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Claiming to Speak a Language - Pet Peeve | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4587 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 113 of 164 12 December 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I recently came across a student who claimed on her resume that she was fluent in Thai.
Excited to have a chance to practice my Thai with her (I'm a learner at the beginner level, having gotten 2/3 of the way through the Routledge Colloquial book), I asked, in Thai, that most basic of questions: "Do you speak Thai?" But she couldn't respond even with the simplest "Yes" or "A little." She said she'd forgotten. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 114 of 164 13 December 2012 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Definitely agree. Would not put a language on my CV for a job interview if I cannot write it fluently.
Know somebody who went on summer exchange in Taiwan. Wrote a few lines on her CV saying that spending time overseas in another country offered her the opportunity to learn about other cultures and broadens her horizons. She never claimed to be fluent in Mandarin though which is totally within reasonable limits. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 115 of 164 13 December 2012 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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That depends on the job. Mine only requires reading skills, so I listed all languages I can read. I failed two "tests" out of six (could easily skim and describe - in Russian - the articles they gave me in Finnish, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish, but took a bit long with German and Italian). They seemed the most impressed that I could actually read Polish properly, perhaps half-expecting it to be on my list just because it's related to Russian.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 116 of 164 13 December 2012 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of my pet peeves is also that how much people expect you to know in a language in order to call yourself
fluent depends on how much they know themselves, and how common the language is. Anything significantly above their own level will be considered fluent, anything significantly lower will be bad. English, which most people know, is a language where you become a laughing stock if you have an accent, or make a slight error. In French you can have a horrible accent, and brutalize the grammar, but as long as what comes out of your moth sounds fluent, it will be taken to be so. In Russian you can stutter out a few helpless sentences, and even if your Russian is horrible, people will still think you are almost fluent. Even if you swear on your life that this is not the case. If I had a dollar for every time somebody has declared me fluent in a language that am definitely not fluent in, I would have been a rich woman. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 117 of 164 13 December 2012 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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By those people's standards I am fluent in Breton.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 118 of 164 13 December 2012 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have made slightly different observations: if you are a tourist and just want to communicate then you can get away with just about anything because nobody takes you seriously. If you suggest that you are fluent (even at the basic fluency level) then the same native speakers and some advanced learners demand absolute fluency, a good accent and no errors - and those who couldn't meet the same demands in their own target languages may be even more cantankerous about their demands.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 119 of 164 13 December 2012 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, it's mostly monolinguals who say you can't speak a language if you don't speak it as well as your mother tongue.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 120 of 164 13 December 2012 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
I take it you mean other non-native speakers of English would judge you for having these traits? Ironically, actual natives wouldn't be ruffled in the slightest. English is a globally-known language, few British people speak another language therefore we are used to hearing English spoken in all sorts of strange accents with varying degrees of accuracy. All we care about is being able to understand. Nobody in their right mind expects a Polish immigrant to sound like a BBC radio announcer from the 1950s. Maybe that's why British people can't really understand why foreigners who learn other languages chase the perfect accent. We have myriad accents within the English-speaking world itself, add to that the countless others who speak our language. If I visit Ireland I don't try to imitate the speech patterns of a Dubliner. If I learned Norwegian it would no doubt be imbued with a Scots brogue. Would I be laughed at? Maybe, it's not something that would occur to me. Edited by beano on 13 December 2012 at 2:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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