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A dead honest language CV... | ||
Tags: Curriculum Vitae (CV) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4236 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 57 of 104 04 November 2013 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Iwwersetzerin, let me just say that your achievements are awesome!
I'm sure you heard this question before, but how could such a little country manages to keep its language if there wasn't people like you, who knows it and "bothers to learn the correct spelling"? Ok, I should explain my interest first. Before primary school I was a quiet kid with huge interest of reading. Once I've got small-sized atlas with political maps of the world. Since I'm living in a biggest country of the world, it's kinda hard for me to imagine even Great Britain on its small isles... so it was really interesting. I was reading books about countries of the world, traveling from one to another across the pages. As an outcome, when I was six or seven, one could hear me saying "Я знаю столицы всех стран мира!" or, to put it in English, I knew all capitals of all world's countries. Not anymore though, I've forgotten most of them, but still I do know that there are plenty of states on our little Earth and that all of their citizens speaks different languages. So... I see now that it's really hard to find a man who really cares about spelling. Not a single day pass without me seeing stupid, really stupid mistakes in Russian and people, whose doesn't give a shit about it. I'm not even a proper Grammar Nazi for I myself often make mistakes, but my speech and writing is tricky enough to make a little of excuse. There are a lot of adapted English words like креатив (creative), пиар (PR) and so on. Our language is really gets messy because of that, average Russian doesn't understand what our politicians are saying, they're taking about innovations (инновации - новшества), investments (инвестиции - вложения)... But we're not really integrated into English-speaking society yet. It'll only get worse later. On the contrary, Luxembourg is being placed in a different conditions from the very beginning. People could've expose themselves to French and German, leaving Luxembourgish to be just another dying language. What do you think will happen with the language in future? P.S. Sorry for a lot of mistakes, but I'm Russian Grammar Nazi only, I need to study English way more to get close enough to English Grammar Nazi title :) _____________ Speaking about CV... Well, since I'm too honest when it comes to talks about me, I wouldn't wrote that I know English. I'm intermediate in reading and somewhere below in listening, speaking and writing. My knowledge of German is so small that it would be complete shame to say that I know something in it. I'm not even a half of A1 yet, I wouldn't survive in German-speaking society. Russian gets worse because we do not keep it up in university, and I study technical specialty which doesn't provide decent support. Our Russian teacher in school said that she's teaching businessmen to speak Russian correctly and that they're coming because they want to improve the language and ready to pay for it. I used to laugh at that in school, but now I've completely changed my mind. There should be free or cheap courses for average people with no time and money but a desire to know native language just a little bit better. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| AnnetteK Triglot Newbie NetherlandsRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4355 days ago 13 posts - 23 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Croatian | Message 58 of 104 04 November 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Here's my honest CV. :-)
Dutch. Native. I tend to use the occasional English word when I speak Dutch, but so do most people around me. English. C2, certified (CPE, grade A). I studied English for six years in high school, lived in Scotland for a year and a half, and used it all my life for university studies, work and travel. German. Passive: near native. Active: a bit rusty because I don't use it very often, but when I'm in Germany and hear it around me it only takes a few days to be fluent again. I grew up bilingual (my mother is German) and I studied it for five years in high school. Although I don't need a certificate I'm thinking about sitting a Goethe Institut exam just to see if I can do it. Maybe not C2, but I'm pretty sure I could pass the C1 exam without much preparation. My mother is actually from a village in northern Germany where they speak a Low German dialect but she and all my relatives always made an effort to speak standard German with the kids. I have no problems understanding Low German but I can't speak it. Croatian. B1, certified (I sat the exam at Zagreb University last week and passed it). Three years of self-study (on and off) and 11 weeks worth of intensive courses in Croatia (3 weeks last year, 8 weeks this year). Passive skills still much better than active though. I can handle daily life (shopping, travelling, ordering in restaurants) and very basic conversations in Croatian, but I make a lot of grammar mistakes and tend to start throwing in English words when I get stuck. Which often makes the person I'm talking to switch to English completely ... Russian. One year guided self-study (correspondence course) and one year of classes at Amsterdam University (1987-1989). At the time I could read newspapers, magazines and short stories with a dictionary and I could write basic texts, but I didn't maintain it and lost most of my vocabulary. I've never really been able to speak Russian (the university course was focused on passive skills). Norwegian. One year of evening classes at Glasgow University (1979) and three months travelling around Norway in 1980. I got by o.k. in Norway. Although it's a long time ago and I didn't maintain it, I find I can still read Norwegian and understand bits and pieces when I hear it spoken. (When you already know Dutch, English and German, it's not a hard language to pick up.) Scottish Gaelic. One semester at Edinburgh University and four weeks summer course at Sabhal Mhor Ostaig (the "Gaelic College") on the Isle of Skye (1992-1993). Got to A1 or so and lost it again. Definitely the hardest language I tried to learn. French. Three years in high school (1972-1975). I never liked the way it sounds and dropped it as soon as I was allowed to. I can still get the gist of an easy text, but couldn't speak it if my life depended on it. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5221 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 59 of 104 04 November 2013 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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English: native (UK variant - Northern accent)
