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Achieving Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| altito425 Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5961 days ago 65 posts - 70 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 32 17 December 2008 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was wondering, for those members of the forum who have achieved native fluency in a foreign language - by studying it formally and preferibly having started it later in life (late teens, early twenties) - how long did it take you to achieve this? And how did you do it? This question is specifically for people who have 'mastered' a European language, but people who have mastered languages from other branches can give their input too.
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| Feculent Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6162 days ago 136 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 2 of 32 18 December 2008 at 2:40am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't done it yet =P But I have a Czech friend who did it with English, she learnt it at school for ages and then one day she realised she could understand large chunks of English tv. When this happened she got kinda obsessed with understanding English, practiced her fluency a bit with some Canadian relatives and now.. Well she recently started boarding at my English school and when I met her I thought she was from somewhere in America!! I think her accent's Canadian I don't really know American accent's very well though, it's probably a bit different but I was certain that English was her first language even though an American or Canadian would struggle to put a finger on where she comes from. And the embarassing bit, she gets the same grades as I do in English for English people!
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 3 of 32 18 December 2008 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have achieved native fluency in French according to my standards (which means that I speak as fluently as a Frenchman but retain a slight accent that makes people wonder if I might be Belgian or Swiss). I had seven years of French in school (starting at the age of 10), took a one-semester French course at university and then lived in France for four years, continuously trying to improve my French.
That would be a total of 11 years of (dedicated) study. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| altito425 Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5961 days ago 65 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 32 18 December 2008 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Impressive stories. I wonder, though, if there's anyone on the forum who has mastered a language that they started studying at around 17 (or even later) and managed to obtain native fluency. Edited by altito425 on 18 December 2008 at 8:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maya_star17 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5916 days ago 269 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 32 18 December 2008 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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This guy isn't on this forum, but anyway... his (pseudo) name is "khatzumoto" ... he started learning Japanese when he was 20 years old (I think), and learned it to native level fluency in ~3 years, I believe.
He has a website: www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| altito425 Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5961 days ago 65 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 32 18 December 2008 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Wow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo baby! Senior Member United States Joined 5978 days ago 202 posts - 208 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 32 18 December 2008 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Is there any audio or video of him speaking the language? I would like to see for myself how fluent he is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maya_star17 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5916 days ago 269 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 32 18 December 2008 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
At any rate, he currently lives and works in Japan... something to do with computers. If I remember correctly, his resume and interview were 100% in Japanese, so I'm guessing he's pretty darn fluent. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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