.  And they are all bilingual.  I have a family that is typical french canadian with some international additions.  I have an uncle from Trinidad and an aunt from Bolivia.  Because of my heritage, I have a weird english, stuck between British and american, but it's pretty usual in Canada.   10 years ago , I fell in love with the language.  And I fell hard.  So me, the pure french canadian, has a degree in English literature.  I write and read almost exclusively in english.  Both my fanfictions and my original stories are in english.  The most problematic thing for me is the utter lack of any kind of resources in english in my town.  I have to order everything from the internet.  Because of the fact that my brain works mostly in english, I'm slowly losing my command of my native language.  I used to have a really good written french, but slowly, it's getting harder to write in that language and believe me, French is a hard language to write.  As for english, my main issue is with faux-amis.  Half the time, I'm not sure if I'm using the french or english spelling.  I mix them and I don,t always realizes it.

Germany

Yes, the BSV is actaully run by someone not from an English-speaking country; odd, isn't it?

The language itself comes pretty natural to me by now (at least it feels like it), since I realized pretty early on that it lends itself to literature much better than my own, and actually stopped reading books in German; even with work-related texts I prefer the English version nowadays. The rythm, the flow is just prettier somehow - yes, I'm slightly obsessed. I still have problems with punctuation, but then, I have problems with that in my own language as well - so that's just me.

My main "problem" is that I learned most of my vocabulary online, and often have a hard time differentiating between British and American words. Some obvious ones like fall/autumn, appartment/flat or lift/elevator are easy, but when we start talking phrases I tend to get lost pretty fast. And lets not even talk about actually saying the words, Always_jbj says I'm jumping accents like crazy, guess the TV is not the best teacher after all. :lol:

Also, I don't have to write down things in my own language a lot, so my brain started to make this connection of writing = Engish; with the result that I start thinking in English as soon as I want to write something down. So I end up having to translate it in my head, and since I was never any good at translating, I change the words, but not always the phrasing - makes for some hilarious sentences. Same thing happens when I talk about something that I usually think about in English (like BtVS). Whenever I talk to my sis (who is the only German-speaking person interested in it - that I know) she has lots of fun correcting all the literal translations I end up making.

Dia, I have the same problem.  Some subjects just refused to be discussed in french, no matter how hard I try.  Makes my family crazy.  Especially if you consider the fact that in Quebec, there are laws and movements to protect the integrity of french language. *hides*

This thread is really great, It makes me realizes that issues I have with english, like my problem with british/american, are pretty standard.

Well, I'm a 'language-patriot' and I like to think that Polish is the most beautiful and difficult language in the world. But I understand you - I can't even think about a dialogue from BtVS verse in other language than English. It just sounds so silly and unnatural!

The other thing is a problem with Polish translation - we don't have words for 'to vamp' or 'sire' and our equivalents for 'slayer' and 'stake' sound stupid. 

'Cathing' the melody of a foreign language is really hard for me as well. Personally, I try to talk with British accent, 'cos I think it's much prettier than American (don't sue me!) but it's difficult when TV and radio attack us with American films and songs. So every time I hear some Brit talking I listen to him intently.

Also English tenses are horrible. We don't have so many of them and we survive. Really, one past, one present and one future tense are enough.

God, if you think that english tenses are bad, believe me it's nothing.   In french there are around a dozen tenses.  What's more, there are almost more irregular verbs in french then there are regular.  There's so much exceptions and rules that there is almost nothing standard and our plural forms are just insane.  My first english grammar class in college was incredibly easy.  Ok, except for the forms that are non existant in french. 

Don't get me wrong, French is an incredibly beautiful language ( if you don't use slang that is), there are a million different ways to say something, but English is more lyrical in my mind.  But that may be because it's not my native language.

*picks up Yzba and takes her along to French class in her backpack* years of studying and I still get stumped, hehe. I wish the schools I went to taught Japanese. My first elementary school taught Hawaiian, though, but now all I remember are Aloha, Mele kalikimaka (Merry Xmas), lolo (crazy), okole (butt), mahalo (thank you), and ohana (family) - hehe.

