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Please, proficiency not fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6724 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 33 of 59 14 August 2010 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well, there are two practically set phrases in English, "he is fluent in ...", "he speaks fluent ...". An average educated person has heard them and has a general sense of what those are about. Now, whether the connection of "fluent" to "flow", "fluid", "influx", etc, is obvious may be hard to agree on. What is easier to duscuss is whether noticing that connection would make much difference in figuring out what it means "to be fluent in". I would argue that it is not entirely useless, but at the same not of that much help, because the general meaning of the two phrases quoted above is already known, and I don't see it providing any greater clarity as to the level of proficiency implied, nor to exactly which language skills it does or does not apply - for that one really needs to know the technical definition, rather than try to reason one's way towards a precise technical definition based on etymology. Edited by frenkeld on 14 August 2010 at 8:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5079 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 34 of 59 14 August 2010 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think this is the point: The average person will be happy with his general sense and defend it, while people trying to learn something will have a moment of illumination when told what the actual meaning is, where the word comes from, and why the wrong/vague/more or less meaningless semantic connection was made. Isn't this what a language forum is all about, learning something about languages, "even" your native one? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 35 of 59 14 August 2010 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yes, and that's what I mean by "except for languages".
Both my parents were teachers, so I think they qualify as at least average in terms of education. I've got a degree and I'm awaiting award of a second --which included English language to degree level which I got a distinction for-- so please don't presume to tell me what an average educated English speaker does and doesn't know.
We don't need to agree, because you are wrong.
"Fluent" in the technical sense literally means "with flow". English speakers do not know this unless they are specialists in language. It's a fact, and there is a native English speaker telling you this now. To an average English speaker, there is no concept of "flow" related with "fluency". The etymological link to "flow" is obscured, and the concept represented by "fluency" is nothing more than "good at". Have another look at this thread -- that's the whole reason it's here: people don't get what the word is supposed to mean. English is a language that has lost almost all of its synthetic character -- English speakers have very little feel for etymology. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 36 of 59 14 August 2010 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
A word that the average English speaker will not understand is not English. "Fluency" in its technical sense is specialist jargon. So I'd say that learning the technical sense of the word isn't a question of learning something about English, but more about learning something about linguistics. I would agree that learning about linguistics is an admirable goal. So in that vein, here's something about linguistics: There is no such thing as a common error. Anything said by a large number of native speakers must by considered "correct". By that token, there is nothing "wrong" in using "fluent" to mean "good at". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5079 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 37 of 59 15 August 2010 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think we agree in general, but I don't understand what you mean by this: You cannot mean that the English language is restricted to some average vocabulary that can be understood by every average person? Isn't English said to be one of the languages with the largest vocabularies at all? You want to say that the biggest part of this is not English because it is not in the repertoire of the average speaker? Many years ago I learned that every speaker, even the most educated one, has command of only a limited vocabulary, that is a part of his native language, but never the entire corpus. And I don't see how it could be any different. Thinking about my command of German this is certainly very true, and I know that there are people with some words less than I know, so I don't understand this argument, sorry. And I never heard about a theory that excludes foreign words from the actual language. I mean, fluent may be of foreign origin, and I can't say if most people feel it is a foreign word or a loan word, but it is clearly adapted to the structure of the English language: It is not fluentus, fluendo or something similar. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5229 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 38 of 59 15 August 2010 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
frenkeld, people learn words differently in their native language and other languages. When you are studying English as a foreign language you will most likely connect 'fluid' and 'fluent' since they sound similar to you and it's easier to remember them by association. But if you are a native you will just learn that "he speaks fluent French" means "he speaks good French", you are not sorting words by their similarity and remembering them by association when you are learning to speak your native language. here is one example: I just asked my English-native boyfriend what being fluent means to him. He said that it means speaking without making to much 'uhhms' while, at the same time, being understandable (he met a Spanish guy once who spoke very fast English but no one had a clue what he is saying). Then I asked him does he see the connection between words 'fluent' and 'fluid' and he gave me a weird look :). He said he didn't see a connection at all, except that they sound kind of similar and asked me what connection I see. I explained: "fluids flow and when you are fluent words 'flow' from your mouth". he then said that he never had that association in his head (until I put it there :) ). Now, about the topic. I totally agree that 'proficiency' would describe things more clearly since it includes all aspects of the language. However, I see the bigger 'problem' in defining what it means that someone 'speaks the language'. C2 level is proficient, no doubts about that, but many people who speak foreign languages are not at the C2 level (at least not in all of the language related skills). I think this would probably need to be left to the individual definitions. For me, I'd say that if all of your skills are at least at the B2, you can claim you speak the language (since you will be OK in most of the everyday situations and have a good base to progress fast in case you need to, e.g. for professional purposes). However, other people would say that someone whose oral expression is on a high level while other skills might even be nonexistent (like writing), also speaks the language, and that might be a perfectly valid claim, too. Edited by Aineko on 15 August 2010 at 12:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6724 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 39 of 59 15 August 2010 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The possibility that my non-native background may have something to do with my insistence that the connection is "obvious" had occurred to me. The thing is, my English, while not near-native, isn't fully "learned" either - I came to the US at the age of 18 with what was probably some sort of intermediate level and, being in a technical field, have never done any further formal study of it since 1979. The rest of the language has been acquired over the years by immersion, so a lot of the vocabulary was not learned through torture by flashcards or meticulous linguistic analysis, but just sort of happened, so I am not sure whether my non-native status has much to do with it. Perhaps physics courses that touched upon fluids had something to do with my being aware of what they do, I don't know. My main peeve is that etymology should not be used to legislate what the word should mean, which is luckily aided by the fact that most people are not in the habit of thinking in that direction anyway when they already know the word to some degree. When they don't, even the natives are not at all unlikely to try to guess the meaning of a word through the words they already know, but "fluency" in a language is a widely enough known concept for that habit not to kick in.
I will presume to tell you that if you asked your parents to think of which words in English the word "fluent" may be related to, they wouldn't have great difficulties coming up with a few examples. What is likely, however, is that when you had your big family debate about whether "fluent" corresponded to C1, C2, or above, you all had a good enough sense not to try to figure that out through etymology, so it never even came up. Edited by frenkeld on 15 August 2010 at 1:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6724 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 40 of 59 15 August 2010 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I very much agree that etymology is very enjoyable in its own right; no one who likes languages can possibly be uninterested in the origin of "interesting" words. It is also an obvious necessity to have precise technical definitions in an academic subject like linguistics. To what extent the formal terminology can always reflect the etymology of a word is murkier. There would have been nothing illogical in using the adjective "fluent", in the sense of flowing easily, to describe the ease of reading and writing as well as speaking, so the fact that its formal use, and to some degree even its common meaning, is confined to speaking cannot be justified on etymological grounds alone. Edited by frenkeld on 15 August 2010 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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