The Land of Stories 2 : Book Tour 2013

great. let's speak Martian then.

I can't get past the hair. Someone should cut that boy's hair! But.. the shirt is nice.

Lottie2303 wrote:I like it. He looks cheek and appropiate for a book signing  

I thought you either meant "cheeky" or "chic".  

MoviesAreLife wrote:

Lottie2303 wrote:I like it. He looks cheek and appropiate for a book signing  

I thought you either meant "cheeky" or "chic".  

Hey, already got corrected once. I am not native speaker. Bow down to my English skills!!!   

Lottie2303 wrote:

MoviesAreLife wrote:

Lottie2303 wrote:I like it. He looks cheek and appropiate for a book signing  

I thought you either meant "cheeky" or "chic".  

Hey, already got corrected once. I am not native speaker. Bow down to my English skills!!!   

All joking aside, your written English skills are amazing. I'd never know you weren't a native speaker unless you told me. How many years did you study English? You write it better than ME, and I'd a native speaker/writer of the language!

I always hate my tiny grammar mistakes which seem to be in every single post. Drives me nuts. I studied for my BA and MSc in English so I should know it rather well. But since I was 11 actually.

Every non native English speaker needs to learn it properly. Nowadays I wouldn't get a proper job without sufficient English skills.

Lottie2303 wrote:I always hate my tiny grammar mistakes which seem to be in every single post. Drives me nuts. I studied for my BA and MSc in English so I should know it rather well. But since I was 11 actually.

Every non native English speaker needs to learn it properly. Nowadays I wouldn't get a proper job without sufficient English skills.

What mistakes? Looks good to me!  

@Lottie, I admire how good you're in english. I also been studying the language for years, but I think I'm not as good as you and other non-native english speakers from this forum are . Sometimes I'm impressed how you're able to not only write posts as long as a page (sometimes), but with an insightful meaning behind.

@MovieAreLife, sometimes I feel we don't appreciate our native languages until someone else tell us how wonderful it is, or his grammar is better than ours. I think for us, is only a tool we use everyday, but actually we have no idea how to use it properly, for instance it would be difficult for me to teach spanish.

brisallie wrote:@Lottie, I admire how good you're in english. I also been studying the language for years, but I think I'm not as good as you and other non-native english speakers from this forum are . Sometimes I'm impressed how you're able to not only write posts as long as a page (sometimes), but with an insightful meaning behind.

@MovieAreLife, sometimes I feel we don't appreciate our native languages until someone else tell us how wonderful it is, or his grammar is better than ours. I think for us, is only a tool we use everyday, but actually we have no idea how to use it properly, for instance it would be difficult for me to teach spanish.

Very true!

^ i didn't know either. so chris is just like me.  

I read this on tumblr and it made me laugh "I just pictured Mr. Hellboy at night, tucked in bed, reading The Land of Stories"


Languages are like a horror for me. I had a german language in school since I was 9 and I swear I am not able to say one sentence in that language nowadays.... I have an absolutely terrible memory. Quite often I really want to say here something, add my opinion so I start a new post but I got stuck, don't know how to express what I wanted to say in english, so I delete it. It gives me an headache. Also I have an hard time to remember the words, I know I've searched for some words in the dictionary more than a hundred times but I stilll don't remember them. I've listened like million videos in english and still don't understandd speaking english. And a gramatic is another big problem.

I know that is very important to know it nowadays but I am just a lost case :-)

arina wrote:I read this on tumblr and it made me laugh "I just pictured Mr. Hellboy at night, tucked in bed, reading The Land of Stories"


Languages are like a horror for me. I had a german language in school since I was 9 and I swear I am not able to say one sentence in that language nowadays.... I have an absolutely terrible memory. Quite often I really want to say here something, add my opinion so I start a new post but I got stuck, don't know how to express what I wanted to say in english, so I delete it. It gives me an headache. Also I have an hard time to remember the words, I know I've searched for some words in the dictionary more than a hundred times but I stilll don't remember them. I've listened like million videos in english and still don't understandd speaking english. And a gramatic is another big problem.

I know that is very important to know it nowadays but I am just a lost case :-)

I think your written English is perfect.  

Sometimes you and others word things better where English isn't the first language better than me. 

I have no trouble understanding anyone on those forum.

I have a hard time understanding other languages, so I am a lost cause as well, and would probably get lost if I went to another country where English wasn't the preferred language.  

arina wrote:I read this on tumblr and it made me laugh "I just pictured Mr. Hellboy at night, tucked in bed, reading The Land of Stories"


Languages are like a horror for me. I had a german language in school since I was 9 and I swear I am not able to say one sentence in that language nowadays.... I have an absolutely terrible memory. Quite often I really want to say here something, add my opinion so I start a new post but I got stuck, don't know how to express what I wanted to say in english, so I delete it. It gives me an headache. Also I have an hard time to remember the words, I know I've searched for some words in the dictionary more than a hundred times but I stilll don't remember them. I've listened like million videos in english and still don't understandd speaking english. And a gramatic is another big problem.

I know that is very important to know it nowadays but I am just a lost case :-)

I have absolutely the same problem with English. I've studied German too for 4 years, it was so hard I can barely form 2 or 3 very simple sentences without making mistakes.

brisallie wrote:@Lottie, I admire how good you're in english. I also been studying the language for years, but I think I'm not as good as you and other non-native english speakers from this forum are . Sometimes I'm impressed how you're able to not only write posts as long as a page (sometimes), but with an insightful meaning behind.

