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How do polyglots do it? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5219 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 65 of 159 09 January 2014 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The question of whether it's harder to go from C1 to C2 in a "hard" language like Japanese than in a "easier"
language like German is intriguing and difficult to answer. I certainly don't have the answer. But it raises two points that I would like to address. When we speak of the intrinsic difficulties of languages, we refer to two things. First, the writing system. A different way of writing is a killer. Second, the structural distance between one's native language and the target language. I think we can safely assume that languages related to one's own are easier to learn than more distant ones. At the same time, we notice that all speakers learn to speak their native language spontaneously and easily. I don't think that Japanese is harder for Japanese children than German is for German children. There may be some issues of learning academic language for the school systems, but I'm thinking more of speaking the language. Just last night, a Chinese friend was showing me something on his smartphone that is configured in Chinese. I'm always flabbergasted when I see this. I say to myself, how can anybody in the world understand a writing system that is so complicated? But my Chinese friends say to me that French is way more complicated than Chinese, Although I readily admit that the writing system is probably the biggest stumbling block when starting the so- called difficult languages, I don't believe that the speaking systems of languages are hugely different in terms of difficulty. As Benny the Irish polyglot has shown, you can get the basics of any language in three months in the right circumstances. Writing is another story. As I have mentioned earlier, when we talk about time and difficulty in learning languages, we tend to forget the context of learning, and particularly the role of immersion. Learning Mandarin in China and Mandarin in New York city are two vastly different experiences. All this makes me think that when discuss polyglots and hyperpolyglots, we never refer to their writing skills. To my knowledge we rarely see -- I may be wrong -- blogs or posts of polyglots in other languages. Iversen is the exception that comes to mind. I think we must admit that speaking and writing are two very different skills. Edit: I had written my post before reading Hungringo's post that I totally agree with. Edited by s_allard on 09 January 2014 at 5:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3777 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 66 of 159 09 January 2014 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course, when I said that Japanese written with Latin characters would be easier for Hungarians than German, I had in mind exclusively linguistic considerations. However, as we all know, languages are socio-cultural phenomena and we can't just separate them from their culture. As a Hungarian I share cultural references, a common history and way of life with my German-speaking Austrian neighbours. With Japanese people I might share some grammatical concepts, but that's it, we don't really have common cultural reference points.
Culture can become crucially important when you are moving from C1 to C2. At that level it is not just about using the right suffix and knowing the irregular verbs, but you have to be able to act and speak within a cultural context. The more alien this cultural context is, the more difficult will be to get it right. You need to understand not only allusions to historical figures and literary works, but also what, when and to whom NOT to say. Edited by Hungringo on 09 January 2014 at 4:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4322 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 67 of 159 09 January 2014 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I find writing the easiest way to tell if someone is C2 or not. Because I am a native level English speaker when I was an academic I used to get lots of people asking me to read their papers before submission. I was always amazed how bad the writing can be of someone who apparently speaks English at a good C1 level. While bad writing by first-year students writing in their L1 can be explained by lack of knowledge about how to write (how to structure and argument, how to edit etc) it can't be the full story for well-established professors who are writing in a foreign language, who certainly have lots of knowledge about how to write in their L1. My guess is that vocabulary and syntactical structures are much simpler in everyday spoken speech compared to professional writing, so weaknesses in language skills can often be masked if all you have to judge someone by is by their conversational abilities. It's relatively easy to write accurate, but obtuse text; what is really hard is to write about a complex subject in a simple and accessible fashion. I think that only happens when you have a really nuanced grasp of a language's vocabulary and style. Edited by patrickwilken on 09 January 2014 at 4:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Guests Guest Group Joined 7165 days ago 0 - 22 votes Logged on | Message 68 of 159 09 January 2014 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Writing isn't real as far as language is concerned. You can find a C2 learner who writes
better than a native high school dropout, but you'll never find one who can speak better. | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4322 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 69 of 159 09 January 2014 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
This seems to be conflating "native" with "highest level" obtainable (see prior post). I am confident that there are high school dropouts who speak poorer English than a strong C2 speaker. I know because I have met them. Edited by patrickwilken on 09 January 2014 at 6:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3910 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 70 of 159 09 January 2014 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't believe this. I know a guy here at my job that is Spanish native (colombian) and speaks portuguese better than some brazilians and writes it better too. I'm not sure but I guess people use to create some sort of aura around native speaking skills like it is an impenetrable shield. I think if a person lives long enough in a country, using it's language as primary source on a daily basis, I don't see why is not possible to speak it even better than some natives. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5219 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 71 of 159 09 January 2014 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I also see a lot of academic and business writing in French and English. And I wouldn't go so far as to say that good writing is indicative of C2 level but it writing well is certainly a skill in itself that must be learned quite distinctly from speaking. For native speakers, it is of course highly correlated with schooling in the language. I have no doubt that certain highly educated foreign learners can write better than poorly educated native speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Guests Guest Group Joined 7165 days ago 0 - 22 votes Logged on | Message 72 of 159 09 January 2014 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's impossible. An L2 learner is only imitating the language. They're only speaking something that resembles it. They'll never be able to speak as well as someone with an innate understanding. Native speakers cannot make mistakes when speaking, and there's no way an adult learner can ever reach that level. Unless you're talking about silly prescriptive rules, a native speaker always wins. Edited by swefn on 09 January 2014 at 7:49pm |
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