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Why canīt I speak?!? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| KingM Triglot Senior Member michaelwallaceauthor Joined 7193 days ago 275 posts - 300 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 12 16 November 2005 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, that's better. Conocer implies familiar with, because of course you don't saber those words if you still need to practice them.
I think getting the structure and feel of a language might be the last skill to come, even after you are comfortable with everything else. Even people who are pretty fluent and having been speaking a language for years sometimes come up with awkward constructions. They are not really wrong, per se, but just sound a little off. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7017 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 12 16 November 2005 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's how you can tell that those people don't have that particular language as their mother tongue. In fact, there's a similar thread somewhere on the forum about recognising whether a person is a native speaker or not simply by analysing their writing. The vast majority of people posting on this forum write extremely well considering that, for a great number of them, English is a "learned" language. However, certain phrases they use and constructions they make tend to give the game away. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hagen Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6962 days ago 171 posts - 179 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 11 of 12 17 November 2005 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
At some point the learning curve gets extremely flat for every language. Then it would take years and years to achieve perfection. Most people only spend that much time on one language if they permanently live in the respective country. I've met people who came very close in German, e.g. I had to read their email a second time to decide if it was a German native speaker writing or not, or I had to listen to someone's speach for a minute or two before I could hear the accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7017 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 12 17 November 2005 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Even then I find that there is always a slight hint of an accent or something quite trivial that isn't exactly the same as a native. In fact, I remember reading that a native accent cannot be achieved once a person is older than ???? years (not sure how old you have to be before this "magical" cut-off point occurs). In any case, it doesn't require perfection in order to fully appreciate your chosen language. I've been "fluent" in English and Spanish all my life and I still have to look things up in the dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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