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Using Slang | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4842 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 26 04 May 2012 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lately I have done a Assimil lesson, and one of the sentences was:
En ce qui concerne l'argot, nous vous conseillons de ne pas l'utiliser. Or in Enlish: As far as Slang is concerned, we advise you not to use it. What do you guys think? I actually love slang, it feels so good to use it, it really exposses the "soul" of a language and its people, I think. I plainly love it. One argument might be though, that you don't know the exact meaning, the level of vulgarity or something like that, but you can learn that right? You have learned it in your own language... I mean I won't say that beginners should learn slang right away but when you really get the feel of a language and can watch movies for example, then why not use it yourself aswell? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4418 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 2 of 26 04 May 2012 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you completely. Right now I am somewhere between a B1 and a B2 in French,
and I am just starting to learn some slang here and there. Even learning how verlan is formed was fascinating. I think it would definitely not be good to learn at a more basic level (not that I am fluent) as you would not have found your feet with the language yet. It would probably only work if you were living in the country in which the language is spoken, in which case a lot of the slang would be around you everyday. Even right now, I don't learn too much outside of what I encounter. Aren't things like Assimil more for beginners anyway? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nimchimpsky Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5421 days ago 73 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English | Message 3 of 26 04 May 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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One should use slang and everything else when it is appropriate. Therefore, Assimil is talking nonsense. Did they give any reasons as to why we are better off avoiding it?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5191 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 26 04 May 2012 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
If you feel you understand the strength of the expression and the context is safe, then ok, you can test the waters and use slang. But there is never a requirement to use it, and in the wrong places and at the wrong time, it could certainly be inappropriate. When I was a teenager, a bunch of us Québec kids went to spend 2 weeks in Ontario, living with English-speaking families. There were complaints that a lot of the French-speaking kids were using the f-word liberally. Obviously, they didn't understand the strength of the word and thought it was funny. Actually, some kids were using it with their own family and nobody cared because it simply didn't convey the same level of obscenity. Edited by Arekkusu on 04 May 2012 at 9:52pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6966 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 26 04 May 2012 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
The most sensible approach to colloquial language (including slang) that I've seen so far comes from FSI Conversational Finnish. The course does not explicitly teach how to use it nor give exercises to practice active use of it but it provides a colloquial version of every dialogue (both in print and audio) and so even beginners can get some passive knowledge of it. The notes on grammar sometimes point out the differences too. However the course teaches the standard language and expects users to learn to use that variant instead - the colloquial content is there as an adjunct to what the FSI expected from students in the Finnish course. Knowing and using slang in all languages is a matter of sociolinguistics though and can set off strong reactions in native speakers because of the tacit division between native speakers and all other users of the language, fluent or not. This discussion on antimoon and this one from MasterRussian highlight the trickiness about foreigners using slang, and partially explain why Assimil takes such a hardline on teaching slang. For my part, I've had to be careful about using slang when speaking Finnish, Hungarian, Polish or Slovak. On one hand, my use of slang sometimes gives the impression to my friends that I know more than I let on. On the other it sometimes seems rather jarring to use slang since it has a certain air of familiarity or irreverence and native speakers may interpret its use as a sign of a foreigner trying hard to create dubious solidarity or ingratiate him/herself with the native speakers. In addition, I generally speak by the book and it'd be jarring to native speakers when I randomly drop a non-standard characteristic/expression while using otherwise standard language. Edited by Chung on 04 May 2012 at 10:20pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4669 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 6 of 26 05 May 2012 at 1:13am | IP Logged | ||
@Chung:
So what? It's their problem. If they blamed you for exploring all of the fields of their native language (especially if speaking in such manner in everyday life), they would be simply pathetic. On my Persian classes we learn more and more about the colloquial Persian of Teheran and nobody has a problem with that. We're just told what's colloquial and what's official (and what's somewhere in between). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PillowRock Groupie United States Joined 4544 days ago 87 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 26 05 May 2012 at 2:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I would probably think of it this way:
If you haven't yet reached the level of certainty in your grasp of the connotations / vulgarity / insult level / whatever of the expression in question that it no longer occurs to you before using it to think about such things as a piece of generic advice in an Assimil course ...... Then you're probably safer (in some situations literally / physically) not using it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4588 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 8 of 26 05 May 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Great topic! I was confident that I was fluent in Armenian after studying it for 2 years. Then in 2009, a new Armenian language satellite network became available in my area, and I realized I wasn't as fluent as I thought I was. All I had been exposed to prior to that was "textbook Eastern Armenian" and Diaspora Armenian, but not the actual Armenian you would hear on the streets of Yerevan. Even a little language like Armenian has highly developed slang which some highly educated Armenians look down on, because it's not considered "pure" Hayastani Armenian.
However, for me at least, acquiring the slang vocabulary (heavily influenced by Russian) has given a whole new dimension to my language learning experience, and now I try to incorporate the slang into my vocabulary to sound more "authentic." Not every one wants to sound like a robotic TV news anchor reading from a teleprompter. It's funny because today educated Diaspora Armenians from Lebanon or Iran who have never been to Armenia at least understand if not speak the street slang of uneducated hoodlums of Yerevan without even realizing it. Armenian children born in the US are exposed to the cross-currents of Armenian slang long before they know American slang, and what's wrong with that? They have the opportunity to be fully bilingual in 2 living languages which are evolving every day. And with the use of Armenian slang, it's probably less likely that Armenian will become a casualty of English here in the US. I want to emphasize that by slang I do not mean profanity. Some American students beg their Russian teachers to teach them "mat'", which is probably too obscene, even for most locker rooms. But still, sometimes it's those words the censors bleep out on late night TV that are the funniest. Edited by tanya b on 05 May 2012 at 2:59am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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