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REAL multi-languages fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 41 of 102 14 September 2014 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, it is the level I have stated that I can deliver. I haven't spoken Italian here in 2014 except a few sentences at the Berlin gathering, so choosing flawless Italian pronunciation with lightening speed as my main goal would be idiotic for me. Besides I know that my speed and accuracy benefits from a few days in a relevant country (like Italy in this case), and I have basically stopped making videos so in practice journeys and visits to language conferences are the only situations where my speaking skills are tested. Instead I work on getting a high level passively, a reasonably high level in writing and a functional, but solid level orally. And I have also other things to study, like the things I used as themes for those paintings: the Italian one was modeled over Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. For me it is more important to know who/what that is than is to be able to pronounce it as well as a child in the streets of Ferrara could. Edited by Iversen on 14 September 2014 at 3:58pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4621 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 42 of 102 14 September 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you can do it in less than 10 years, if the circumstances are right and the desire to fully engage with the language is present. My wife could barely speak any English aged 20 but by her late 20s, following years of solid immersion, I would say she spoke just as good as a native. 3 persons have 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 43 of 102 15 September 2014 at 5:21am | IP Logged | |||||
I think you are misinterpreteting the Dunning-Kruger effect. Ten years are enough time to achieve significant proficiency in any skill, if they are used efficiently. After that time she would not have suffered from overestimating herself as more advanced than she is, like many people at their first low intermediate stage in a language do. If this was about her self-assessment (and for all I know it's beano's direct assessment of her skills) and she suffered from that bias, she would have started out overestimating her skills as "could barely speak any English" and a decade later, underestimating them as "just as good as a native", at which point she would probably have been better than most natives. As for your idea that a native speaker has a set amount of years of a headstart I would ask you to think about how much time the average native speaker actually spends on trying to improve his or her language skills. Edited by Bao on 15 September 2014 at 5:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 44 of 102 15 September 2014 at 7:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Are we over complicating things with all our definitions and being overly coy?
I think I'll just answer to what I perceive to be the main question here: How many foreign languages do I speak at a high level with a good accent. And my answer is three. English, French and Spanish. I do not have a native, educated speaker level, nor could I hold a speech on astronomy in either of them, but I can say pretty much what I want without thinking and with a fairly good accent. My knowledge in technical/administrative vocabulary is best in English, my pronunciation is best in Spanish. I would range them both as C2, French possibly at C1, since my writing skills are really bad, but my pronunciation should meet the OPs demands. But I'll let you judge for yourself, I include a link to a video I did with Richard Simcott 2 years ago. And yes, my Italian accent is not great, but my background in Italian is only 5 weeks in Italy, a couple of semesters of evening classes, 3 short term boyfriends in the late 80ies and more than 20 years of abandonment, so it would have been a miracle if it were. Oh, and everything else in the video is in the B-range, so not fluent. Cristina's video Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 15 September 2014 at 7:51am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 45 of 102 15 September 2014 at 8:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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No, but JClangue reminds me of an old banned member called casamata who had a few other
aliases. @Cristina; could you hold a speech on astronomy in Norwegian? If you can't, then it doesn't matter that you can't in any other language. Edited by tarvos on 15 September 2014 at 11:34am 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 46 of 102 15 September 2014 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Although I'm fond of pointing out just how amazingly good well-read native speakers really are, this doesn't mean that a non-native can't do very well after 3 to 5 years of the right kind of immersion. In the US, native English speakers must generally take the SAT before applying to a university. The SAT Verbal is scored on a scale of 200 to 800. It tests primarily written, receptive knowledge. Here's what an admissions officer has to say about the SAT Verbal and English-as-a-Second Language students:
The average native-speaker score on the SAT Verbal is 500 points, with a standard deviation of 110 points (or at least it was when they recalibrated the scores in the 90s). Doing some math, this suggests that a score of 700 puts the student in the 96th percentile, assuming the scores are normally distributed. Or to put it another way, universities like Harvard and Yale get a fair number of non-native students who outperform 96% of university-bound natives after a "couple" of years. Now, this is only measuring passive skills, and it's entirely possible that these students studied English in another country before arriving in the US. (It's hard to imagine a Harvard student who didn't take English courses and read stuff on the Internet.) Even so, SAT Verbal scores in the 700s are quite respectable even for native speakers. And I've seen plenty of first-hand evidence that speakers of Romance languages can go from B2 conversational skills in English to near-native within 3 to 5 years of full-time immersion, even without doing any studying at all. The only skill I'm ignoring here is writing. Lots of non-native speakers write very good English (look around HTLAL). Some people who converse at near-native levels write poor English. The difference? The good writers usually read a lot of English. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 47 of 102 15 September 2014 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Beano's wife could be amazing without being savantlike. 10 years of listening and learning could be better than 29 years spent on inefficient activities, like watching TV from your home country or looking out of the window. Normally you would expect that it was necessary to do some hardcore study in the beginning (including courses), but we don't know how that first phase was passed - and that information may actually belong to the private life of the Beanean household. But it might be possible to be an fluent speaker with a nearnative accent and still not know how to name the objects in your own kitchen. Just as you can know all the words and still not be able to speak fluently.
One thing to notice is that the language in question is English, and that "barely" most likely only refers to active skills. It may cover a fair amount of passive listening, maybe even some understanding, and then Beano's wife didn't start totally from scratch at the age of 20. What if she had moved to a small village in Hungary or Japan without knowing any Hungarian or Japanese, and Beano had been a fluent speaker of English? Would ten years to learn Hungarian or Japanese from scratch be enough? Edited by Iversen on 15 September 2014 at 1:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 48 of 102 15 September 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
No, I could not, but I included the example precisely because we tend to be very demanding when it comes to someone saying they know a language well. Sometimes it seems that we demand way beyound what we would ask of a regular native speaker. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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