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Studying a language to native fluency | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 57 of 96 08 October 2009 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The basis varies from person-to-person. For starters English is pluricentric, and so choices in vocabulary or spelling can be "wrong" or "correct" depending on whom you're talking to. (e.g. some people may insist that using "while" in place of "whilst" is "proper"). This perception is reinforced by dictionaries which highlight tendencies or conventions followed by speakers of the varieties of English (usually British versus American)
It's probably more suitable to look at English "correctness" or "incorrectness" as being topics that can be placed on probability distributions. If the usage is perceived by the user to be prevalent in the relevant speech community then he or she is more likely to go along with the convention regardless of whether it's (in)correct. In addition, English-speakers do a fair bit of imitation of each other (or at least use others' speech patterns as points of reference). For example this would explain why the meaning of "begging the question" has over the time acquired a more literal meaning of "to raise the question" because of repeated use by native speakers who didn't realize that "begging the question" is an imperfect calque of the Latin term "petitio principii" which is understood to mean "assuming the initial point" instead). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rikyu-san Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5528 days ago 213 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, French | Message 58 of 96 08 October 2009 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally, I don't have fluency in anything else but Danish. My English is pretty good, but native fluency, no.
However, my step-daughter has Danish and English fluency. My wife moved to England with her former husband in February 1995 when my step-daughter/their daugther was nine months old. When she was ten-eleven months old she started to speak Danish, "yes, no, hey you" and her favourite word, "more". We have pictures of her with mashed banana in her whole face, and a sly smile. Those were the days. While in London she was exposed to English very quickly. She caught up and attained age-appropriate fluency at the age of five when my wife divorced and moved back to Denmark. She developed her Danish further and English was only used occasionally when she travelled to England for infrequent visitation. However, at some point her father married an English-born Indian woman and they had a child, a little boy. So during her visits she could then flex her English a little bit. Three years ago she moved to England to live with her father. She has attended an English school and now has native fluency. Her accent is pretty Londonesque and I can't tell the difference between her and her friends. Her grades in English is school is the highest possible for her age group (final year in secondary school). She speaks, reads and writes English perfectly and is sensitive to English customs, their unspoken rules and mores, with the only difference that she is immersed but not subverted. She can experience English society and culture from the inside but she also benefits from her frequent context shifts when she visits us in Denmark on a regular basis. Actually, her Danish is beginning to suffer. She throws in English phrases, translated verbatim from correct English into incorrect Danish, which is kind of cute, particular in the first few days upon arrival in Denmark. This doesn't answer the opening question of this thread - is it possible to attain native fluency through self-study. But I think it points out a way forward for myself in terms of my own study. I simply have to do as the Romans when in Rome - and as my step-daughter when in London. I have been reading maybe a hundred posts on language learning on this site and I have learned a great deal. I have not only been inspired by what I have read - I have reached the next and most important step: been empowered to actually go out and "do it!" Your success, your important learnings and your triumphs, are absolutely empowering. I just want to add one point - one of my own language learning strategies that I have used with great success and that maybe been what distinguishes those who have native fluency and those who don't: mirroring and imitation. In order to attain fluency we have to, literally, do as the Romans when in Rome. If they use a certain pattern in their non-verbal communication, we might consider mirroring that and use similar gestures ourselves. The English are "singing" in a certain way, going up and down in their register in a completely different way that we as Danes do. It feels awkward and embarrassing and totally inauthentic to do that, for me at last, but if I took the time to learn how to mirror those intonation patterns, the difference between me and an English would become significantly smaller. Many English people are using patterns of non-verbal behaviour that are used in certain contexts and reproducible, patterned. If I wanted to approach native fluency even more, I would learn those contextual non-verbal patterns. Like - how does an Englishman go into a shop and buy clothes - I probably know what he would say, but HOW would he do it at a non-verbal level? THAT I would study. When in Rome, do as the Romans. If people have attained native fluency, they must have done this. When a person from Japan is making a shin bow with all his or her spirit, showing deep respect for the other person, it makes a deep impression. When I do the same and put all my spirit into a shin bow I can feel it makes a deep impression in me as well - and I can feel/sense that the way I do it is different from what a Japanese person would do. To me it is important to be aware of these subtle differences. So during my Japanese studies in the coming years I will try to be very, very sensitive to these non-verbal analogues and all the patterns. They are visible expressions of the deep structure of Japanese culture. If I can mirror the surface structures (what is visible to the naked eye) but also catch the deep structures I will approach native fluency even at beginner's and intermediate stages. (I distinguish here between passing as a native at full native fluency and having native fluency within what one has learned - the latter not being the kind of fluency that is discussed in this thread). This is different and a far more serious way of learning a language than I used when I was young. When in Kyoto, do as the Japanese. I mention this for two reasons. One, I believe it is a useful strategy for me to have this contextual/non-verbal awareness and overcome any sense of reservation I might have to express myself exactly like a native would do, even after one Pimsleur lesson. The faster I get into the groove, the faster I will learn. My experience with English as a mature adult confirms this, I think. Second, I believe that is what my step-daugther has done, uncousciosly simply by doing as the Romans while in Rome, that is, London, West Acton. I would also assume that anyone in this forum who has achived native fluency or even near-native fluency have done the same. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 59 of 96 08 October 2009 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Remember that 50% of native English speakers are below average!
I agree with those that say that "native" is probably not a good term to describe proficiency in a language. I'm sure in every language, there are many native speakers whose command of the language you would not aspire to. If you want to "sound like" a native, that is one thing. If you want to be fluent or proficient, that may well be another. My aspiration in my target languages is to be able to read, write, listen, speak and otherwise participate in the language with natives and native material well enough that my degree of proficiency is not a distraction or impediment to communicating in that language. Then I would consider myself to be fluent, and I would be happy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 60 of 96 08 October 2009 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Right. I have a co-worker who is a native speaker of English, but if a foreign learner was practicing English with me and uttered the kind of sentences she says (e.g. "Them don't work too good."), I would have to immediately correct them. Edited by Levi on 09 October 2009 at 12:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6377 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin | Message 61 of 96 09 October 2009 at 4:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Here's an interview with a Japanese woman on Youtube who could probably pass for a native English speaker. She went to England and lived there 7 1/2 years but as far as I know had lived in Japan until then. Edited by sheetz on 09 October 2009 at 4:29am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6084 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 63 of 96 14 October 2009 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! Well my French and Russian are pretty fluent when speaking. My French is somewhere around B2-C1 and Russian probably C1 speaking, but my writing is really bad, so I will have to focus on that at some point. I would like to get both these languages up to native-like fluency. My Spanish is also pretty fluent. I started studying Spanish like a year ago, but until the summer only got up to knowing the present tense. However this summer I took an intensive Spanish course in Spain for 3 months and my Spanish knowledge exploded to a level that I am pretty much fluent in it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6084 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 64 of 96 14 October 2009 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you can only reach native fluency in a language when you're living in a country or are exposed to a certain language (and native speakers) for a large part of the day, for example in an international school. Only then will you be able to get the accent right and master some of the small intricacies of the language. So I think every language learner, if they want to be seriously good in that language, needs to go to a country where their target language is spoken and live there for an extended amount of time.
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