What city is the best for learning English?
Hi! I'm Russian and currently I'm on the verge of going abroad to study English properly; but still I don't know where exactly to go. Have you got any ideas what place is the best?
Now I'm choosing between Oxford and Cambridge in England, Boston and San-Francisco in US but I'm not sure yet. In general, I would like this place to be calm enough, with green parks and famous universities...
So, I'll be glad to know your opinion!!!
Do you have some experience? Your reasons for Montreal?
I recommend San Francisco. Why? It probably has the nicest weather out of them... It would be a nice change from Russian weather.
San Francisco - yeah, the weather... Do you know this city well? Are there some parks, sportsgrounds..? Are there a lot of students?
Travel questions-just like last year's English travel guide for Native Korean-except he wanted a gay-friendly city and maybe had some other request. I suggest antimooners open a travel agency. No, that's a little joke, but I wonder which city he chose.
Oxford? (supposedly the home of RP)
I suppose it really depends on what dialect you want to learn.
For GAE, something like St Louis, or Indianapolis might do well.
Options are too many for you to choose from. It is really upto you. Everyone from my family members who had visited USA many times prefered to stay in SF for its richness. Food, weather, scenery!
Perfect place to learn English, no doubt!
Any major city in the United States (outside of the Northeast or Deep South) would be good. For example, San Diego, Dallas, Washington DC, Salt Lake City, Denver...
SF is a beautiful city, but it may be better to go to a city with fewer international people if one wants to be immersed in a language.
Joy,
The prior Guest is right about "international" people. (And try to sign in as something beside "Guest"--it gets confusing.)
I've thought about this before, and regardless of the language you're learning. The capital and largest cities have the most immigrants (i.e., non-native speakers) or various "ethnic" accents, and some small towns have more tourists than natives. So here are my suggestions:
1. Pick one of the major cities of Canada, or of the U.S. Midwest or West, but stay in one of the middle-class suburbs: educated, native speakers. (Example: the North Shore suburbs of Chicago--you still get to enjoy the great city, and there many beautiful areas (include Northwestern University) in that region.
2. Pick a smaller city, but one that is less "international," e.g., Milwaukee, Spokane, Syracuse--places that speak varieties of "General American English," and usually have a university and other cultural amenities.
>>1. Pick one of the major cities of Canada, or of the U.S. Midwest or West, but stay in one of the middle-class suburbs: educated, native speakers. (Example: the North Shore suburbs of Chicago--you still get to enjoy the great city, and there many beautiful areas (include Northwestern University) in that region.
2. Pick a smaller city, but one that is less "international," e.g., Milwaukee, Spokane, Syracuse--places that speak varieties of "General American English," and usually have a university and other cultural amenities.<<
Actually, such areas do not necessarily speak General American per se, even though they do speak North American English dialects which can be generally classified as "Northern". For starters, the whole area between southern Minnesota and upstate New York is going to have the NCVS, which is definitely a non-GA feature. Also, much of the Upper Midwest, including the Chicago and Milwaukee areas, has other distinct non-GA features including non-English substratum features such as final devoicing and interdental hardening (think "da Bearss").
I would not dissuade one from studying English in such areas at all, but I just want to point out that one should not expect the people there to necessarily speak GA proper. GA proper probably really is not spoken by that many people these days, as its range has been contracting due to the spread of sound changes from the west (cot-caught merger), north (Canadian Raising and NCVS), and south (pin-pen merger). If one really is bent on learning purely GA, which I see as rather pointless, one is probably best off living in some place like St. Louis, even though I see no real other reason why one would specifically want to study there.
St. Louis is probably the best choice, then. Check for current crime statistics in any city first and try to find out which areas to avoid.
Another note is that if one is to be studying there, which I would probably assume in this context, I would suggest choosing someplace with a really good university to go to, such as Madison, Wisconsin or Ann Arbor, Michigan than necessarily just any specifically large city such as Chicago or Milwaukee, even though those generally have their own universities as well.