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Do you speak it like a native? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 17 of 58 15 April 2010 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
My knowledge of German is very limited; so, I won't weigh in on the specifics of the test phrases. But I do want to raise some methodological issues about the value of these phrases for purposes of assessing C2 levels or native-like fluency. And I would like to pick a bone with the idea of something being "easily understandable to native speakers". The fundamental problem here is the definition of what it means to understand something. As native speakers of a language, we know that in many situations, especially in spoken language (and this applies specifically to comedic discourse which is primarily oral), "understanding" requires making links or connections to historical, linguistic, cultural, geographic and contextual events and facts that obviously go far beyond the definitions in the dictionary. The discussion about understanding the examples given here, in my opinion, can also apply to conversations where we the listener are not participants in the interaction. If I listen to a telephone conversation between two family members discussing family business, how much of the conversation can I really understand? The language of politics is particularly rich in historical and cultural references. Just the names of political parties can be hard to understand. Or what about the political connotations of a neologism like "Obamacare"? I don't follow professional sports much. Indeed, much of the sports news in the media is totally incomprehensible to me. In ice hockey, when they speak of "icing the puck", I really don't know what they are talking about. There's a whole sub-field in linguistics devoted to these complex issues, but I think a fundamental issue for us in this forum is the following question: Does a native or native-like speaker of a language have to "understand" every utterance in the language? Why can native speakers not have different levels of understanding of their own language? Can we not say that a 16 year old high school student may not have the same understanding of the given examples that a 40 year old would have? Should we not speak of superficial or surface understanding versus deep understanding? And how can one measure the level of understanding? Let's say we play a recording of a stand-up comic. Should the we count the number of laughs? Suppose I don't like this kind of humour. I may understand it but not find it funny. But I don't think the creators of the CEFR model were thinking of the problems of understanding jokes or slang in the target language. My "understanding" of the CEFR model is that it is all about the assessing the ability to manipulate actively and passively linguistic structures of varying degrees of complexity. I might go so far as to say that it is more about "surface" understanding. I'll be the first to admit that I have not looked at any examination protocols for the C2 levels. I am much more familiar with the test materials of the Canadian federal government language assessment system. At the highest levels, it's not about plays on words or historical references. It's more about longer utterances, complex grammatical structures and wider vocabulary. Edited by s_allard on 15 April 2010 at 8:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 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 18 of 58 15 April 2010 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
This term is not self-explanatory, so not quite the same as the neologisms I gave, which can be understood without having heard those words before. However, as an item of vocabulary it would be classified as beyond C2 vocabulary, in the realm of what only natives and native-like speakers should know. -- I was the first to point out that these phrases are really to test for native-level understanding of a language, not for the C2 exam, though it is considered by some to reflect that level. The phrases I suggested were interesting from a language point of view and did not require knowledge of any particular field's vocabulary (unlike sports); the neologisms draw on regular words and patterns of word formation that any adult German will know, and same goes for the slang. Only one of the phrases made a cultural reference but could be understood without. For the Canadian French, I did not want to start discussing Charest's policies, but rather suggest the "M'as m'en rappeller" that is seen in the picture as a test of language proficiency. -- That being said, cultural knowledge, not of every field but of a "general knowledge" base, can be essential to judge the impact of certain phrasings, and to avoid making mistakes on a very advanced level of speaking. For example, a friend and I discovered that classifying someone (in this case George Bush) as a "cowboy" has nothing but negative connotations in German, in the sense of a shoot-first-ask-later mentality, while in American English the word also conveys the idea of traditional values, taking care of one's own, and so on. So a German and an American could agree that somebody is a cowboy and not have achieved understanding. An easier example of the place of cultural knowledge in language: an English newspaper recently titled "Karzai closes to final victory as vote counting passes 7 million". If your task is to translate that to German, you may want to call it just a victory, as 'Endsieg' is heavily contaminated. If you don't have something approaching an adult German's amount of general knowledge, there are thousands of such pitfalls. It's the difference between a fluent speaker and a native or native-like speaker that I'm trying to test here, and yes there are people on this forum with a native-like command of the German language; as evidenced by this thread. Edited by Sprachprofi on 15 April 2010 at 2:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sandy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5628 days ago 37 posts - 61 votes | Message 19 of 58 15 April 2010 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The following sentence would be understood by all speakers in the North of England and by most people in the rest of the UK but I would be surprised if any non-native speakers understood it : "That mardy git has got a cob on."
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 20 of 58 15 April 2010 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hi, Spachprofi. I want to dispute this very point here. You argue that the word cowboy in German can have a different connotation from cowboy in English. I would point out that cowboy in English can have different connotations as well, depending on the context. More importantly though, I think the above quote is a bit of an oxymoron. How can a German and an American agree that George Bush is a cowboy if the word cowboy does not mean the same thing in German and in English? I would have said: "So a German and an American could both use the word cowboy and not understand the same thing." Although it is not clear in the original quote, I think we can assume that the German and the American are speaking the same language. They both use cowboy in German or in English, with the ensuing misunderstanding. If we are talking about identical words or loanwords in two languages, this is an example of a faux ami or false friend. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LLF Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5580 days ago 66 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 58 15 April 2010 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
While it's an interesting idea, it's impossible to do without specifying which kind of "native", you are referring to. As you've already pointed out, Americans and Germans can have a different understanding of a single word - which one has the correct "native" understanding ? In general, how can you possibly disentangle the linguistic issues from the cultural issues ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sayumi Groupie Japan Joined 5418 days ago 51 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 22 of 58 15 April 2010 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
That silly twit's in an irritable mood/throwing a fit. I guess it's like うまかばい (umakabai/delicious), the Kyuushuu dialect version of おいしい. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 58 15 April 2010 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would also say that basic common understanding is reached if both parts can agree about the things you have to look for in Bush' behaviour. It would also be reached if they both knew why the other part used the description, even if they might disagree about the use in this specific case. And of course it would also be reached if they just disagreed about the desirability of walking around with a big gun, etc., but agreed that he did just that (not necessarily in a literal sense).
But if one part simply didn't understand why the other could see/couldn't see a cowboy in Mr. Bush, then they wouldn't have understood each other. Apart from that I agree with those that say that not even natives understand everything in their language, - both on the lexical level and because you cannot know the context of many of the things you hear. No need to get a cob over that like the grumpy girl.. Edited by Iversen on 15 April 2010 at 3:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5409 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 24 of 58 15 April 2010 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here is an Japanese example. One said to an idiot "このウマシカ者！" (Kono umashika mono!). Do you Japanese speakers understand it?
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