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REAL multi-languages fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 102 13 September 2014 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As I read this thread, I can't help thinking how we tend to beat around the bush and flounder when we try to define
things like "real fluency" all the while there is a perfectly good system of assessing proficiency. It's the CEFR, of course, that many people here are quite familiar with. I don't see why anybody should have to go through all kinds of gymnastics to explain their language skills when they can just the CEFR scale. It seems to me that the OP is really asking how many people have C2 levels language skills in addition to their native first language. Some people do have C2 levels in other languages. Few people have C2 in many languages. If someone says to me "In addition to my native language, I am C2 in French, C1 in Spanish, B1 in German, Russian and Norwegian." I have a pretty good idea of what they can do. I don't object to calling that person a polyglot. Why do we make things more complicated than they are? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 26 of 102 13 September 2014 at 1:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
He may mean it, but that doesn't stop others from answering to what he asked, instead of what they think he meant. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 27 of 102 13 September 2014 at 3:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For those who may be interested in how a hyperpolyglot assesses his proficiency using the CEFR, here is an
interview in Italian of Emanuele Marini talking to Luca Lampariello. Interview with Emanuele Marini Around 15:30, Marini is asked how does he assess his 30 languages in terms of the CEFR. He answers that he has four C1/C2 certifications and he thinks that he has comparable levels in many of the other languages - I didn't count the number - and then the other languages at a lesser level. It couldn't be any clearer. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 28 of 102 13 September 2014 at 4:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Because not everyone's skills are easily described by CEFR, and not everyone is comfortable stating a self-assessed level nor interested in taking an exam. Edited by Serpent on 13 September 2014 at 4:22am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6060 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 29 of 102 13 September 2014 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Three (English, French and Spanish). If I hadn't started so late in life, I think I would have been able to reach the same level with Italian. In my country we tend to forget one major advantage: no movie or TV series is ever dubbed, and we are exposed to a lot of different languages since childhood (tourists, media, etc.). We have frequent cultural events, such as cinema cycles (mostly in French, Italian, German and Spanish, but also others), both in cinemas and on TV. I know there must be lots of other small European countries with similar patterns, but the bigger markets seem to have widespread dubbing and smaller foreign language exposure. Edited by Luso on 13 September 2014 at 4:31am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 102 13 September 2014 at 6:52am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I avoided using the CEFRL scale because the original poster asked about near-native speaking abilities:
…and I'm honestly not sure how many C2 exams really demand this level of performance. A while back, we had a thread which linked to example speaking videos from Cambridge ESOL (sadly no longer available at the original location), and folks were, well, less than blown away:
Now, in contrast, there really is a "near-native" level of performance that most people reach after (say) 5 years of full-time social/professional/romantic immersion. At this point they might still lack really high-level writing skills, and they usually retain some accent. But their social use is often both effortless and entirely natural. We're talking about a level which corresponds to ILR 4+, or which would perhaps even be rounded up to ILR 5 (full native/bilingual proficiency) if you ignore any residual accent: 
(Chart from Wikipedia) Once you start trying distinguish these very high-level skill categories, I'm not convinced the CEFR helps much. Certainly, many C2 exams are very demanding. But I don't think the CEFR scale was ever intended to distinguish between: 1. "They speak well enough that we'll admit them to a reading-intensive graduate school", and 2. "They sounded like (1) five years ago, but then they moved here, got married and spent their entire life immersed for half a decade." This is not a distinction that most test makers, universities or employers normally care about, and with pretty good reason. As Khatzumoto was found of pointing out, once your language skills reach a certain level, you just fill out the job application and go to the interview and act normal, and nobody ever even thinks of asking you for a language certificate. After all, you're right there in front of them and you obviously speak the language just fine. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 102 13 September 2014 at 7:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm not sure the OP was really making the distinction between C2 and so-called near native or native-like. What
passes for native-like is usually excellent pronunciation that is often acquired at a young age. Great phonetics and interactive skills impress more than reading and writing skills. When we listen to recordings of sample CEFR test candidates, what we hear most is the accent. This is why so many people think those C-level tests are so easy, until they have to actually do them. If people saw somebody ordering food in a Chinese restaurant using using 100 different words of fluent Cantonese, everybody would conclude that this person speaks excellent Cantonese. I suspect this is what the OP is really talking about. It's not about actually having truly native-like skills in multiple languages, something I think is very rare. It's more about being able to pass for native-like The greatest advantage of starting young and living in various countries is the accent and interactive skills. This is why heritage speakers have an enormous advantage here. They sound great until you start really listening carefully and realize that they may not know the language that well after all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 102 13 September 2014 at 8:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
In my personal experience, any adult who has spent 3 to 5 years completely immersed in a monolingual environment has no problem with interactive skills. This may be different in the bilingual parts of Quebec, where being native in one language and B2 in the other seems to be sufficient for a great many tasks. To use a example from my area, if you have to come in to a research university every weekday, work with monolingual colleagues, write papers for journals, socialize, and then go home to speak the same language—and if you keep this up for years—then your interactive skills will generally be absolutely excellent. It's not like you have a choice. Sure, you'll keep some of your accent, and your writing will only be as good as your reading permits. But fast, normal conversation on any ordinary topic? I've seen quite a few adults master this to very high levels. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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