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How many people can actually speak? | ||
Tags: Youtube Polyglot | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 17 of 45 14 January 2013 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I imagine that the fraction of people who resolve to learn a language, buy some language courses, and go on to become highly proficient is probably pretty similar to the proportion of people who resolve to get in shape, buy a gym membership, and go on to become highly athletic. :-P
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| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6125 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 18 of 45 14 January 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I imagine most give up, but I do know after a few years of classes or other study, the persistent ones learn to count. They can say hello, and construct simple sentences. Maybe they can understand simple slow-spoken utterances from the teacher or textbook -- or maybe if they run into a native who is speaking slowly and clearly, which could theoretically happen. But, they can't understand TV or movies. They know some vocabulary, and can construct the past tense, but they make grammar mistakes. I think the thing is, though, that beginner level language knowledge is pretty volatile, and if you let it lapse for a bit it fades away quickly. I experienced this myself. I took 3 years of German in school, and I think I can kind of guess my way through posts in German online, and if I use a dictionary, I guess I could figure it out. But, I really have zero active ability, time has erased all the genders. For TV and movies I couldn't understand much even when I was studying, so it's not any different now. On the books and programs, I have been clearing out my father's house since he's gone into a nursing home, and I did find quite a few language books and dictionaries. I think it is one of the things he and his wife did -- that when they traveled they purchased one of those phrase books and a dictionary. It's that people imagine they're going to be in some foreign country and get a flat tire or lose their way to the hotel, and then they'll use a phrase book to solve this. Practically, I think, in these situations mostly you just find someone who speaks English -- but the phrase book maybe provides a level of comfort. It's there just in case. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 45 14 January 2013 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
The basic problem with YouTube videos is that talking into a silent microphone is a weird and unnatural skill (it's even harder than public speaking because there's no "energy" from the audience). When I try to make unscripted technical videos in English, I wind up sounding like an incoherent idiot. So I need to put together a loose script, practice it several times, ad-lib a bit during the recording so it sounds natural, and then edit the result. Of course, if I do all the same things in French, I can put together a pretty reasonable recording. But it feels like cheating, somehow, even though I need to do it in English. I think if you want see language skills in action without "cheating", you need to record actual conversations.
But why would most people want to put in hundreds or thousands of hours of study and practice without some connection to the language? That connection might occasionally be an emotional connection, or an intellectual fascination with language as such. But there's no denying that C1- and C2-level skills take a lot of work, and that's hard to justify without a corresponding need or passion. Or to put it another way, if you search YouTube for whitewater kayakers, you'll see people soaring off the edge of 15-meter waterfalls and landing gracefully. And if you "scratch the surface" of these kayakers, you'll find people who have really intense connections to their sport. How could it be any other way? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 20 of 45 14 January 2013 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
As we can see from the numerous "wanderlust" threads here, for those bitten by the language bug, a large part of the appeal is the allure of the unknown and unfamiliar. But becoming highly proficient in a language is not possible without a long process of taking the unknown and unfamiliar and transforming it into well-known "old hat." Metaphorically speaking, the language bachelor may dream about many beautiful young languages with their mysterious alluring smiles, but if he wants to live out his dream of truly belonging with one of these languages, he has to court it, make promises to it and keep them, marry and move in with it, and spend years waking up and looking at it in the morning before it showers, dresses, does its hair, and puts on its makeup. If he sticks with this language through the years and does all this, he may end up happily married to the language, but it's not the same as he was imagining back at the beginning, because it's a hard-earned reality and not just a distant foreign fantasy. 21 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 45 14 January 2013 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have no doubt that for some people learning a language is a hobby or a passion akin to whitewater kayaking, but for many people it's more mundane: it's basically exposure. Most of us here are language hobbyists. We are doing this for fun. But in many areas of the world, multilingualism is a fact of life and often part of the job or one's business. In many cases, people hardly study the languages at all; they basically pick them up. I have to say that the idea for this thread came from seeing this youtube video interview of a polyglot who was promoting a book on language learning. When the interviewer asked if this person had learned all their languages using these tips, it turned out it really wasn't like the book at all. It went something like this: this person was born in Europe, moved to the USA at age 5, grew up in a Mexican neighborhood learning Spanish, then learned Portuguese in high school and hung out with some Brazilians. By now we are up to 4 languages. Then over to Europe for a year here and a year there. So now we're up to six languages with excellent pronunciation. And there's more to come. Now, what about the tips in the book? I'm sure that they are useful and founded on this person's experience, but still you have to wonder why little mention is made of having lived in all these countries at relatively young ages. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6151 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 22 of 45 15 January 2013 at 10:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is outweighed by motivation as the most important factor. Taking Irish and French as an example, a) I learnt Irish from the ages of three to eighteen. b) I live in Ireland, and I've stayed in a number of all Irish speaking Gaeltachts. (I've friends who work for the Irish language station TG4) a) I've learnt French from the age of eleven. b) I visited France on a number of school trips, and also many times as an adult. Yet, it was Spanish that I managed to get to Basic Fluency first even though I started in my thirties. I'm basing my capabilities on the Cervantes Institute placing me at the end of the B2 stream, and getting 90% at the end. This was achieved through motivation and a lot of good advice I got here at HTLAL. Now I know how to learn languages, I'm returning to Irish and French Edited by DaraghM on 15 January 2013 at 10:23am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 23 of 45 15 January 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have a 19 year old friend who speaks five languages extremely well (C1 and above in each of them). She has a Czech mother, and a Spanish father, and spent much of her childhood living in different countries. The ease with which she speaks German, Spanish, French, Czech, and English is both breathtaking and enviable.
She has given me language lessons, and has never told me that I should have started out when I was a baby, and moved with my parents to lots of countries - because that advice would be completely useless to me as an adult. So, she teaches me with my current circumstances in mind, and adapts her advice accordingly. Now, if the people mentioned in the videos really are misrepresenting how they learned languages, then we can rightly be upset about it. Perhaps, though, they realise that their primary audience no longer has the chance to be a child again and live "in country" for years on end. That is, perhaps their advice is aimed at adult learners, with responsibilities, geographical limitations, and no background in language learning. In other words, I am not sure they are being dishonest, but rather, they have to adapt their advice to the actual (rather than ideal) circumstances of their audience as best they can. Edited by Splog on 15 January 2013 at 11:43am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4358 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 24 of 45 15 January 2013 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe it's a matter of strategy. If, for instance, you want to learn greek, don't bother with drills about Zeus, or how the garden is blossomed (do you say that in English?). I am a big fan of lists of vocabulary on subjects. It helps me a lot.
Pretending to speak when all you know are standard phrases, while being unable to creatively produce new sentences to express your thoughts, I don't count that as speaking! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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