> I dont know how rare it is. There is such a thing as a talent for
> languages and a love of writing, which translate into good writing.
> English is my third language, though I have spoken it most of my life,
> so I don't count. I have run into other non-native English writers who
> write very well. For example Hakki, who used to write to lbo, wrote
> beautifully and idomatically.
Most of my experience with non-native English speakers is with Japanese people. The ones I have met who speak and write near-native English were mostly either individuals who lived in English-speaking countries at the beginning of their lives, because their parents were working there, or ones who attended schools in Japan where English was the language of instruction (especially ones established by British or U.S. missionaries). The same is true in the opposite directions -- you will find, I think, most native English speakers who can speak near-native Japanese grew up in Japan, especially as children of missionaries. (The late ambassador Reischauer was an example.)
In other words, if you learn a second language as a very young child, when most people learn their native languages, you can learn it as a native language, but the older one gets, as a rule, the harder it is to learn a language with native facility (although obviously reading and writing are easier to learn than speaking and listening -- a point not often recognized by people who don't work much with foreign languages). The degree of relatedness of the languages in question is also important: English and Japanese (and I suppose English and Arabic) are far enough apart that most excellent speakers/writers of the foreign language probably learned it as small kids, when it was not "foreign" to them. Among the European languages, on the other hand, the similarities are great enough to make the job of learning them a lot easier -- but it still takes most people a huge amount of effort if they start as adults, and most people don't put in enough effort to be more than semi-fluent.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. -- Attr. to Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile