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Do you speak it like a native? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6042 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 41 of 58 16 April 2010 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't believe this is a good way of testing someone's language skills. What it tests is someone's cultural knowledge. When I was studying German at uni we read a lot of books by German authors to improve our knowledge of German culture. What made me mad was the fact that we read the English translations. Your approach assumes that every native German speaker has been exposed to the same German culture. Not everyone has!!! E.G. If a German family moved to Canada and raised their child speaking German the child would in my opinion be a fluent native speaker even if he or she didn't understand the cultural reference of the phrase. So what you are testing isn't whether someone is a native speaker of German but wheather someone has been exposed to German culture. Edited by John Smith on 16 April 2010 at 3:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5435 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 42 of 58 16 April 2010 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Some people take the whole thing way too seriously here.
C2 is a very rare carbon isotope with -4 neutrons. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 43 of 58 16 April 2010 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a native German speaker who grew up in America and I only fully understood the first one. If the phrases were said in context, I'm pretty sure I would have understood all three of them though.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5344 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 44 of 58 16 April 2010 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
音・訓策略だ！ The Japanese word 'baka' (stupid, 馬鹿) is written with the characters 馬 (kun-reading: uma; on-reading: ba; horse) and 鹿 (kun: shika, ka; on: roku; deer). 者 (mono) is a suffix that means 'person'. So ウマシカ者 (umashikamono) is a clever way to say that someone is a ばか (baka), by using different kanji readings. (For the uninitiated: Chinese characters adapted to Japanese use have two readings*: kun-yomi, which consist of native words, and on-yomi, which are used in loanwords that have been borrowed from Chinese languages at various points in history. *Of course, kanji can and do have multiple kun and on readings, or then lack one or the other.) I'll try to think of a Finnish example that can be used in this challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5344 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 45 of 58 16 April 2010 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Can you figure out the meanings this sentence has?
Morsian katosi, mutta vainukoira pääsi vihille. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 46 of 58 16 April 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Québec French example:
Steak, blé d'Inde, patates. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5435 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 47 of 58 16 April 2010 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Bifteck, maïs, pommes de terre ? The steak and potatoes apparently come from English, but for "Indian wheat" (sweet corn) I needed a dictionary. If my guess is correct at all... 1 person has 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 48 of 58 16 April 2010 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
The reason I am vehemently opposed to this sort of example for testing purposes is that it is very difficult to decide what is the right answer. This particular example, like most of these things, can have multiple right answers. Since the author does not tell us what to do, I'm going to assume that we are supposed to explain the meaning or the cultural references. On one level, the three items are the main ingredients (in vernacular terms) of a well-known dish called "paté chinois" or in English "Shepherd's pie". I don't know if there is a mistake, but the meat would normally be hamburger meat or "steak haché" The fact that the "haché" was left out leads me to think that this quote refers to the character, Thérèse Paré, in the very popular comedy show, La petite vie, that ran on Radio-Canada from 1993 to 1999. This character is forever trying to make a proper "paté chinois" based on the ingredients "steak, blé d'inde, patates" from the mother, Jaqueline Paré, also known as Moman. Since the show has been off the air for many years now except for a few specials, this cultural reference is fading. Most adolescents don't know what this is about. Neither should one assume that adults know it as well. As I and others have said before, this is not really about language but more about cultural knowledge. It's more a form of Trivial Pursuit than about learning languages. Edited by s_allard on 16 April 2010 at 10:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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