Oh, I've been learning French for six years now and I still know nothing :) And I can't pronounce your 'r' properly - it should vibrate or something but mine is a very hard sound. 

Well, tenses are a problem for me but we've got something French and English don't - grammatical cases. Every single noun has to be declined properly (like in Latin). We've got this culinary programme on TV with a French cook and even though he's been living in Poland for years he still can't decline. I think there are cases also in German and it's even worse, 'cos they have to decline articles or something...

I remember that at beginning of my English lessons I had a great problem with those - another thing we don't have in our language. I still forget about them from time to time but I'm also so used to them that now an English noun without one looks strange :)

Reading fanfiction had some bad influence on my English. It became much more colloquial :) It was a serious problem, 'cos this May I took my marticulation exam (ending the secondary school), and among other subjects I had to qualify in verbal English test. I was worried I would get carried away and start talking carelessly and colloquially. Fortunately, everything was fine. Now I'm really glad I became interested in fanfiction, 'cos it made my English more fluent as well :)

EAS, any time you need help, just email me;)  Canada is supposed to be a fully bilingual country.....in Quebec, english classes are mandantory for everyone but most people know only "yes, no, toaster, apartment"  and a few others like that.  Mostly because our french has borrowed a lot of english terms.  Can you imagine the looks i'm getting when I say i have a degree in english lit?  Sometimes, I feel like an alien

Most of my problem at this point is being able to tell what's being said when I hear it, at this point... It all runs together for me, as you can imagine. And the people in the little videos don't speak slowly and succinctly, as obviously most people don't in everyday conversations. So yeah *pout* But as for reading French, I can usually get the gist at this point even if I can't speak fluently, and I used to go in French chatrooms to do a bit of chatting as practice ^.^

Well, if you ever want to practice reading and writing in french, I'm always willing to help;)

Thank you *hugs*

I'm English, live in Australia, but I usually speak to people in Italian or French. And I usually end up mixing my Italian with my French, and then people just look at me funny. 

And I get the accent thing. I've only recently moved here, recently being about a year, but you watch shows like Neighbours and things, and eventually you have an Ocker accent. Or a French/Italian one.

*peeks in with shame* 

I haven't been here for a while..:(  Sorry, I've had to deal with serious real life issues.

Okay - as for this topic... I'm from Hungary.

My weaknesses regarding the English language? There are plenty of...LOL Grammar (most tenses), all those expressions like "angry with", "annoyed at" etc (I might use the wrong prepositions here too...:S), vocabulary - the several words for the same thing, yet with slight differences... damn, that's what I hate the most! As a non-native speaker I can hardly (or not at all) tell the slight differences between the meanings. 

Mentioning the tenses -in my language, we have only one tense for each time, so altogether 3 tenses (Past, Present, Future), while English has 12 (each time has Perfect, Simple and Continous), so I have much difficulty in finding out the real tense. I bloody hate the Past one as I simply can't use the Perfect and Simple correctly. For me - in my way of thinking - they are the same. That's the worst thing - we think different in Hungarian, and it's not easy to change for another grammar-structure. For example (okay I know this one :)) ) in my language we would say "on the picture" instead of "in". I had had to memorize it to use the preposition right. Also we have expressions that would sound awkward / weird in "mirror-translation". So I must watch out for those too.

As for speaking, I don't know what kind of English I had been thaught to. I could never distinguish the American and British English. Perhaps cos most of my teachers had studied 'mixed-English" as well. So I think I speak kinda this mixed one too. LOL

Should someone happen to have too much patience and free time, and courage LOL, I'm a willing student! :D

I'm from Norway, speak Norwegian (duh), English and some French.

When writing, I have problems with grammar, and expressions. I'm sure there are other things as well, but I can't think of any at the moment.

I think I have an American English accent, but I'm trying to learn to speak British English.