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Claiming to Speak a Language - Pet Peeve | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dagojr Groupie United States Joined 5590 days ago 56 posts - 131 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 164 03 December 2009 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I'll warn you in advance, this is yet another rant thread. I think I just need to vent.
Recently, there's a certain kind of language speaker/learner that I find a little irritating. They are those who are are the beginning/early intermediate level who claim to speak a language. I don't mean learners who are simply at the beginning/intermediate level. After all, I'm monolingual and at that level in a second language. But it just gets under my skin when someone only knows a few phrases and says, "Yeah, I can speak (insert language)." I'm definitely not saying that knowing a little bit of a foreign language is a bad thing. In fact, I think it's a great thing. But in my opinion, you shouldn't claim that you speak the language if you only know a few words and phrases. It feels like it cheapens the efforts of learners who can legitimately speak more than one language at a high level. Or maybe it just bothers me because I feel like it undermines all of the time and effort I am putting in to learning a second language. :p Am I alone in this feeling? Does this bother anyone else? Am I being a snob? Do I just need to get over it? The last two questions are rhetorical and were only included so that I could at least appear to be balanced, by the way. Please don't answer them. 35 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 164 03 December 2009 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||
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You are definitely not alone. I can sympathize with you when speaking about this feeling. I don't like it when people claim that they know people who speak German or claim to speak German themselves because it usually is not the case when they speak with not only a horrible accent, but can barely express themselves past basic formalities. It gets me all excited about meeting another person who can speak German, but in reality it's not.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 164 03 December 2009 at 4:41am | IP Logged | ||
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You're not alone, the same thing bothers me. :) I still debate with myself whether I should say I "speak Japanese", in
spite of my accomplishments in that language. There was a line in the movie The Russia House where that English book publisher is talking to that Russian woman. At one point, he uses a word in conversation she doesn't know, and when she asks him what it means, he replies somewhat derisively, "I thought you said you spoke English". It amused me for some reason. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachgenie Decaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5710 days ago 128 posts - 165 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, Flemish, Persian, Swiss-German Studies: English, Belarusian | Message 4 of 164 03 December 2009 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I know exactly what you mean. Claiming to speak a language fluently is also fairly annoying when the person is nowhere even close. I have some American colleagues like this who claim to speak fluent German. So I just speak to them in German sometimes. It's funny to see them pretend to understand when they aren't really understanding much at all.
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| Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5802 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1 | Message 5 of 164 03 December 2009 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||
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they're only cheating themselves
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| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7222 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 6 of 164 03 December 2009 at 5:17am | IP Logged | ||
100% agree. After a while you just think, let them believe their delusion. I have to focus on what I have to get done to be fluent. It does disappoint when you want to practice speaking, when the other individual cannot understand much less speak. Now my story many years ago. An old man was browsing the foreign language section in a bookstore. I asked him "What language are you learning?". His reply was Spanish and he informed me he had been studying in school for about four weeks out of six. The classes were really good, he practices and speaks with people, visits Arizona each year and understands it well, blah blah blah... My question to him "¿Cómo está Ud.?" He asked for a repeat and I did. Then he asked what it meant in English. I told him and he responded back to me in English. "I'm fine thanks." There went my chance of a presumed opportunity of practice. At the time I did not even take my Spanish study seriously. Only this year I committed. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6121 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 7 of 164 03 December 2009 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I take all claims of language fluency with a grain of salt, because in my experience most people vastly exaggerate their abilities. I notice this mostly with foreigners who claim to speak English. For example, a lot of the Brazilians I communicate with claim to speak fluent English, but when I look at their writing or hear them speak I'm embarrassed for them. What worse, is that these same persons go around trying to "help" others with English, giving all kinds of wrong information/advice, or even *gasp* TEACHING English, as if they knew what they were talking about.
This is why I am very humble with regards to my own language abilities, and always emphasize that I am LEARNING, because I never want to appear as ridiculous as they do to me. Edited by tritone on 03 December 2009 at 6:27am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 164 03 December 2009 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
Nope, you're not alone. I've come across a few types who openly stated that they could speak some foreign language but it became very apparent that their production was full of mistakes to the point where native speakers would be hard pressed to take them seriously. These insecure fools (yes, I don't mince words with people who puff themselves up) were exaggerating their capabilities by stretching the meaning of "speaking a language" to something more literal which includes being able to utter only a few pleasantries. For one reason or another, "to speak a language" is often interpreted to mean something like a fluent and fairly error-free command of a language, and this interpretation appears just as frequently in the other languages that I've encountered. On a related note, misreporting of linguistic abilities can also become apparent when comparing speech with writing. The speech can sound grammatically correct, but in print these people can struggle with homophones and what sounds correct comes out as egregious errors in print. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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