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At what level do you say you speak (2) ? | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 49 of 118 30 March 2013 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I am in the B1 level of German and am really enjoying reading with the Kindle and inbuilt dictionary. I feel I can read intensively, which suits my personality, but with the ease/pleasure of extensive reading. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4368 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 50 of 118 30 March 2013 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Of course he was talking about words you don't *understand*. (As I have already written.) Everything else wouldn't make any sense at all.
I don't know.
As I said, I never counted words so I don't know how many of these remaining 2% occur more than once in a given text. It's hard to tell, isn't it? But 2% is much more than it seems at the first sight... This text of 100 words contains 20 fantasy words, so 20% are unknown words *you don't understand* (not words like 'internationale' you already understand) and 80% are known: The winzbab was filled with the rich sojola of pampeki, and when the light summer koink enberreyeled amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy fenterast of the lakshmoozy, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-eppsterring farraj. From the corner of the tettenholm of Persian psysyssi-gondalippi on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, caroonable kekkerskicks, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gollya of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured staubus of a laburnum, whose emorfying stoeppkes seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so shtratten as theirs; and (...) You really could read such a text with comprehension and enjoyment? On the other hand, if two words were unknown, it would be no problem (but nevertheless there would be many words you wouldn't understand. 98% is really not that much! According to Arguelles, 98% still mean approximately 24 unknown words per page. See http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/about.html). I think Arguelles' "98% rule" for extensive reading makes sense!! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 51 of 118 30 March 2013 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
If you read a lot of informal native materials (VDM, Topito, etc.), there's no reason you can't get, say, 40% of the jokes in a standup comedy routine by the time you reach B2. I even get some of Patrick Huard's jokes these days, despite having made no particular study of informal dialects in Quebec.
Once you reach a solid intermediate level, at least in a Romance language, that sentence is most likely to come through as:
All the other words in that sentence are basic social and survival stuff that you'll run into constantly. And the missing word can not only be inferred from context, but after you hear it 10 or 20 times in similar phrases, you'll probably pick it up automatically. [/QUOTE] Sorry, but I have to disagree. I was at B2 level in Spanish before living abroad and I remember watching "Amores Perros" and getting only like 60% of the words. It is hard-core, informal Mexican Spanish with a lot of slang and swear words. Then after returning from abroad from my short abroad trip (9 months), I realized that there was a veil that lifted. Now, I understood like 85% of that movie. Also, all native Spanish speakers will "hear" all the words spoken by other natives even if they don't understand them all, though they will usually understand by context. They speak REALLY fast and it is very difficult to understand if you haven't been totally immersed in the language. Now, regarding the comedy club, it also depends on 1. The speed at which the comedian talks and 2. More importantly, the cultural references and innuendoes that the comedian makes. Thus, if you understand the words that he/she is saying, you might not get the joke because it deals with their culture and history. You have to know the difficult informal language AND know the culture of the country. For most people, 40% comprehension is not acceptable. :) Edited by casamata on 30 March 2013 at 7:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 52 of 118 30 March 2013 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I'm sorry, I wasn't being clear. I meant to say that it IS very possible for pretty much anybody, but that almost nobody except for the handful of exceptions in the world can reach such an advanced level in like one month abroad. Most people take years to reach that mastery in languages that are close to their native tongue and much longer for languages that are very different from their first language (s). It's confusing and annoying to me when people say that "all languages are equally difficult." Well, if somebody plays, violin, how hard will it be to learn a similar instrument like the viola? Much easier than learning the cello or, even more so, something like the drums or something outside the string family. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4601 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 53 of 118 30 March 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I think the "all languages are equal" idea comes from, more about getting started in a language... Generally when ever I hear it, its about helping someone decide to start or which language to study, taking into account the different aspects of each language: pronunciation, grammar, tonal?, related?, writing system etc... with each language having a give and take on these categories, its easy to call them equal. However, when it comes to mastery, the shortcuts one is able to take in a related language would definitely be an asset. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 54 of 118 30 March 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
It's not hard to figure out if you have the text digitally (you can use tools like 'uniq'). The reason why the 2% covers so many words is because they are very infrequent. Almost 50% of all word types in a text occur only once (see Zipf's law for more accurate numbers, I pulled that 50% out of my head).
