alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 1 of 15 05 February 2011 at 5:37am | IP Logged |
There was a thread made a long time ago about becoming fluent since joining this forum.
What I am wondering is the opposite. How many members have been losing fluency since joining due to lack of practice?
I have taken out the fluency of Esperanto in my profile, as I do not maintain the language anymore. I really have no idea if I can keep up a fluent conversation anymore. In other words I was trilingual for a short time, and now back to bilingual.
Who lists fluency, but did not keep up with it.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
RealJames Diglot Newbie Japan realizeenglish.com/ Joined 5129 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Japanese
| Message 2 of 15 05 February 2011 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
To be honest I'm not sure how much longer I can keep fluency in French.
Since I moved to Japan I have practically no chance of speaking it, and I often find myself word-searching for incredibly simple words whenever I do speak it.
French people I speak to don't know I can speak English, they think French is my mother tongue, but they think I'm an idiot for not being able to remember simple words lol
1 person has voted this message useful
|
ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian
| Message 3 of 15 05 February 2011 at 9:19am | IP Logged |
alang wrote:
What I am wondering is the opposite. How many members have been losing fluency since joining due to lack of practice? |
|
|
Do you mean because of the horribly addicting nature of this site and its tendency to draw one in and make you lose track of time, leaving you with no time to study or practice your languages? Or is it just a general question asking if we've had to demote certain languages to lower levels since creating our profiles?
Either way, I used to claim basic fluency in Esperanto but would not anymore. I couldn't keep up my motivation for long enough and ended up letting it fall into disrepair. I have it listed as intermediate in my profile now because I can still read and understand it fairly well and still remember a lot of the grammar and vocabulary. But actually producing the language fluently, that would be challenging at this point.
Edited by ellasevia on 05 February 2011 at 9:24am
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5702 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written)
| Message 4 of 15 05 February 2011 at 10:59am | IP Logged |
I also did loose fluency and practice on Italian. I began to speak out loud Italian sentences yesterday; I have
to !!!
1 person has voted this message useful
|
alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 5 of 15 05 February 2011 at 3:15pm | IP Logged |
ellasevia wrote:
alang wrote:
What I am wondering is the opposite. How many members have been losing fluency since joining due to lack of practice? |
|
|
Do you mean because of the horribly addicting nature of this site and its tendency to draw one in and make you lose track of time, leaving you with no time to study or practice your languages? Or is it just a general question asking if we've had to demote certain languages to lower levels since creating our profiles?
|
|
|
I am thinking both, as it would cover many reasons why fluency has dropped. I find maintenance more difficult, than becoming fluent, because of other offerings in life. In my case resting on my laurels was the main reason.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5105 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German
| Message 6 of 15 06 February 2011 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
RealJames wrote:
To be honest I'm not sure how much longer I can keep fluency in French.
Since I moved to Japan I have practically no chance of speaking it, and I often find myself word-searching for incredibly simple words whenever I do speak it.
French people I speak to don't know I can speak English, they think French is my mother tongue, but they think I'm an idiot for not being able to remember simple words lol |
|
|
The internet is your friend. Find someone who speaks or wants to speak French (like moi) and talk to them.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5071 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian
| Message 7 of 15 06 February 2011 at 7:06pm | IP Logged |
I don't practice most of my languages, just Russian and occationaly Indonesian. And
English of course. (And Norwegian obviously)
I haven't spoken Spanish in a few years, and not a word of German in a decade, but put me
on that plane to either countries and I will speak it after a day. So called basic
fluency of course, I haven't mastered either. You can't loose it, it's in the back of
your brain.
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
BTom Diglot Newbie United States findalanguageteacher Joined 5180 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili
| Message 8 of 15 09 February 2011 at 5:21am | IP Logged |
Depending on how much you have used the language before, I think it is relatively easy to get back to the level you were previously. I had a classmate who learned German when he was a kid but he claimed he forgot the language. In a matter of months he was able to remember everything.
1 person has voted this message useful
|