Hiho!

[Vandroiy]

Pleased to meet you all.

I'm one of those few who are not native English speakers, yet dare meddle in the realms of High Fantasy along with friends who also had to learn the language a tad late.

I actually just registered in hope of being allowed to read the "Showcase" forum, but it seems I should write five posts for that. I'll see what I can do about that.

There is a story I would like told. But I fear my writing skills are sub-par, since I only lately decided to try realizing something in written form. I hope to find this forum the right place to do something about that, and get along with all of you!

 

[myrddin173]

Well to be good at anything, you have to suck at it first. So what language is your native tounge? Anyways welcome to the boards.

 

[Hëradïn]

welcome! I'm going to hazard a guess and say Suomi (that's Finnish to us non-Finlanders). anyway, you already have a really good grasp of the language, how long have you been studying English? If I was to take a guess I would say 2 or 3 years.

 

[Vandroiy]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

My mother tongue is German. How long I've been studying English... well, it depends on what you call "studying" -- it was never a full-time thing, but it's been long since I started learning it. That was back in school, and I was really bad at first. At one point, I simply decided to do anything in English that would be natural to do in English -- it started with avoiding translated movies, then all the software on my computer, literature for studying, then I switched to English midway in Orson Scott Card's Ender series and finally, this year I started reading Wheel of Time.

The old vocabulary used in a medieval setting is the hardest for me, apart from computer games and music I just never came in contact with it before; I found Wheel of Time incomparably more difficult than anything Science-Fiction I came across. It is still flooding me with new vocabulary. Guess what, the setting I want to write in is mostly medieval.

I'm quite comfortable using English, but writing a story in it is just another step up. It took ages to write my first few paragraphs, but I still scrapped most of it again. There's just so much detail in language that makes an outsider clumsy even after years, and a German-English dictionary gives little more than rough meanings.

Anyways, English is the right choice for High Fantasy, and I'll write in it even if I have to drag in three people to help editing.