Surprisingly, I could see myself reading a text like this in a novel. I would get the gist, and that's enough. I thought 80% would be harder. But I would agree that a text with 20% unknown words is usually not comprehensible. But I think you misunderstood me. That's my interpretation of Arguelles' numbers: >80%: words you can define when you come across them in isolation up to 16%: words you can somehow guess in the context of the text max. 2%: words you don't have any clue about when you see them in the text Most of your fantasy words wouldn't fall into the 2nd category, but the last. So you have only 80% comprehension, which is not enough. But in real languages, you will find a lot of words you couldn't define when seen in isolation, but in a certain context they make sense. Not only because of the context, but also because it is similar to a word in another language you know (maybe even a cognate), but you don't recognize it as a cognate in isolation. The closer a language is to one you know, the less words you need to really know and the more words you can guess. In a completely unrelated language, you might need to know 94% of the words and you can guess 4% from context. In a related language (eg. Dutch - German), knowing 85% might be enough to guess 13% of the words because you get other clues than just context alone. eg. you give me the Dutch word 'zijn' in isolation - how should I know it means 'sein'/'to be' and not something completely different? It looks different enough. But if I see it in a few sentences, I will probably recognize it as the cognate to 'sein'. Edited by daegga on 30 March 2013 at 8:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4368 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 55 of 118 30 March 2013 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I don't get the gist then. But maybe for a beginner it is enjoyable that he understands even easy very frequent words and is able to follow the logic of a sentence in the language that he's learning. That's imaginable.
I understood you. I only referred to the numbers in his video about extensive reading. I'm still not quite sure what he meant in the thread quoted by serpent, but of course, if you are able to guess the meaning because many words and expressions are similar to those in your native language or another language you know, it is a different story. But these go all into the 98%, the remaining 2% are words that are absolutely unintelligible to you. And I don't think that Arguelles only thought of related languages. Imagine a very different language that has no cognates at all with your language. The comparison German-Dutch is good, I never learnt it but I can understand it quite well. Maybe I understand even more than 80 percent of a normal text, but I cannot really read it without recourse to a dictionary.
That's exactly what Arguelles meant in his video.
No no, those would be words you understand. Please don't think of languages that are related to yours. Maybe Japanese or Korean or another exotic language, you will NOT be able to figure out the meaning, because there are no cognates at all.
Yes, but that wasn't what I was talking about.
That's an assertion ;)
Yes, but we were talking about words in a text you don't understand, not isolated words. My example with the 100 words was a text as well. Edited by Sterogyl on 30 March 2013 at 8:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 56 of 118 30 March 2013 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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[/QUOTE] I think the "all languages are equal" idea comes from, more about getting started in a language... Generally when ever I hear it, its about helping someone decide to start or which language to study, taking into account the different aspects of each language: pronunciation, grammar, tonal?, related?, writing system etc... with each language having a give and take on these categories, its easy to call them equal. However, when it comes to mastery, the shortcuts one is able to take in a related language would definitely be an asset.[/QUOTE] I'm talking about reaching equivalent levels in two languages. For an English native, the asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, etc) are the ones that take 3.5 times more hours than Romance languages or Germanic tongues. Well, at least that's what happens in the FSI that trains many highly motivated students. Could something be the same difficulty if it takes 3.5 more time for equivalent proficiency? I don't think so--time is really the measure of difficulty. If an Engineering student studies twice as much as a sociology or psychology student, for example, is it harder? Unless the sociology or psychology students are so smart that they don't need to study, engineering is probably much harder. (I'm also not an engineer) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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