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Claiming to Speak a Language - Pet Peeve | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5910 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 57 of 164 14 December 2009 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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It's worth noting that some people use the word "fluent" to mean "could hold a relatively uncomplicated conversation with a reasonable degree of fluidity of speech". Not everyone thinks of fluency as basically meaning perfection or at the very least close. I wish this word wasn't used in such extremely different ways by different people, but that's how it is. So the people who claim to be fluent in a language who don't speak it at an advanced level aren't necessarily foolishly overestimating their own abilities or flat out lying, they might think of what they know as fluency. Personally I would prefer to avoid using the word fluency when asking someone how well they know a language, because if they say "yes I speak it fluently", you still have no idea what they mean by that. "How well do you speak it?" tends to give a more informative answer.
It is a real shame that the definition of fluency isn't as clear-cut or streamlined as it should be, personally I won't call myself fluent until I'm at a very advanced level, so it kinda sucks having people going around boasting fluency who have done much less work than you. But really, it makes more sense to understate your own abilities and let people be positively surprised, than set yourself up for embarrassment and letting other people down. It seems the people who are truly serious about their target language(s) will refrain from going around calling themselves fluent, probably in large part due to realizing how much there is left to learn... Edited by Lizzern on 14 December 2009 at 12:20am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 58 of 164 14 December 2009 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I think a lot of what you mean by "being able to speak a language" can vary in context. My relationship with French is in a fuzzy area where I sometimes do and sometimes don't claim to speak it.
I still can get lost in fast speech, understanding only a word here and there, and my speech production will sometimes come slowly and haltingly. I will confuse genders and use words incorrectly. I have a long way to go before I get to a near-native fluency level. Yet, I would consider myself fairly advanced in the language. I can easily understand the vast majority of written French, and the spoken language poses few problems when it's not spoken too fast. I can get the idea across for most things I need to communicate, even if I may not do so with perfect grammar and my vocabulary is still somewhat lacking. So if, for example, I am at work and a monolingual French speaker needs help, then I will claim to speak French, since I can usually work out what it is they need help with and assist them completely in French. But there are certain situations where I would not claim to speak French, for example if someone asked me to interpret for someone. I feel I meet the requirements for "basic fluency" on this site, which is why it's listed in my profile as a language I speak. Edited by Levi on 14 December 2009 at 12:43am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5610 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 59 of 164 14 December 2009 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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You know what else I hate? When people tell others that *I* speak 7 languages, just because I've told them I have studied them! Studying sooo not the same as speaking well and it makes me embarrassed that people go around saying I can do something that I can't.
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| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5987 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 60 of 164 14 December 2009 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Something similar happened yesterday. Recently I gave some friends some advice on how they could learn Spanish, and I lent them several of my DVDs that happened to have Spanish audio. Yesterday I went to a party where there were several other mutual friends, including a Spanish speaker. She came up to me and started speaking super fast Spanish until I said "woah there! I barely get any of that, why are you speaking Spanish to me?"
It turns out that she had heard that I was "teaching Spanish" to our mutual friends, and knew that I spoke some Chinese, so she assumed I was fluent in Spanish too. At that point, another person said "oh ya, you're that guy who just picks up all the languages really easily!" So I had to explain to them just how many hundreds of hours I've had to put into Chinese and German, and that I typically study languages for more than 3 hours every day. They gave me a weird look when I told them I had watched 180 hours of Star Trek in German ;) What I learned from this exchange is that some people believe it's possible to just "pick up" a language, like you found it outside your door one day beside the newspaper. Perhaps people with this belief are the ones who start calling themselves fluent after taking a "101" course. Maybe they think they've "picked it up" after 40 hours of study. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 61 of 164 14 December 2009 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking of other people expecting you to have a high ability in a language, my dad and I were watching a movie on the SciFi (or...Syfy these days) channel, and the beginning of the movie was set in Korea around 500 years ago or so, and they were speaking Korean, and my dad said "You probably didn't need the subtitles, right?" And this is coming from a person who spent a year in Korea when he was in the army. I wish it were as easy as watching a few movies and learning every word and every grammatical structure.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5822 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic | Message 62 of 164 14 December 2009 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||
My family, friends and boyfriend do this, which I really don't like, I keep telling them, "I'm not fluent!!" >.< 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 63 of 164 14 December 2009 at 6:37am | IP Logged | ||
This happens often to me. I don't like it when people say "oh yeah, he speaks Czech, just because I have small conversations with my Czech friend. Maybe it's from the fact we speak it whenever we see each other that people get this assumption. But I most definitely do not speak Czech fluently. This particular situation just as yours has not happened to me, but I would not be surprised if it did. It's not uncommon. People also assume that just because I can speak German, that I speak Spanish fluently. I do have a good command of Spanish, but I prefer not to say so, but most unfortunately, people get the assumption I'm fluent, and they spread it around. Even though it's unintentional, it irritates me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5592 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 64 of 164 14 December 2009 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think people should just give others some some slack when they say they can speak a language. I myself used to say that I could speak Spanish because I had spent four years studying the language in school. However, when I went to spain for two weeks I learned how completely inadequate my knowledge of Spanish was and since then I never say I can speak Spanish. Instead, I just say I am actively studying the language. Sometimes people say they can speak a language because there was really few ways for them to test their ability to speak a language.
7 persons have voted this message useful |
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