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You are not a real polyglot if... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6607 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 249 of 299 01 November 2013 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||
But yeah I'm amazed by s_allard logic, not in a good way.
...Really? I actually also had something to say, but I respected Cristina's wish and talked about it with her by PM. Anyway, I explicitly said that I won't tell a Croatian that he's actually speaking Serbo-Croatian... not now at least. I'll be happy if years later something like this will be an okay thing to say, and even happier if there's no need to because the X is finally introduced. EDIT: sorry, Iversen's post wasn't there yet when I commented. As an attempt to stay on topic, isn't it an issue of passive skills being handwaved as easy and exposure being ignored/viewed as "not real learning"? I myself have expressed this, hm, "activist" view that if you can really use both languages/standards, they count. But why this disrespect for passive skills, really? It's harder for a learner of, say, Norwegian or Swedish to pick up all three big Scandinavian languages than for a native speaker. Never forget all the exposure you've had. It basically seems like your languages only count if you have active skills and if it took you an effort to achieve them. Edited by Serpent on 01 November 2013 at 9:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5344 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 250 of 299 01 November 2013 at 9:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am happy to discuss linguistic political correctness any time, anywhere, in any thread. Just not in this thread, which was started with another topic in mind. Kindly respect that. Thank you @Serpent, for doing so.
As to your comment on the lack of respect for passive knowledge I agree - passive skills should count for something - and to get back to our job application example I would definitely list passive skills in Danish if I was applying for a job in the USA which demanded Danish skills. I would however also make it clear, that I could understand 100% of written Danish, and communicate with Danes with very few problems, but that I would be speaking Norwegian to them. I would imagine that if they had to chose between an American with a B2 or C1 or even a C2 level, and a Norwegian, then the Norwegian could probably do a better job as long as it did not consist in writing or translating into written Danish. That is the one thing that someone who had learned Danish could probably do better. But if the tasks were for instance to translate from Danish to English, I would think a Norwegian would have a better chance of understanding the nuances. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6713 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 251 of 299 01 November 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged | |||||
I would dearly love to change "and" to "or", and then those paleolinguistss who can decrypt cuneiform claytablets or Egyptian hieroglyphs would finally get some credit for their skills - even though those skills almost certainly only are passive. But once we have accepted a scale which is squarely based on the ability to speak (or at least write) a foreign language we can't give credit for being able to read it. It would be like including your skills in snooker when calculating your golf handicap. So what about impressive or extremely hardwon passive capabilities? The obvious solution would be to give a separate number for those, but it is equally clear that you can't just include all related languages and dialects which you potentially can understand. For instance I can understand Québecquois, but I have never studied it or done anything special to learn it. On the other hand I have followed courses in Ancient Français and leant to read it reasonably fluently, so it is a separate item in my language learning in a way Québecqois isn't. What then about Low German? Until a few years ago I had done absolutely nothing to learn it except watching German TV, but I could understand it. But systematically watching TV is also a deliberate activity so even before I bought my first dictionary in Platt I would guess that it qualified (and since then I have tried to activitate it so now the situation has changed). However Schwiizertüütsch doesn't and never did because I have never had a TV station that systematically sent programs in this kind of German. Of course there will be a greyzone because of the problems with the definitions of 'studing' and 'being capable of'. I have read a Serbian grammar and used a dictionary, and I have a limited ability to read it (at least I had last time I tried). Should I add it to my list of passive languages? Well, maybe. But what then about Croatian, which I only know from my travels? I own a Croatian grammar and a Croatian dictionary, but I haven't done even the minimal amount of study I did with Serbian - mainly because I would like to add another language written in Cyrillic, whereas I already have enough languages written with Roman letters on my scoreboard. So Croatian should not be included, but Serbian is a borderline case. My skills are equally dismal (and 10% passive), but I have at last done something tangible to acquire them. PS: And the discussion about political correctness must stop, else the thread will be have to be closed. Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2013 at 10:22am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6607 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 252 of 299 01 November 2013 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||