Ahh, thank you so much  

I cannot learn and speak French. Drives me nuts. Such a beautiful language, but my brain cannot grasp it. I am also happy I never had to learn German. We really have a complicated language. I am always impressed when foreigners speak it perfectly.

I loved the story about Doctor Who. Looks like he actually isn't that much of a fan. More likely just the normal viewer, but it doesn't equal his Dowtoan Abbey obsession. Fair enough. That fan at least has a great story to remember.

^I'm the same with French. I just cannot get that language. I know and recognize a lot of words, but I can't read any sentence. With a dictionary and a lot of time to puzzle I can sort of comprehend a song lyric, but that's about it. I'm glad my husband is quite fluent in French, so I don't have to bother when we're on holiday.
German is easy for me, because I live only 5km from the German border and grew up with watching German tv. Our local language (limburgs) also has a lot of German in it, so it's a very familiar language for southern Dutch people. But I can imagine how hard German (and Dutch) must be for foreigners, because the grammatical rules are difficult and the sound of the language is hard to pronounce if you're not used to it.

English is easier for me because I love reading in english, it's a hobby. The difficulty for me is that I often instinctively come up with how to word or phrase something, but it's never 100% right and then I get lost when I try to write it down because of the spelling (like I had to look up the word 'instinctively' right now in a dictionary) or not getting a phrase or expression completely right (e.g. "It's up for grabs" would come out something like "It's up for scraps" which is nonsense).
So the online dictionary is my best friend. Check and doublecheck.

I do think that for us who do not have English as our native language it actually kinda helps us to phrase sentences and write down replies in a somewhat more elegant/more profound manner (although grammatically more awkward sometimes), because we literally have to think about the words harder when we write our thoughts down. This causes a pause and sort of filter between just blurting out our thoughts and typing them in a post.
Our thinking is checked because of our slower writing (and every word and sentence has to mean something because the writing process takes up so much time), while the native english speakers can typ down their thoughts without thinking about them twice, if you know what I mean. Like Chris when he stumbles over his words in an interview because his thinking goes faster than the words he's saying, lol.



BTW: I'm halfway through the book and I love it so much! It's so thrilling to read.

I'm the same with French. I just cannot get that language. I know and recognize a lot of words, but I can't read any sentence

Well, being French, I recognize myself that it isn't an easy language to learn. The grammatical rules can be very strict but at the same time present a lot of exceptions, particularly when it comes to conjugations.

I have the huge huge luck to have a very good memory, both photographic and auditory, which allowed me to learn English, German and Latin pretty easily. To be honest, I find English very easy to learn, particularly since we have so much media available to read and hear it, like music, TV, movies and the Internet. Well at least for me, I know I've learnt a lot reading and writing on forums.
I can read Dutch and globally understand the meanings, mostly because some words are very close to German, and same with Spanish and Italian, which resemble both French and Latin, but I can't speak it or understand a conversation when people speak with their accents or use slang, for instance.

And I agree with you Marie that the fact that we have to phrase our sentences in english while it's not our native language do "forces" us to write in a more thought out manner. Anyway, it's great that we have a common language that allows us all to share and expand our horizons, I find talking with people all over the world extremely stimulating and enjoyable.

coxfire wrote:Anyway, it's great that we have a common language that allows us all to share and expand our horizons, I find talking with people all over the world extremely stimulating and enjoyable.

Me too, it's amazing we can talk daily and practically immediately with people on the other side of the globe. It's a small world after all.

i have no trouble at all understanding ALL of you guys, so your english is a lot better than you think. just focus on expressing yourself. don't worry too much about making mistakes. i make tons of mistakes (though I am also not a native speaker), yet I continue to whine.  

I also make lots of mistakes, particularly when I'm ranting, and I have and English major.

^Ranting is a lot more difficult in another language (although the swear words are fun, lol), especially in writing. I don't know: it kinda takes the flow of the rant away when you have to think about how to write it down first.  


Thank the internet for emoticons like these:    

I must say, most of my mistakes are make because I write rather quickly or I am agitated and not in the mood to actually check my grammar. Spellcheck is my best friend, because otherwise my posts would be not readable. I always feel totally ineloquent and that I write with a rather small set of vocabulary. But overall, I am pretty confident talking and writing in English. I miss using it on a daily basis. German is sometimes too stiff and complicated. One sentence in English usually equals three sentences in German  .

Marie, I once studied in the Netherlands for three years and I shamefully have to admit I don't speak your language. Too many Germans were around me and my studies were conducted in English. I feel so embarrassed nowadays because it is so rude to live in a foreign country and I didn't even try to learn it. Also it would look so much sweeter on my CV to add yet another language. 21 me was unfortunately too lazy  . However, I always say Dutch sounds like drunk German. Sorry, I had to mention that  .

^Hahaha, that's an accurate description of the Dutch language. To me German sounds like someone who is trying to articulate too much, as if speaking to a deaf person, lol.

Pity you didn't get to learn the language when you were here, but Dutch really is quite difficult, and the Dutch don't expect foreigners to speak it. That's why the Dutch usually try speaking in the foreigner's language themselves (or at least in English), even though that of course doesn't help the willing foreigners to learn Dutch in return, as they never get to practice it.



Back to Chris at the book signings:



x


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I really love that little 'butt-touching-because-I-feel-a-bit-awkward-in-public' signature walk of his.