Studying and speaking in your profile (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Studying and speaking in your profile
Tags: Language Level Satisfaction \| Measuring Progress \| Forum Features \| Fluency \| Speaking
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

23 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

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 17 of 23

14 March 2014 at 10:30pm | IP Logged

Henkkles wrote:

Jeffers wrote:

If I could write another language as well as the non-English natives
on this thread have written in English, I would list that language as "speaking".

Ogrim, Tarvos, Serpent, Solfrid, aabram and Henkkles are just a few of the people here who inspire me. I
figure if they can do it so evidently well with English, I just might make it with French, German or Hindi.

Find forums to post on. Seriously. It's the best practice.

Any hints as to where we might find such forums? The only non-English forum I have ever been on was
"Dedos verdes" but that was for gardening geeks. It would be great to find a French language forum for
instance.
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 18 of 23

14 March 2014 at 10:33pm | IP Logged

go to google and search "forum potagers" and something is guaranteed to come up :)
1 person has voted this message useful

1e4e6
Octoglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4289 days ago
1013 posts - 1588 votes

Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian
Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan

Message 19 of 23

15 March 2014 at 2:38am | IP Logged

I just realised how difficult it is to find a forum that has the same quality and
activity as an Anglophone forum for the same activities. As an example, I sometimes
participate in chess forums, and all of them are Anglophone. The ones in Spanish have
much less activity and breadth in terms of content. As example is this forum, wherein the main forum (outside of specific languages) is in English. I have posted in approximately
eight chess forums, none whereof were non-Anglophone.

So Anglophones basically have a disadvantage in terms of practise (unless the forum
starts allowing languages other than English in the General Discussion, etc.). The non-
Anglophones basically practise since they have to do so, but the native Anglophones
continue to use their own language.

Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 March 2014 at 3:26am
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 20 of 23

15 March 2014 at 2:47am | IP Logged

Jeffers wrote:

If I could write another language as well as the non-English natives on this thread have written in English, I would list that language as "speaking".

Ogrim, Tarvos, Serpent, Solfrid, aabram and Henkkles are just a few of the people here who inspire me. I figure if they can do it so evidently well with English, I just might make it with French, German or Hindi.

That's amazing to hear but to me this level is definitely "advanced fluency" and not just basic.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4908 days ago
2151 posts - 3960 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

Message 21 of 23

16 March 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

Jeffers wrote:

If I could write another language as well as the non-English natives on this thread have written in English, I would list that language as "speaking".

Ogrim, Tarvos, Serpent, Solfrid, aabram and Henkkles are just a few of the people here who inspire me. I figure if they can do it so evidently well with English, I just might make it with French, German or Hindi.

That's amazing to hear but to me this level is definitely "advanced fluency" and not just basic.

Leaving aside discussions of what "basic fluency" and "advanced fluency" might mean, I agree with you. And I wouldn't say "I can speak a language" without a list of caveats, unless I was somewhere close to advanced fluency.

Here's an analogy: last weekend I programmed a game of hangman with Python (an assignment for a course I am taking). That might be equivalent to basic fluency in Python. I was really proud of myself, and with how far my programming skills have progressed. I know describe myself as "knowing a bit of Python". I am a long way from saying, "I am a Python programmer".
1 person has voted this message useful

vonPeterhof
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4771 days ago
715 posts - 1527 votes

Speaks: Russian*, English^C2, Japanese, German
Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish

Message 22 of 23

16 March 2014 at 9:00am | IP Logged

Ogrim wrote:

With regard to two languages I have on my "study" list, Catalan and Romansh, I have a very good grasp of them passively, but I only study them insofar as I read them, listen to radio in them and write the occasional entry in my log in them. I can also speak them but at a pretty basic level, making many mistakes, but I do not have the ambition to be a proficient speaker in them. So should I keep them as languages I study, or could I claim that I "speak" them?

In general I count such languages as ones I'm "studying on and off". After all, I do often end up having to look up unfamiliar words and grammatical patterns, and then perhaps add a sentence or two into Anki. This is where my German, French and Ukrainian are right now (although I don't have an Anki deck for Ukrainian; not sure if I'll make one later). On the other hand, my Kazakh and Norwegian are in the "just flirting" category, even though my proficiency in the former is (or used to be) at least as high as my proficiency in German, and both of them are better than my Greek. The reason is that with those languages I'm actively avoiding exercise and exposure beyond reviewing the Anki decks for retention purposes and glimpsing Facebook posts by native speaker friends. Since I'm only trying to preserve existing knowledge rather than acquiring new knowledge I don't think I can honestly say I'm studying them, and I'm not proficient enough in them to comfortably converse with native speakers either. But then, my boundaries between "speaking" and "studying" are a bit fuzzier than between "studying" and "flirting": I think I've reclassified German like five times since I registered on this forum, and Japanese twice.
1 person has 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 23 of 23

16 March 2014 at 11:01am | IP Logged

I still study all the languages I have listed as 'speaks', though insofar I can find interesting sources I would spend more of my time on extensive activities with my 'good' languages than with those where I still have to look several words up per sentence. In a case like Danish my extensive activities will of course occupy almost all the allotted time, but I do actually look words up for the etymologies, and I also like to read and listen to Danish dialects. So studying never stops, it just changes its character.

And regarding the criteria for 'speaks' I have made my owne one: being able to have a monolingual holiday without sacrificing the discussions I normally would have in English or French or German. And by and large these are also the languages I can speak fairly fluently without preparation, though not necessarily without grammatical errors or forgotten words.

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