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Passive Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6473 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 9 of 33 23 May 2007 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess I could say I have passive fluency in Dutch or Spanish, since I can understand these languages based on the other languages I know. However the language where it is really applicable is Latin. At school we were only taught to understand, analyse and translate Latin to German, not to compose anything in Latin (apart from being able to conjugate etc.), because even most professors and bishops can't really speak Latin anymore. At the end I was able to read any Latin text without much effort, but I would have had to think for half a minute or so when trying to reply to somebody speaking Latin. Today it's just a little easier because I have had some more practise writing Latin because of lessons I developed or texts I adapted.
And I now disagree somewhat with the completely grammar-based methods for Latin. If somebody's only goal is passive fluency e. g. to be able to read the Bible in Latin, it's not necessary to drill grammar that hard and force people to go through several years of coursebook texts before they can start achieving their dream. That's why I developed the course at http://www.learnlangs.com/biblelatin as an experiment in how feasible it is to have people read the Bible right away and without too much focus on grammar, though clearly some remains necessary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 10 of 33 23 May 2007 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Sprachprofi: what do you need active knowledge of Latin for? no offence meant, I'm just curious :) you don't seem to be one of those enthusiasts who think Latin should be reviwed, are you? [this sentence looks incorrect to me :0 ]
As for me, I'm aiming only for passive fluency in Latin. The same probably goes for Yiddish and perhaps also Ukrainian. Edited by Serpent on 23 May 2007 at 1:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6893 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 11 of 33 23 May 2007 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's certainly possible. I'm currently reading one of the Harry Potter books in Italian with only a few weeks' informal study under my belt. My knowledge of Spanish has given me a significant discount in learning Italian and I'm not having any problems reading the book.
Having said that, I would struggle to piece together a grammatically correct and/or idiomatic phrase without thinking twice and don't know how to conjugate verbs off the top of my head. My passive vocabulary is surprisingly good considering how little time I've been learning Italian but the active vocabulary needs some work. I also haven't had the chance to practice my spoken Italian (which is rather limited) so speaking Italian is still a challenge (no less due to confusing Spanish and Italian regularly). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| justinwilliams Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6692 days ago 321 posts - 327 votes 3 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Italian | Message 12 of 33 23 May 2007 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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What about studying in a foreign language without any active knowledge but a quite good passive knowledge? Would that ever be possible? I know at McGill they offer you the opportunity to write everything either in French or in English even though everything's taught in English but would that be possible in a language like Dutch to study there and to write your exams in English?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 33 23 May 2007 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
The Scandinavian languages are quite transparent and natives from Sweden/Norway/Denmark can understand each other without too much practice - and without being able to actually speak any of the other two languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6853 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 14 of 33 23 May 2007 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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This reminds me of the Chinese guy in Oceans 11 (and the sequels) who speaks Mandarin and understands English, and all the other characters understand, but speak to him in English.
I've heard it was common at one point for people in Hong Kong for native speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin to speak to each other in their own languages, and each would understand the other. If I remember correctly this happens in some of Wong Kar-wai's films. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6440 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 15 of 33 23 May 2007 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I heard they can read each other's newspapers, but they'd pronounce it differently so they couldn't understand each other reading them outloud. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6473 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 16 of 33 24 May 2007 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||
Imho the vast majority of people will *not* find any use for active knowledge of Latin. That's what I said. Also I don't believe that Latin would be suited as a modern language of communication, even the "Latino sine flexione" variation. Esperanto does the job so much better. Justin: it's possible to do that, but be aware that you will have trouble with the terminology. If you only hear the subject's terminology in English, you will have trouble writing about the subject in French. I have that problem with my French linguistics lectures... Edited by Sprachprofi on 24 May 2007 at 2:38am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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