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Fluent - for the first 30 words... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5114 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 15 16 October 2013 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I cannot refrain from talking to anyone who crosses my path, and who I suspect have a different mother
tongue. When I this evening got back to Oslo and had a taxi driver who obviously had an African background, in spite of having very little accent in the few sentences we exchanged I therefore immediately proceeded to ask where he came from originally. He turned out to be from Ethiopia, and was overjoyed when I then correctly guessed that he spoke Amharic as his mother tongue. He even asked me if I was not Norwegian - not because I did not look our sound Norwegian, but because most Norwegians are shy and keep to themselves. He thanked me profusely for the conversation at the end of the trip, and said he was happy to for once have a passenger who did not just give him the address and then shut up for the rest of the journey. That is however not the point of this story. What really caught me by surprise, was that in the few sentences we had first exchanged, I could hardly detect any accent, and would have declared him "fluent" after the first couple of minutes. However, as we continued to speak I realised that his vocabulary was extremely weak, and his grammar as well as his pronunciation was really bad once he was out of his usual "taxi-Norwegian". It is not that I was unaware of the phenomenon, I had just never experienced such an extreme contrast before. I assume most people have their stronger and weaker points within a foreign language, and the more unfamiliar the subject is, the less sure of yourself you will feel, but hearing someone going from sounding almost fluent to really weak within less than two minutes was a first. I suddenly understood why some here are really persistent in keeping fluency and proficiency apart. Do the rest of you have similar experiences? I should perhaps add that in Tallinn today, I also heard a salesman of souvenirs speak what sounded like really good Russian, but with a slight accent. It was quite chilly, and he had wrapped himself into as much clothes and as many blankets as he possibly could, because he was in effect sitting outside. So I told him in Russian that I could hear that his Russian was very good, but that he did not sound like a Russian, could I ask him where he was from? He looked at me with a look full of resignation over the blankets, and said "Egypt". I still feel bad for him. When you have grown up in a warm country, with lots of warm, smiling people, sitting outside in the cold in a foreign country with lots of indifferent strangers must be the third degree of hell. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4033 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 15 16 October 2013 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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That Tallinn part made me really uncomfortable because this is what I got out of it;
Egypt: -warm and smiling people Estonia: -third degree of hell, full of cold indifferent people I am not saying this was your intention but the phrasing made me think this. I am also saying this because I find it tremendously useful to know how I come off, because people very often misunderstand me so avoiding misunderstandings is a priority. Also I haven't noticed this probably mostly because I have trouble talking to people in my own language, let alone in another one. Edited by Henkkles on 16 October 2013 at 11:01pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4416 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 3 of 15 16 October 2013 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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That reminds me of these videos, a kid in India who learns just enough of many languages to sell his merchandise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PrleqeCAPw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-URtZfIgKAU 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5114 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 15 16 October 2013 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for letting me know. No it was certainly not my intention to describe Estonia in a negative way. The Estonians were very friendly, and kind in every way. I am very sorry if that is how I came across. It is just that he was sitting outside, in the tourist area, where the tourists just care about getting the cheapest souvenirs. They could not have cared less if he came from Mars. I would have hated to sit there in the cold, and I already come from a country where it is cold, and where it s perfectly normal to not know the neighbours who have lived next door to you the last 12 years. But I also know the warm feeling of living in a culture like e.g Spain, where you know all your neighbours and their lives and their relatives, and I have spoken to quite a lot of people in Norway who come from further South who suffer because of that contrast. But what do I know? For all I know this was a successful polyglot who was sitting there to practise as many languages as possible, and who finds this to be his dream job. Perhaps he has married into an Estonian family, and is the proud patriarch of a family. Perhaps he finds he breathes better in the cold, like I do when I sleep with an open window in 20 degrees below zero, but cover myself with warm duvets and hot water bottles. I try to be very careful not to say anything negative about any culture, and I liked Estonia. That did not make this contrast less harsh. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 4880 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 5 of 15 17 October 2013 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I've experienced on numerous occasions having a taxi driver from my city centre to home being from another country, Polish being a big number, but they
could speak English enough to ask where I wanted to go to but they had difficulty in understanding some things I would say. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4114 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 15 17 October 2013 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
I think what you experienced has much to do with a mixture of the need to learn a language in order to make a living (not for the sake of learning a language and its cultural by-products, like I would dare say most of us here do), and the contextual constraints of that very profession. The guy has repeated a core of words every day until he's essentially perfected them, but outside his job, he probably still has contact with friends from home and speaks Amharic or a mixture of both languages at home. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5210 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 7 of 15 17 October 2013 at 6:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't refrain from trotting out my hobby-horse and pointing out how the loose use of the term fluency gets us
into trouble. Yes, you can speak fluently with limited vocabulary and grammar in a small number phrases that you master with good pronunciation. But that's not the same as speaking a language proficiently. OK, so much for my usual rant. What we are talking about here is something that we all experience to some extent in our foreign languages. Many times we are comfortable to a certain level in a language and beyound that we fall apart. The Spanish that I know is very fluent but if I have to talk about a complex subject I start to feel out of my depth. The limits of my vocabulary become apparent and my grammar can no longer follow. All this is normal because just like the taxi driver or the souvenir salesman in their respective languages, my exposure to Spanish is limited to certain subjects. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5114 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 15 17 October 2013 at 8:15am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, like I said, I am not unfamiliar with the phenomenon, but so far my experience had been people who might get out of their depth in unfamiliar subjects, but who have a core base. My Spanish vocabulary would not be terribly impressive if I were to discuss the motor of a car either, but my basic Spanish would still be there, with correct grammar and pronunciation. In this case the language totally fell apart. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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