That's one of the things I've been trying to hint at, really... You don't have to reach fluency in BCSM to have a valid opinion on whether it's one, two or four languages, but you do need some experience with Slavic languages. You are learning Russian and have experience with Polish (and Ukrainian?). Chung is learning everything but Russian. I'm a Russian native speaker learning Polish and Croatian. *cough* And speaking of CV, what about a generic one that's not written with a specific job in mind? Like on job-hunting sites etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4717 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 253 of 299 01 November 2013 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which expresses what I was trying to say nicely in three sentences. Thank you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5440 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 254 of 299 01 November 2013 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can take a hint. No more discussion about political correctness. I shall no longer talk about the languages of
ex-Yugoslavia. At least the thread was revived from the dead. As to recognizing the validity and importance of passive skills, I don't see much of a problem. It is true that the various language assessment systems aim to provide an overall measure of one's ability to read, write, speak, comprehend, and, in the case of CEFR, interact orally. That is the purpose of these systems. But people have always recognized that their passive skills are usually better than their active skills. I think we can assume that all Scandinavians have a relatively good passive knowledge of the other Scandinavian languages besides their own. And the same logic can be applied to all language families. Now, one can discuss what exactly it means to understand a related language, especially if there is a major cultural difference between the languages, but that is another question that would probably get me into trouble. The fundamental issue here --and to get back to the OP -- is the importance of actually speaking in determining one's status of being a polyglot. I take the rather extreme view that polyglot means the abiity to speakat least four languages equally well or to at least a C1 standard. I'm fully cognizant of the fact that most of the time we use the words "speak a language" very loosely. I have argued strongly in favour of a standardized system of self-evaluation along the lines of the CEFR. To speak a language, you should qualify for, let's say, a C1 or whatever agreed upon standard. This way those long lists of languages spoken can have some true meaning. Edited by s_allard on 01 November 2013 at 2:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6713 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 255 of 299 01 November 2013 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For me it has always been easy to assess both ease and correctness of my passive skills. Ease of production aka fluency is also fairly easy to assess, although different persons may have different standards - but at least I know that I can say stuff in German without constantly trying to crawl around holes in my vocabulary like those I have in Greek or Russian. But I can't really judge how well I speak a language (correctness, pronunciation) before I have tried it out on some reasonably interested native or nearnative speaker. And this is not a function of the length of a language list, but simply a fundamenal problem with any assessment of one's skills in any language. You can judge your own 'feeling' about a language, but somebody who is better than you must judge whether your own assessment is justified.
I would in practice also expect at least four very strong languages from a polyglot with related languages - like English plus three Romance languages. I would be somewhat more lenient concerning the level if the four languages were English, Japanese, Warlpiri and ancient Greek as an active language. And even though I can see the relevance of mentioning very closely related languages or dialects in applications to certain jobs I wouldn't use the word polyglot about someone with just two or three active languages, not even if that person was a renowned and laureated author in both/all those languages. And whatever the level purely passive languages should be mentioned on a separate list, not on the list over spoken languages. So in practice s_allard and I would probably use the word 'polyglot' about the same persons. The problem is at the other end of those language lists, where I'll put a language on the list if I can stick to a language for a whole week or so and speak about all kinds of themes with native speakers without making a fool of myself - but I certainly don't claim to speak at C1 or C2 in for instance Dutch or Romanian. We have probably members here who would include languages where they can buy a bread or check into a hotel, but not have lengthy discussions, and we have others who wouldn't even list their C1 languages because they strive for perfection and in their own eyes haven't reached it yet. And I doubt that we can bring those two extremes on a common formula. Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2013 at 2:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5440 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 256 of 299 02 November 2013 at 1:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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My suggestion to solve this problem once and for all is to introduce the notion of certification, that is, to have passed a recognized language assessment test. A certified polyglot is a person who has passed, let's say, three CEFR C1 examinations distinct from the native language. One can additionally speak, understand and study all kinds of languages, of course, but that's different from being certified.
Here at HTLAL, we would simply have to add the category to our profile. I know that many smaller languages to not have formal government approved testing systems, but we will just have to live with that. This proposal would go a long way to eliminating all these endless discussions about passive/active skills and the meaning of understanding and speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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