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Passive 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 17 of 33 24 May 2007 at 3:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, and that is why I only have placed Swedish and Norwegian on my profile as beginner languages, even though I do understand them almost totally (though you will always be able to dig up a dialect-speaking old mand or a youngster from some strange subculture whose language would pose a problem even for a native speaker). In fact there are four levels to consider: 1) There are languages that you can cope with both actively and passively, and for most people this probably means that they have to deliberately sit down and study them (not necessarily in a formal setting). 2) There are those languages that you only know passively, but on a level where you just need some speaking/writing practice and some systematized perousal of the grammar and idiomatics of the language to 'activate' them. My Swedish and Norwegian belong here, and some day I may decide to spend the time learning them properly. Latin did too, until I forgot it. 3) There are those languages (and dialects) that are so close to a language you know that you can get the meaning of texts and maybe even spoken sources, but you would have to start almost from scratch if you decided to learn them properly. I would say that Low German, Sardinian and Romantsch belong in this category for me. 4) Lat, but not least there are those thousands of languages that you just don't know and can't understand. Parallel to this here-and-now description there is also the possibility that you once knew a language on some level, but have forgotten it. My Latin belongs to this category, and of course it would be easier to relearn than it was to learn it the first time. Another example: after 3 years of study at the university, most of the time with me as the only pupil in the class, I could speak Romanian fairly well in 1981. For the next 25 years I had absolutely no exposure to this language and in the summer of 2006 I could not even read it. Then I decided to visit the country (with Ceaucescu gone and all that), and inspired by this forum I decided to relearn it. Even with the ineffective training methods I knew then it took less than a month to reach a level where I could discuss with people I met. This doesn't invalidate the four levels above, but just exemplify that you sometimes can move quite fast up the ladder for a given language. And yes, I do intend to relearn Latin soon. It will (re)open a vast literature from almost 2000 years to me on the passive side, it would serve as a glue between my Romance languages, and if I could also get to the point where I could think in Latin I would probably stand a better chance of not forgetting the whole thing again. Edited by Iversen on 24 May 2007 at 10:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gperson000 Newbie United States Joined 6449 days ago 31 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, French | Message 18 of 33 24 May 2007 at 3:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Does anyone here study a living language to acquire passive fluency without being able to communicate? Or is my idea more abstract than I originally thought?
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 19 of 33 24 May 2007 at 6:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I did this, to a degree: I've read a fair amount in several languages in which I have no speaking ability whatsoever, some of which I've never studied at all (ie, Spanish and to a lesser degree, Portuguese), and others which I've glanced over grammar sketches for, but did incredibly little active study (ie, Swedish). I've also acquired a higher level of passive comprehension, arguably passive fluency, in French, which I studied against my will when I was younger, without learning much, and of which I've acquired a fair amount of by living in Switzerland and reading trilingual texts (largely banal things, like ingredients, instructions, and warning signs), and French texts that seem to have content I'd like to understand. I also have some minimal use of spoken French, and a minimal ability to write it; I can carry on slow, ungrammatical written conversations in it, or ask and answer simple questions. I've never exactly decided "I'm going to study this language, but only for passive fluency", but it's been a vague thought of sorts as I perused texts in various languages, largely without any active study whatsoever. This forum has inspired me to try to take my knowledge up a level, and gain more active use. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justinwilliams Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6688 days ago 321 posts - 327 votes 3 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Italian | Message 20 of 33 24 May 2007 at 7:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I actually have no intention of doing my exams in French! But since I don;t think I would be able to reach fluency in a language like Dutch in a year span I was considering the possibility of doing the exams in English if that;s possible at all.
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| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6525 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 21 of 33 24 May 2007 at 11:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've seen Spanish and portuguese students at my university speak to each other, both in their native language.. they said "ah, well, we understand each other, there's no need to learn each other's language." :-). I found I can get the jist of spoken Catalan without any study, to me it sounds kind of like Portuguese but with bits of words missing.
One intresting thing to note though.. when I started learning portuguese, I just read bits and pieces, and watched tv etc. But, later, I took another stab at the language and did the FSI course. Although I didn't learn any new words really, my oral understanding really skyrocketed. Also, after only studying Russian passively for a couple of years, after a trip to Russia and being forced to speak quite a bit, texts became suddenly much more 'transparent,' understanding was much easier to grasp. So, maybe even if you only want a passive command of the language, an active approach could be beneficial. 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 22 of 33 24 May 2007 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That reminds me of Ardaschir saying that although he greatly enjoys reading literature in the original, he doesn't focuse solely on reading and that he believes that exactly his good speaking skills help him to read better (i can't find that thread, sorry)
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| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6393 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 23 of 33 25 May 2007 at 9:24am | IP Logged | |||||
When I briefly flirted with Japanese last year, I had decided to be content with passive fluency. Active fluency was not really necessary for a short trip to Japan, and it was highly unlikely that I would end up living there or being employed in a job that required it. My primary interest was in Japanese literature, so being able to speak it myself seemed secondary. That being said, I did still plan on attempting to learn to speak and write it. If I could learn to speak and write it, why not? There were no real disadvantages. I just wasn't planning to be horribly upset with myself if I never reached that stage. Then of course, there's Latin. When I studied Latin, I tried very hard to get to the point where I could speak and write it, not because I felt that the skills were necessary but because I was raised in the school of thought that you had to study every aspect of a language. My original Latin teacher taught us songs in Latin and encouraged us to speak it, so I thought that was natural. When my boyfriend learned it, however, he tried to avoid speech as much as possible. He's studied it for years longer than I have, and I now read as fluently as he does. Of course, that may be because I'm just more skilled at learning languages. In the case of Latin, however, where a long versus a short vowel can change the meaning of a word, I think my approach had a lot to do with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spikeygal Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6427 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Japanese, Esperanto | Message 24 of 33 25 May 2007 at 11:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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I study Latin, and have done for the past 3 years, and I can't speak it for my life, even though I can translate it written to an A grade standard. But I guess I'll never need to speak it, eh? So yes, it's possible.
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