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People from Canada who are fluent in Thai | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 41 of 64 15 October 2010 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree, I think it's extremely impressive that he's made forays into such a range of exotic languages, especially with his history of having to overcome the difficulties of autism. Now all he needs to learn is the useful social trick of UNDERselling rather than OVERselling yourself, and he will be able to amaze everyone he meets. :)
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| Cesare M. Senior Member Canada youtube.com/user/CheRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5171 days ago 99 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English* | Message 42 of 64 07 November 2010 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the update. Actually now I am fluent in 8 languages and also have a list of languages that I need to work on. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cesare M. Senior Member Canada youtube.com/user/CheRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5171 days ago 99 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English* | Message 43 of 64 07 November 2010 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Here it is: I can speak 43 languages, but so far, I am fluent in 9: Bulgarian Urdu Arabic Thai Russian Kyrgyz Hindi Kazakh Czech (on a basic level) Languages I need to work on: Persian (Farsi) Macedonian German Georgian Indonesian Turkish Languages I am not sure of fluency: Italian French Spanish Portuguese Galician Malay Romanian Albanian Tajik Serbian Bosnian Croatian Ukrainian Dari Azerbaijani Estonian Danish Greek Pashto Chuvash Gujarati Latin Kurdish Polish Tatar Languages that I might have a very good chance in being fluent in: Portuguese Galician Romanian Albanian Serbian Bosnian Croatian Ukrainian Danish Greek Pashto Kurdish Polish Tatar *The languages that I claim I am fluent in were also claimed and opinionated fluency by a large number of natives of these languages, which makes me fluent in those languages. Also once I am fluent in a language, I will update this description. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cesare M. Senior Member Canada youtube.com/user/CheRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5171 days ago 99 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English* | Message 44 of 64 07 November 2010 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes I know my Spanish didn't sound fluent and yes I am not fluent in Spanish but everytime I spoke Spanish to someone in public in Skype they always tell me that they like my Spanish, I'm just saying, but I do understand now. :). Also I have joined a Thai Online chat community several times. But thanks for the advice. ผมทราบภาษาไทยอย่างน้ ำไหลไฟดับ :) Edited by Cesare M. on 07 November 2010 at 4:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 45 of 64 07 November 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You said that there are some languages that you're not sure about what level you
reached in them. Asking natives for an evaluation is always a tricky thing, because in some countries people are much more likely to make you compliments than in other countries. For example, in China people typically told me that I spoke excellent Chinese - but I knew I was just a beginner and the only thing they heard me say was "Ni hao" (hello), with a bad accent at that. They were obviously making me a fake compliment. Maybe they wanted to thank me for trying to learn, or to encourage me to make a better effort next time. I have now turned to other ways of evaluating my language skills, for example using online tests like http://www.transparent.com/language-resources/tests.html. I also like opening a random news story or a random page in a novel and seeing how many words I need to guess or look up - it's gratifying to see that number constantly going down as I progress (EDIT: to give you an idea, it's never more than 10 per page for languages I count myself fluent in). That only works for languages I speak well of course. Before that, I use practice texts that are easier than real materials, and I like to do practice translations to evaluate my active level. It's typical to read better than to write, and to write better than to speak. I posted some sample texts a while ago at http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=5926 so others can give it a try. Use these texts as a measuring stick - try to translate them to the best of your ability, without the help of a dictionary or online translator (this is crucial!), and see how many words and structures you're missing. Then, if you're happy with your translation, post it to http://www.lang-8.com in order to get a correction. Considering the exotic languages you've been studying, I don't think this forum can correct most of them, but there should be people on lang-8 who can, and you can learn a lot from corrections. I plan to use the same texts at the end of the year in order to evaluate how far I've come in Swahili, Chinese and Modern Greek; the languages that I've been working on most this year. Edited by Sprachprofi on 07 November 2010 at 8:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 46 of 64 07 November 2010 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
What exactly is the difference between these three categories? It seems to me it would be easier to lump everything into two categories: "fluent" and "not fluent yet," and then just keep studying everything, if you're really serious about languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 47 of 64 07 November 2010 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just a quick note: if someone says they "like" your (whatever language), that doesn't necessarily mean that you're fluent in it. ;) I don't want to be a downer, but you ought to know that many people, especially speakers of more exotic languages, will often be so excited that you can say even a few words of their language that they will over-compliment you. I've had this happen myself, and although it's a nice feeling, it should not be taken as absolute proof that you speak that language fluently. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 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 48 of 64 07 November 2010 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. I often tell foreigners who don't speak great English that their English is actually quite good just to make them feel good about their efforts and keep them motivated. Whenever someone tells you that your X language is very good you should always assume they're trying to be nice and probably exaggerating your abilities to make you feel happy. Another example of this is when I went to Tanzania this summer after studying Swahili for several months. Most of the people who I talked to said that I spoke extremely well, even though I knew this not to be true as I was still at a beginner-intermediate level and stumbling through almost every sentence. They told me that I speak well in order to keep me motivated and to make me feel good about my efforts. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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