Spanish: B2+ (will take the DELE C1 soon - after 3 years of self study - a third of the time in Spain, no girlfriends yet - Pretty average all round skills. French: B2 - 7 years of High School; extra-mural course while at University - not credited in my degree: several teenage exchange visits totalling about 9 months, failed miserably with my exchange partners sister! 2 years in Italy but working during the day with French, in French (4 girlfriends). I have not written anything in French except half a dozen email since 1990. It is still the language that come to mind first if I don't know a word in any other language. Italian: B1 - Had 2 Italian girlfriends at University. When I started work I requested to be sent to Italy in the 1980's not expecting it to happen but it did. Got off the plane knowing a phrase book and 6 weeks later moved in with my new Italian girlfriend which lasted a year and she was sent to Rome. Good comprehension reading and oral: production is much weaker until I have been in country a week or so. German B1 - Avoided German at high school, but got sent to Germany to work so borrowed course materials from a work colleague and passed the Conversational German course with merit. Cannot write German, my accent is phony but I've met Germans who speak worse English than my German. Russian - A2 - Had the advantage of intensive courses with the Defence School of Language which I passed at Level3 which I suppose is about C1/B2+ but have had about 3 conversations in Russian since the 80's: can still read and write Cyrillic. Had one girlfriend so have some everyday vocabulary still. Arabic - A2 - same intensive course as the Russian but I feel much more at home with Arabic than Russian now. Can read and write Arabic fairly well. Vocabulary is yet again my weak point as the technical vocabulary I was drilled in is of little use in everyday circumstances. I study Arabic every now and again for a few weeks before a trip to relevant countries. Polish: A2 - I have a lot of contact with Polish people and can actively communicate with them - can't write Polish though. Latin A1: 5 years of high school and the high school AP programme: can read fluently and understand when I get my head around spoken accents - I can translate written texts into Latin slowly but I've never tried speaking. I did once try to get friendly with a nun who had studied Classics at University but she was having nothing to do with me. Japanese: A1.5: Can (and did) just about survive where no-one spoke English. I still know about 500 Kanji and the Kana: spent almost a year in Japan (2 girlfriends) I can read Urdu and have basic conversations in Urdu or Hindi but cannot get my head around the Devanagari script or I haven't tried hard enough/don't have the motivation. Languages I have started and of which I remember a little but still have materials and may still go back to: Greek, Turkish, Vietnamese (1 girlfriend) Norwegian (1 girlfriend) Welsh - I suppose it all depends on the girlfriend! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 60 of 104 04 November 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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One good thing about threads like this and about s_allard (just to mention one name!) is that they make you THINK.
It is clear that the CEFR criteria emphasize the skills based on the assumption that you first learn to speak about yourself ("Good day noble sir, my name is ...") and then you proceed through familiar everyday babble about laundry, children and the weather to the pinnacle of language production, which seems to be academical discussions about lofty scientific and cultural subjects. And this is clearly based on the way normal language courses are organized, and that's fine with me. After all my first words in a new language could actually be "Hello, I have reserved a room in your hotel" and "my name is so and so". But the written and the passive 'genres' are modelled on the same sequence of skills, and there it might not be justified. For instance in reading my own instinct is to pinpoint the hardest possible texts in a language, excluding texts about some technical subject which I wouldn't able to understand in my own language - like gardening, where neither my mother nor me knew that the big thing in her garden which has blocked out her Astra reception the whole summer long is an "avnbøg" in Danish (Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus L.)) and not a normal Bøg (Beech, Fagus something). If I can read even the hardest text about subjects I know that I'm at the level C2. If I can understand a few words and maybe even make a guess about the theme of an article then I'm at Solfrid Cristin's freely invented C0, and if I can get the gist of the text then I might say this is A1. IS this what the CEFR criteria say? Well, for C1 this is part of the requirements: "Can read quickly enough to cope with an academic course,". And for A2 the Cerberus at the door will ask you this: "Can understand straightforward information within a known area, such as on {sic} products and signs and simple textbooks or reports on familiar matters." Eh, products? Some of the things you can buy in Italy or Singapore can't be bought in Denmark or they may have a totally different name. Is that simple? On the other hand the Higgs particle is international in the deepest sense of the notion, and if my preferred topics are things like history and science then I may be able to read academical texts fluently long before I can read and understand a simple advertisement or an SMS from a teenager. So there I may have tweaked the criteria ever so slightly by accepting academical subjects too early in the process (and leaving out information passsed on primarily through soaps, songs and political speeches), but looking back on my list I dont think I would change any of my annotations concerning my reading or oral understanding. The languages are ordered in the order I think they should be ordered, and I haven't blamed the test vultures for the result. PS: I just found an evaluation sheet for the written tests af the Cambridge Institute (which now include a free practice test that can be taken using any computer with Firefox). The instructions don't explicitely specify any specific range of topics ... but in practice you can't avoid finding out about the topic range when the actual test questions are formulated. The same site also offers a free ultrasimple "which-test-should-I-take" test. With 25 out of 25 points here you are told to take something called a "CPR" but honestly, the test is very basic stuff - probably too basic for any reasonably proficient testee. Edited by Iversen on 04 November 2013 at 4:08pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 61 of 104 04 November 2013 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Dear Iversen, I thought you knew my name by now. Since Solveig is the pinnacle of beauty, loyalty, limitless capacity for love and foregiveness and all other traditional Norwegian virtues I will consider it as a compliment, though :-) Oh, and I can think of more than just one good thing about s_allard :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 04 November 2013 at 3:36pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5221 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 62 of 104 04 November 2013 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I thought I knew the name: was going to Google when I get home: Thanks Solfrid Cristin ! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 63 of 104 04 November 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Solveig comes from Per Gynt, and is the blonde blue eyed woman who after he has messed up completely, fooled around and lied and cheated, saves him from disaster by her never failing loyalty and love for him. Not much of a modern role model, but I chose to take it in the best possible way :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 64 of 104 04 November 2013 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Beetroot state of colour provisionally reinstated - and my apologies for a grave slip of memory 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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