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Claiming to Speak a Language - Pet Peeve | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 6096 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes  Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 49 of 164 04 December 2009 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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There are people who appear to have a very liberal view of what constitutes speaking a language, let alone speaking a language fluently. The whole issue of levels within a language seems to be debated amongst learners endlessly without any real concrete description upon which everyone can agree. Whilst this does give rise to frustrations to those in the language community who take a more modest stance on their abilities, I feel there is room for all types of people in the world. After all no two people are identical and we all offer our own unique talents.
I can see from all of the examples in this thread, and from my own experience, those who tend to overplay their knowledge in a particular language seem to come undone at some stage. This can be a particularly unpleasant experience for that person and has the potential to demotivate the individual. The person who overestimates their own language ability dupes no one in the end. Personally I find it a great shame when anyone falls to the ground with a bump and I take no pleasure in seeing it happen. Indeed I have no doubts that at times some of these people do have a lot to bring to the table, but once deflated they may be less willing to open up again. Being content in ourselves that we know what we know is a great and positive step forward. Comparisons to other language learners can sometimes give people a boost to say "I can do that too", but the best and most real comparison is the one you make with yourself and your own abilities. My advice to anyone is to be true to yourself, strive to be the best you can be and to be happy in what you know. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6619 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 50 of 164 04 December 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I would say that its quite easy for beginners to make the mistake of believing they are "fluent" or close to it.
For example, a lot of beginners start off a language by taking a 101 class or spending a few months going through a Rosetta Stone course. Hopefully at this point, the beginner will have a grasp of performing basic tasks in the language like ordering a meal or giving directions to the taxi driver. But the person might not necessarily realize the full complexity of the language like grammatical features not mentioned in the beginners book or certain words being pronounced far differently from their spelling. And usually, natives will cut those people some slack because everyone at some point has over-estimated their own abilities or under-estimated the complexity of their target language. On the other hand, there are some show-offs that should be exposed. Without mentioning names, if someone has a Ph.D in linguistics and publicly claims to speak a ridiculously large number of languages or tries to get a job or book deal by exaggerating his/her own language abilities, the person becomes a big target for anyone wishing to expose fake polygots. It would be practically impossible for anyone to expose every false polygot. Just look at the number of grown men who go to bars pretending to be war heroes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5469 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 51 of 164 05 December 2009 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I agree with Iversen that a lot of technical language is easier then slang when it comes to foreign languages if you know what they mean in your native language. Edited by genini1 on 05 December 2009 at 7:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6187 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 52 of 164 06 December 2009 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I remember in high school a teacher briefly got on the topic of language and began asking the class who was bilingual and trilingual. Most people who claimed to be so were taking a beginner's class in their second or third language. Looking back I realize that it was an awful display.
These days I don't hear people claiming to speak a language too often, but probably because I word my question very cleverly: "How well do you speak it?" I've never had anyone claim fluency. Another thing very related to this is people who over-estimate their friends' language abilities. I know someone who used to brag that I speak Japanese and every so often a fellow learner would outdo me within a couple sentences just because they studied it much more than I have. At work I heard about someone who speaks Korean "fluently." I look forward to meeting her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 164 07 December 2009 at 12:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Iversen means here that reading about nuclear physics is qua language level not difficult, if you - of course - have a knowledge background in that field. For example I have read so many astronomy magazines that it's for me very natural to read them in my foreign languages as well - and much easier than reading simple novels. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 07 December 2009 at 12:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dagojr Groupie United States Joined 5590 days ago 56 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 54 of 164 07 December 2009 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Haha, wow this is so very true. I tried this out to see if it would actually work. A have a BS in math, and minor in physics, and I'm pursuing an MS in electrical engineering. So I have a solid math foundation. I went to wikipedia and looked up some basic calculus articles in Italian, which by the way is a language I know almost nothing about. I'm not claiming that I understood every single phrase in the article, but I definitely got a pretty good understanding of what was written, which I think is pretty cool. This is because so many of the words used in Italian for math were identical to those used in English. Very confident in my abilities after reading a few wikipedia articles, I then found an online Italian newspaper and attempted to read it. Not surprisingly, I couldn't read hardly anything! And I'm certain I would be hopelessly lost if someone tried to speak to me in Italian unless they were particularly skilled at charades. Of course, some people don't know math, regardless of what language it's in. But if you have knowledge in the right subject, then I guess reading in a foreign language can often be surprisingly easy. Edited by dagojr on 07 December 2009 at 8:28am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5470 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 55 of 164 07 December 2009 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Yes this is very annoying.
I followed a language course last summer and the teacher went round the group asking people what languages they spoke. One man claimed to speak English, French, Dutch, Spanish and German. I was impressed at first, but when I tried speaking to him in Dutch, and then French, we couldn't go beyond the most basic subjects! I might as well claim that I speak German and Japanese! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| koffiegast Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5461 days ago 29 posts - 33 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 56 of 164 14 December 2009 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I have studied a bit of Japanese but was never able to find a conversation partner. Logically I have spend most of my time reading and learning kanji. I'm by nature very lazy and suck at languages (even my mothertongue). Logically, I'm quite shy to say I understand a bit of Japanese, because I don't want people to think I speak it fluent (or even close to). I can read some sentences and I'm sometimes surprised I somehow know how to pronounce a word (composed of kanji), but I have some trouble understanding some sentences and as for listening to Japanese I confuse some sounds and/or I'm not able to pickup every word perfectly.
Naturally, I wouldn't claim any fluency or even able to speak the language. Unfortunately my parents are always (to their friends) like 'yeah he speaks Japanese'. Needless to say it buggered me, a lot. And I feel ashamed somehow that I'm still not fluent, but hey on the other hand it is a totally different language and it feels like (to me) that in order to learn Japanese well you will need to relearn your own mother tongue (why does this sentence make sense, how does it translate this to something comprehensible), learn Japanese and their customs. It almost feels like learning three different languages. I once followed a Japanese course and some girl claimed to speak Dutch, English, Spanish, French and German. I could believe she could speak the first three (native, learned, secondary native), but I doubted the last two. Because, although these languages are taught in the Netherlands at middle/high school (middelbare school), I don't know anyone who can actually speak one of those languages fluently after only those few years in school. After the course and a couple months after I asked how well she could speak Japanese, she claimed fluency, but I only expect she could have a decent basic conversation (because Japanese is a very extensive language and I highly doubt she knew all the different words or even write anything down). Mmh long post, sorry 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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