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Are we being too hard on the polyglots? | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6235 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 65 of 72 06 January 2012 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm simply tired of definitions of "fluency" that a lot of people would fail at except for being able to wave the magic wand of "but I'm a native speaker", while people with bigger vocabularies, more professionally acceptable grammar, but who have a mild accent or who can't recite nursery rhymes or recognize a particular pop song are told they're "not fluent". It seems absurd, when people with far more different accents (from different areas where the same language is spoken), who have different household tools and different names for some shared ones, and a different popular culture are not held to the same standard. My point is that quite a few criteria that sound ridiculous when applied to a native speaker also sound ridiculous to me when applied to non-native speakers to determine whether or not they're 'fluent'. And while 'fluent' has been discussed to death on this forum, I'm tired of definitions of it that destroy any semblance of meaning - whether it's "I can say hello, I'm fluent!" or "only people who are native-like in every way I care about are fluent!" Words change, people stretch them, and others complain when they consider the changes to be going too far and excessively corroding meaning.
And I consider that to be something I cannot agree with. Perhaps I've just spent too much of my life with people who read and write English at what I'd call an educated native level, speak and comprehend it better than many native speakers I know, but have a mild accent, occasionally forget words for kitchen appliances, and don't know many nursery rhymes. Or perhaps I've just spent too much time around different groups of English speakers, who have never even heard of each other's favorite songs and movies. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5211 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 66 of 72 06 January 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
^ As I've said, it was never my intent to define fluency on some "universal" level. It's why, both times, I explicitly qualified the subjective nature of my interpretations:
I honestly don't care at all to maintain any dogmatic views of what any words mean. As far as I'm concerned, if a word can be generally understood to mean something, then, by functional definition, that's one of its possible meanings. And since many people use words differently, words come in many shades of meaning. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, and I only care for the beautiful scent, not the floral terminology. So to repeat (as seems necessary, given all the inflamed controversy my humble post seems to have ignited), I don't think the definition I used is its sole "correct" definition. It was merely the functional definition I used for the sake of establishing what level of fluency I was referring to in the rest of my comment. I still wouldn't refer to myself as being fluent in any language I couldn't speak like a native, but those are my own standards, and I'm not trying to "impose" them on anybody. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6499 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 67 of 72 06 January 2012 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't see this discussion as virulently inflamed. Most of us just don't buy that you have to speak like a native to claim fluency. And fluency in a number of languages on one level or another is something you need to qualify as a polyglot, so with your definition there would hardly be any polyglots left (and even less hyperpolyglots). In other words: with your well justified enthousiasm for the skills and knowledge of native speakers you rob the term "polyglot" of any meaning insofar we are speaking about this world, and in the process you overlook that some apparently fluent, but not native speakers actually perform tasks in their learned languages which many native speakers couldn't do, such as discussing complex financial schemes or African butterflies with native specialists on an equal footing without preparation. They may choose the wrong gender once in a while, and their r's may not be rolling as as the proverbial stone, but their accomplishments in such a case would by most of us be taken as proof that they are fluent speakers. Edited by Iversen on 06 January 2012 at 1:56am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5211 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 68 of 72 06 January 2012 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
...which was precisely the point of my entire post! I'm so glad we've finally reached a consensus. :)
Oh, do not misunderstand me—I did not use native fluency as the standard because I think natives are inherently the most talented and gifted wielders of any given language. I used them as the standard because they intrinsically comprise the very essence of the language itself as a living and existing thing. Without the demographic backbone of a native community, what justification is there anymore for all the arbitrary quirks of any given language? No language can be intrinsically correct with respect to an authoritative internalization of logic, as even the assigning of a phoneme to a word is itself arbitrary. Thus, it is the native speakers whose existence legitimizes the language, and I consequently think it acceptable to define fluency in a language with respect to the degree of adherence to the native community's conventions. That said, I just noticed something that I probably should have clarified a looong time ago. A lot of you seem to be making a big deal about the issue of accents and sounding like a native speaker. But if you'll notice my past posts, I never actually mentioned "sounding" like a native. I distinctly referenced having the fluency of a native. Fluency refers to the speed at which one can communicate one's thoughts—NOT how well one can mimic a particular phonetic aesthetic. If you can effortlessly describe how your day went like a native speaker, you can communicate fluidly and are therefore fluent. If, however, you struggle to piece together the grammar and vocabulary to describe how your day went, but you manage to articulate what you do say with the most flawless accent, then congratulations: You have an impeccable accent, but you're not fluent. Edited by nway on 06 January 2012 at 2:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6715 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 69 of 72 06 January 2012 at 4:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with you, but there are at least two "polyglots" who consider themselves fluent by your definition except that their sole topic of conversation is how many languages they speak, how they learn languages, what a genius they are and what a divine talent they have, etc. On those subjects, they may appear fluent, but ask them to discuss world affairs, what they had for breakfast, or any topic other than themselves and they would be hopelessly lost. I called it ME-FLUENCY. I'm fluent as long as I talk about ME. Edited by translator2 on 06 January 2012 at 4:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4842 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 70 of 72 06 January 2012 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Perhaps the difference between a native and a near-native can be found in these moments
when a native says "I'm a native and since I don't know this, it mustn't be universally known to natives", whereas the near-native quietly thinks "As a non-native since I don't know this, it must be my foible." Fortunately they both have to then acknowledge, "Oh, my I have so much to learn yet!," which to me is far more unifying than the above is divisive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 5865 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 71 of 72 06 January 2012 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
what do you have against me-fluency? I'm definitely a me-fluency kind of guy in my own native language (somehow all of us are) and of course, I'd like to be that fluent in the languages I'm trying to understand.. (that me-conversation is the most important thing in the whole word for me) btw, Are we being too hard on the polyglots? when I see a post like "Fluent in Mandarin in 3 months?" yes, I am (well, not so much :P) Edited by tmp011007 on 06 January 2012 at 9:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5807 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 72 of 72 07 January 2012 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
:-) Which means they're not beyond B1 on the CEFR scale, because that's the last mention of talking on "familiar topics". 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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