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Not Being Fluent in any Language (Cost of | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4368 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 17 of 26 18 June 2014 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know that I would go so far to suggest it's a disadvantage, but I have known multilingual speakers who, while they were completely fluent and functional in their languages, still said things that were unnatural or were unable to express themselves as well as they would have liked. Ordinarily that may not be a real issue (even native monolinguals have trouble expressing themselves), but in the context of someone with a degree, who is primarily around others with degrees, I would agree that there is a certain "standard" expected (not even getting into whether it's fair or right that that's the case). And I think you're right that if the language of focus changes, it can get to the point where one language is primarily used for professional purposes with difficulty talking about everyday activities, and the other is used for daily life with difficulty using language for one's profession. Now, I would say it's possible to overcome this, but it takes time.
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4621 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 18 of 26 18 June 2014 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are many examples of people in the UK who were brought up in bilingual households yet have an expert command on the English language. Our deputy prime minister Nick Clegg being one of them.
I don't think bilingualism per se negatively affects children and young people to any great extent. I think the environment in which they are raised is a far more important factor. Personal intelligence comes into it too, of course. The cream will always rise to the top. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 19 of 26 18 June 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd count monolinguals with a degree as a part of 'most people'. They should do well enough reading the academic register of their own language, but some are good at writing it and others need to have their papers proofread. And being good at the academic register does not automatically mean that you are good at other registers or uses because you need to spend time on learning them, just as you need to spend time on academic language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 20 of 26 29 June 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I really have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of not being fluent in any
language. With the exception of certain pathologies it just doesn't seem possible to me. I always think that surely, when people talk about this they mean that someone is simply uneducated in their mother tongue or conversely they maybe they aren't familiar with alot of colloquial terms. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 26 29 June 2014 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been gritting my teeth while reading this thread because, in my opinion, it is a quintessential example of
what happens when a discussion starts off on the wrong foot. I know that some people think I have nothing better to do than rant about the use of the word "fluency", but here we have a case in point. Fluency, in the world of linguistics or second language acquisition, refers to fluidity of speech and the lack of spurious hesitations and stuttering. On the other hand, for many people and language learning product marketeers, fluency is a synonym of proficiency. I've been waging a somewhat solitary and losing campaign here at HTLAL in favour of the technical use of fluency because it allows us some terminological clarity and it is used this way in the documentation of the CEFR. As has been pointed out, it's somewhat preposterous to claim the someone is not be fluent in any language. Everybody is fluent in their native language, barring some speech pathology. Some people can even be quite fluent in other languages. On the other hand, it is certainly true that people can be fluent in a language and use non-standard grammar and vocabulary. Some people cannot read nor write and obviously have no mastery of academic language. Basically, the ability to use, i.e. speak, read, understand and write, a language at various levels of mastery is correlated with formal education. If you take a manual labourer with limited formal education and a university professor, both can be equally fluent in the same language, but the professor would certainly be considered a more sophisticated speaker by the general population. Because of this misuse of the word fluency, in my opinion, the present thread has been rambling along in search of direction due to lack of clear definition. For example, it's pretty self-evident that speakers of heritage languages, i.e. learned at home by children of immigrants, do not have the level of overall proficiency of speakers who were brought up, i.e. educated, in the native country. Typically, they cannot write the language well. Is this a big surprise to anybody here? Certainly not to me. By the same token, adult learners of other languages rarely come close to being as proficient as native speakers. This is no surprise either. All this said, it is certainly true that fluency with good pronunciation is somewhat indicative of speaking proficiency in the target language, especially to the ears of non-native speakers. We all know speakers, including some of us, who can bluff their way through various languages. But that's not the same as being proficient in a language and more specifically in various subsystems and registers of the language. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 22 of 26 29 June 2014 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think I like those defintions, and not just because accepting that would allow me to put "fluent in French" on my resume. 1 person has 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 23 of 26 29 June 2014 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
I support your war against the misuse of the word fluency, but actually, this definition goes against your point. I take the definition of fluency to be related to "fluidity", in other words, that the language comes naturally or easily to the speaker. I know many native monolingual speakers, without speech defects or learning difficulties, who nevertheless have trouble expressing themselves fluidly. Step out of the middle class for a few moments, and you will find people who rarely express themselves verbally outside of a very narrow range of situations. So by your definition, there are indeed native speakers who have a low level of fluency. This is because fluency comes by using the language. And this does often come down to education, because part of education is practice in speaking and writing. Some students avoid both speaking and writing because they know they are weak, and so they don't get the practice, and therefore never develop what most people would call fluidity or ease of speech. Of course, you like to correlate education with "levels of mastery", in order to distinguish that from fluency. But education also has an impact on fluency. I dislike the correlation of fluency with proficiency or with level of mastery. I agree that an A1 learner can be very fluent with what they know, for example. However, I also don't believe in the idea that native speakers are automatically fluent. As I said before, fluency comes with use. I remember a poster on another thread who said that every native speaker will always be more fluent than every learner. As though they were born with their language. But the OP was originally bringing up a different problem: a person who switches languages while growing up. I used the example of Korean students I met in India. Many of them left Korea at the age of 8 or 9. Some of these became good at English, others never got very good. At the same time, their native tongue was trapped in time, so to speak. They spoke with the language habits of a 9 year old. I don't think you can consider an adult who speaks like a 9 year old "fluent". Besides this, their ease of speech in their native tongue was weakened as well due to reduced contact. It is probably a small number of people. But there are, in fact, people who due to circumstances or education, can not express themselves easily in any language. Edited by Jeffers on 29 June 2014 at 11:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 24 of 26 30 June 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I doubt that this is a case of using the word fluency with a too vague definition, I rather believe it's one of judging the abilities of bi- or trilingual speakers as compared to (highly educated) monolingual speakers while conveniently forgetting that unless you use a language in a certain type of situation while unable to fall back on another language or with the ambition to use only that language, you probably won't learn how to use that language in that type of situation.
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