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Claiming to Speak a Language - Pet Peeve | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 145 of 164 25 December 2012 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's more true about the other guy, I would say. Having been GRagazzo's teammate this year, I'm absolutely sure he's tons better than the guy he describes (who still thinks in terms of equivalents and can't believe that if X is translated as Y, it can also be translated as Z). Edited by Serpent on 25 December 2012 at 1:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| blas blas Newbie Italy Joined 4670 days ago 14 posts - 29 votes Studies: English | Message 146 of 164 25 December 2012 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd say that there's no point in discussing languages with someone who doesn't even know that Italian and Spanish are related. As for the "qua" thing, it occurred to me that maybe this guy's family is of Southern origin: in some Southern Italian dialects the standard "qua" becomes "accà" or "ccà"; this might explain why he pronounces it "ka". Just my two cents. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aldariz Triglot Newbie Slovakia Joined 4693 days ago 9 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Czech, Slovak*, English Studies: French | Message 147 of 164 26 December 2012 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just say that I have a partial understanding of French whenever I'm asked about it. I
think that's the best way to describe the level I'm currently at. So yea, I don't "speak" French, not by a long shot. Sometimes I even have doubts about my English, even though I've been told by a colleague that I have a better grasp of the language than many native speakers do. To this day I'm not sure whether he was being sarcastic or not. 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 148 of 164 03 January 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally I have enough Cantonese & Mandarin skills to ask for directions in Hong Kong,
Taipei or Beijing. But can't say the same for Paris since my French is a bit weak. You need to be able to communicate confidently at a certain level before claiming you know the language. Saying you are studying it is not a problem. I know a dentist who posted ads in local newspapers that the clinic serves patients in several languages. It is just the cost of doing business. The dentist doesn't know all the languages, just that he/she relies on the secretary to do the translation when necessary. Edited by shk00design on 03 January 2013 at 5:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4652 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 149 of 164 24 March 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's something I'm really afraid of - if you want to know why, go check out my log :) In short, I was at an exchange meeting with Arabic speakers and their reaction to my introducing myself in Arabic was "She can speak Arabic too!" loud enough for everyone around to hear! About the topic, well, I think the problem lies in the fluent/not fluent mindset and in unclear definitions. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6973 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 150 of 164 25 March 2013 at 8:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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A few weeks ago, when I was visiting family, my mom and I went to a party and were
introduced to an older Asian woman who told us (in heavily accented and somewhat broken English) that she was born and raised in Taiwan but was raised bilingual (Mandarin/Japanese). When my mom spoke to her in Mandarin, however, she seemed to have significant trouble maintaining the conversation in Chinese, hesitated several times, and code-switched frequently back to English. Later in the conversation, she also glibly mentioned that she had lived for four years in Germany and four years in Panama, and thus spoke German and Spanish. However, when I spoke to her in German, she didn't understand me and explained that she didn't really speak it much anymore. She explained that though her husband is German, their family/home language is English. Given her apparently weak Mandarin, I wonder if she had effectively “lost” most of her native languages and if her broken English is now her dominant language. Sometimes my partner gets on my case for telling people that I only speak a "few words" of a language or that I only speak "a little," but it's times like those that I'm glad I don't overestimate my abilities. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 151 of 164 25 March 2013 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, she could have lost her languages. I know quite a lot of people who used to speak a
language well or even used to have it as a native one and have been losing it for some time. It starts with a few missing words here and there, continues with getting a different accent and progresses towards complete loss and the feeling "I used to know this". Pretty sad. Well, I claim to be able to speak only English and French and those are the languages where I can really hold up a conversation, be understood and speak about quite anything I need. But I am still far from perfect. The trouble is that my family claims I speak German, which is a trouble. I can survive in German, I can get myself understood in some situations but I don't speak it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4302 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 152 of 164 25 March 2013 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Being a heritage learner, that is really true. There are times that I have some sense that something just doesn't feel right but I just can't seem to find the word for it yet since my vocabulary is not that advanced. The good thing is that if you try hard enough, you can absorb the language at a faster rate than that a second-language learner. However, this requires hours and hours of upon hours of hard work. I can't fathom what it means to be a heritage learner of a language that uses a different alphabet. Just learning a related language for me already gives me a headache. Of course, the process of learning a heritage language and a second language is different. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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