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How fluent to be a Polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 1 of 49 25 January 2006 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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How fluent do you have to be to be a genuine polyglot? Some of the posts on this forum seem to be unduly harsh and critical of people who claim to be polyglots. They say their accent is not good or only fair. (Did Maurice Chevalier speak English? He had a strong French accent, at least on stage.) Or they criticise mistakes in grammar or choice of words they use as if it disqualifies them.
Does your neighbour, Con the Fruiterer, (well known on Australian television) speak English if he speaks with an accent? If you can read and write and converse in French, German, Russian and Spanish, but make mistakes and mix your words and grammar at times, or speak with a strong accent, does that prevent you qualifying as a polyglot. I don't expect people to speak without an accent. If you listen long enough, you can usually tell where a person comes from. And I am very sceptical of characters in books who learn a language and pass as natives when they have only just learnt the language. The only people who truly speak without any accent and can pass for natives are people who learnt the language as children. It reminds me of the story I heard while I was working in Germany. A German spy landed in England during the war and made his way to a pub. He put his money on the counter and said to the barman, "A martini, please." The barman said, "Dry?" "If I Vant three I will ask for them!" 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 49 25 January 2006 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Fanatic this is a good question and I'm glad you start the debate. I think there are many types of polyglots. Some have a mostly written knowledge of most of the languages they 'speak' - does that diminish their merit, I don't think so. Others make plenty of mistakes whenever they open their mouth but still manage to communicate with people who would otherwise never have understood a word.
I think we should coin new words to precise the type of polyglot we mention. A '10 language academic polyglot' or a '15 language practical polyglot'. Whenever people ask me how many languages I speak, rather than answering with a number I always say 'Well, French is my mother tongue, English I can speak and write quite well, Italian I speak really well but I don't write often, ...' and so on. 3 persons have 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 3 of 49 25 January 2006 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Some people argue that unless you can speak the language properly, then you can't claim to be fluent. However, I can't see why the ability to only read and/or write in a language should be totally discounted. Perhaps it is not entirely practical but a lot of time and effort does go into learning grammar and understanding the written word.
I personally am better at reading languages than speaking them. It's possibly down to self-esteem but I find I progress through a language quicker through reading than through speaking it. That's just my 2 cents. If you look at the list of polyglots at Wikipedia, quite a few of them just have a reading knowledge (with or without dictionaries) of some of the languages they're credited with learning. Does this make their efforts any less admirable? I personally don't think so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6945 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 4 of 49 25 January 2006 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm glad someone brought this up. With redard to modern languages, this has been bugging me for a while. A while ago, someone (can't remember who it was) claimed that unless someone speaks a language with little/no accent, that he/she doesn't consider that person to be a fluent speaker.
To me this seems pretty ridiculous. Living in a highly multicultural country, coming into contact with large numbers of foreign students all the time, most of whom speak with a moderate accent, I would never say that they are not fluent in English. Michel Thomas lived in America from 1945-2005, he spoke with a strong (hard to place) accent, but after 60 years living in a mainly monolingual country, nobody could say he wasn't fluent. Is a kid with a speech impediment not fluent? Yes he is fluent, he just sounds a bit different. Perhaps English may be a biased observation point, since there is a massive number of foreigners who learn it, much more than most other languages, and so we have more exposure to different accents and therefore don't think much of them, but I still don't think an accent has any effect on how one's fluency should be rated. For example (no offence is intended, FX) FX writes with better spelling than many English natives, he also writes with more eloquence and a larger variety of words than most people on the internet, but he would be quickly pegged as being a native French speaker by most native English speakers. Yet I don't think anyone would, or even could dispute his fluency in English. Ok my rant is done. Edited by Walshy on 25 January 2006 at 4:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7018 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 49 25 January 2006 at 6:12am | IP Logged | ||
Everyone does this with their mother tongue, let alone with a learned language. I can't see anything wrong with claiming to be "fluent" (there's that word again!) if you can understand most written texts in any language. Speaking isn't everything. For example, someone fluent in Latin might find it hard to practice their oral skills in the language, but if they can read Cicero they're fluent in my book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7095 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 49 25 January 2006 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think you could call yourself fluent in another language when you can get into a 30+ minute conversation with a native speaker, understand 98-99% of their sentences and be able to respond with everything you would like to say with confidence (without too much hesitating). That leaves room for grammatical mistakes and accents, maybe you don’t say everything the way you want to, but you are able to communicate your point. I think that you could claim to be fluent when native speakers don’t have to slow their speech and don’t find your errors or accent a hindrance to communication. Edited by Farley on 25 January 2006 at 12:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 7016 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 7 of 49 25 January 2006 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's very sad that in order to measure our fluency we always have to consider the "native speaker" element.
So, you can't be fluent by yourself, you need to be understood by others. It's a very demanding skill, like an ability that only makes sense when tested. This remembers me the Friends' episode that Joey is learning French. The tape says one thing, and he repeats "bla ble blu" and then the tapes goes on: "well done!" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6897 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 49 25 January 2006 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I second all of what Farley says there.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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