Emigration to Europe

Not a personal experience but a friend of mine who had bad leaving cert french moved over there and was pretty much fluent within six months.

If you can afford to move over for a bit with enough saved to keep you going until you get a job I say go for it.

Germany or one of the Baltic countries...

I havent bothered looking at this thread, I just LOLLED at the OPs name LOL

I always loved the thought of moving to Italy or the south of France. Shame I'm crap at languages though.

mmmmmmm.. daniiiiish

I've lived on the continent an to be quite honest, the cultural differences are usually vastly overstated and, in reality, you'll find most of Europe pretty similar to home, once you crack the language barrier.

The main thing you need to be sure of is that you are prepared to and have an ability to pick up a language. This can be quite a bit of work and you will need to actually open the books, preferably and crack the grammar when you are there. It's not all that difficult when you are actually totally immersed in a language to do that as the grammar and vocabulary suddenly makes sense as you're hearing it and using it every day.

Simply picking it up on the fly will give you enough to get by, but you will not get the details right without formal classes and study.

If you're looking at some of the Northern European countries where English is widely spoken as a second language e.g. Scandinavia & Finland and the Netherlands, then you might struggle somewhat to pick up languages as you simply won't get the opportunity to practice. My experience of the Dutch is they will kind of turn around and go "I speak English! FFS!" when you're trying to practice your Dutch.

The situation in France is that basically they speak about as much English as we speak French, so you'll learn fast.
Spain's the same! Don't expect *any* English outside of the coastal resorts.
Germany, likewise, people do speak English but you certainly will have to learn German to get by on a normal basis.

Depending on your ability, and it does vary a lot from person to person, it could take you anything from 12 months to 5 years to become proficient in a language. It also very much depends on how different the target language is from English. For example, you're unlikely to pick up say Finnish or Hungarian very quickly as they're radically different from most European languages. Most English speakers will pick up Swedish/Danish/Norwegian, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese quite quickly. The Germanic languages share a common root with English so, once you crack the vocabulary the grammar and structure tends to feel fairly familiar. French, Spanish and the romance languages are also very familiar as English has a huge chunk of Latin (particularly French-origin) vocabulary and most of us have been exposed to French at school.
When you look at Slavic languages, you won't really be very familiar and you'll have to do a lot of learning of basics.

Closer European languages also have the advantage of having similar phonemes (basic sounds) to English. Or, at least they're similar enough to survive using proximate ones from English, although your accent will sound very foreign. After a certain age, your brain stops recognising anything other than the phonemes in your native language(s). So, many people can find it quite difficult to crack the sound system in other languages after childhood. However, it can be done, particularly if you're totally immersed in a language all the time. Again, some people lose this ability more than other as they age. If you've a musical ear, or you're a good mimic / pick up accents easily, you're quite likely not to have a huge problem with this.

One thing that can be very worth doing is to do an English-teaching qualification, particularly CELTA (at UCC or International House in Dublin) before you travel. It only takes a few weeks, but it can be a useful source of income while you're building up your new language. However, don't expect to be able to make a huge income out of it.

To teach in many countries, you will need at least this AND an undergraduate degree.

It can be a good money-spinner while you're setting yourself up and acclimatising though.

Just be ware that there are loads of scam-like English teaching qualifications out there which aren't recognised. So, seek advice from ACELS (Advisory Council for English Language Schools) if you're looking at something that isn't from Cambridge (CELTA/DELTA etc) http://www.acels.ie/

Also, bare in mind that you can have vast variations between regions in EU countries. E.g. if you take our nearest neighbour, compare say London, Newcastle and Glasgow, they're very different places. The same kinds of differences apply in all EU countries and certain cities can also have very difficult accents and dialects, so ALWAYS seek local advice / advise from a national of that country living in Ireland before you go

The main thing is, if you do go, throw yourself into the local culture and just absorb and be part of it and you'll get on really well!

The absolute worst thing you can do in the long term is spend your time hanging out with the local Irish/Brits and Americans all the time. Some people seem to exclusively hang out with expats and, they never really manage to connect with their new surrounding sand language.