|
 |
Are you literate in languages you study? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5703 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 18 30 March 2014 at 4:49pm | IP Logged |
|
Interesting question. I think when it comes to languages with familiar scripts many people just include reading and writing in their definition of fluent, and leave it at that, without commenting further. Also, people define fluency differently - for some it mainly/only refers to speaking abilities, for others it means the whole package. But I don't think I've ever seen anyone say something along the lines of "I'm fluent in X, and I'm also able to read and write in it". It just doesn't sound right to me.
I'm studying Japanese right now and reading and writing are definitely my weakest areas. They're going to lag behind for a long time, and I actually wish I could neglect kanji more than I can, but that would limit access to native materials unfortunately. But if it wasn't for that, I would actually be happy to just learn to speak well and worry less about writing. I would rather be the person who speaks very well but can't write much, than the person who speaks reasonably well and writes reasonably well but isn't very good at anything. When I read, I read for information about things I'm interested in, not for language learning primarily, and I have very little interest in reading fiction. So yes, I'll need to learn to read, but mainly for convenience when travelling, and so that I can have access to Japanese perspectives from untranslated material. I also need it to be able to study audio sources. I'm not going to suddenly start trying to read everything I want/need to read in Japanese just cause I'm learning the language. Unless there's a particular reason why I need to learn it in Japanese, English/Norwegian is just faster for me to learn from. It takes a lot of work to learn to read and write Japanese, so I want it to be useful. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 10 of 18 30 March 2014 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
|
Reading is important to me, and for this part I have basic fluency in Italian, Polish, Spanish, Belarusian and Ukrainian. To claim to speak them, I just need to speak them, heh. I can already communicate but I'm not satisfied with my level.
Beyond my uni assignments I've never read stuff in Latin, though. I'd say I have the necessary linguistic knowledge, but not the cultural one. And I'm not sure I can effortlessly handle the free word order and the case functions. Aiming to improve all that during the dead languages challenge. I also want to get a textbook for doctors and something about "Latin for tourists" if possible. I also don't consider writing important in Latin, but in the languages I picked up naturally (after English and Finnish) it's more or less the final hurdle. I can also probably write in Esperanto, without a dictionary but with a lot of time to remember the vocab and suffixes. I abandoned it because there's no content I truly care about. It's definitely a case of speaking and writing better than I understand, hehe. Edited by Serpent on 30 March 2014 at 5:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 11 of 18 30 March 2014 at 10:16pm | IP Logged |
|
I have read books in about... 8 or 9 languages? (Dutch, English, German, French,
Russian, Swedish, Romanian, Breton and half a book in Hebrew, plus Latin texts). Out of these I would say I speak the first seven only, and would claim fluency in Dutch, English and French (to an advanced level). I would also say I speak the next four, but fluently... Breton and Hebrew I don't really read or speak very well, but I can structurally deal with both of them and have written short messages in them. Korean is quite hard for me to read and write (like trying to break a wall with a toothbrush). Portuguese... I've never tried, but I probably could relatively quickly. In Icelandic I know for sure that I can't, but I have no structural knowledge of Icelandic beyond basic and elementary phrases. However, here's the thing - when I teach, I can give instructions in Dutch, English, French and Russian. (although I don't usually want to use Russian for this purpose, I can). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4572 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 12 of 18 30 March 2014 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
|
So far fate has led me to learn only languages with other alphabets. I have read books in my native English and also in Russian and Armenian, and hope to do that in the future with Farsi.
When I write Armenian, my spelling is almost perfect, and I could also say that abot Russian if it didn't have all those soft signs between consonants. Farsi has a number of consonants with the same or similar pronounciation, so I'm not at the point where I can write it effortlessly. I am shocked that I can write it at all. Even some second-generation Persian-Americans, who are fluent, cannot make that claim. In the future, even if I just nibble around the edges of a serious study of Mandarin, I would not even bother with studying the Hanzi until I was fully fluent in Putonghua, which may be beyond the level of my intelligence. For me just reading and writing is not enough. It's like sitting on the bench and not being able to play. However, I have found that reading out loud, for example, magazine articles or even advertisements has improved my accent so much sometimes that I sound like a native speaker. Visualizing the written word has forced me to concentrate on every syllable. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4152 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 18 31 March 2014 at 8:35am | IP Logged |
|
I had been thinking about that lately. So far it had never occured to me not to read/write in the targer language. On the contrary: I love books and newspapers etc. and I love to write.
Lately though I have been tempted to let hebrew reading/writing go, and simply learn how to speak. And then I understood that the only reason for that is me being lazy, and nothing else. So I'm learning how to do that as well. I'm sure I'll make a lot of mistakes, but that's life. I really think we should always give writing a try even in the more frustrating languages, because the feeling of accomplishment will be even greater in the end. Unless you just need the speaking skills for touristic reasons, or you don't intend to read anything in your TL, of course. In that case, at least you will be able to speak, and perhaps save the writing part for later (?). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4433 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 14 of 18 31 March 2014 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
|
I am an avid reader, and for me, being able to read literature as well as non-fiction in the original language is one of the most important motivating factors for learning a language. If I take the two languages I am studying the most at the moment, Russian and Romansh, my reading skills are certainly much more advanced than my speaking skills. I am still at a relatively basic level in Russian, but this does not stop me from working through newspaper articles or other short texts in the original. As for Romansh, I am not far from "fluent" in reading, but would have a hard time keeping up a conversation (due to lack of practise). If I had not got into Romansh, I would never have discovered a whole new litterary tradition and would never have read such excellent authors as Ursicin Derungs, Silvio Camenish or Donat Cadruvi. And although all the Russian classics can be found translated into most "big" languages, I know there is a lot of interesting contemporary Russian literature waiting for me, once I get my Russian up to the required level.
In short if I ever "brag" about being fluent, it most certainly includes reading, and reading a lot. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4045 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 18 31 March 2014 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
|
For me, reading is much easier than speaking, except for Chinese. My speaking lags behind the reading.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4462 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 16 of 18 31 March 2014 at 9:46pm | IP Logged |
|
I think languages like Chinese will be more suitable for/in the future:
1. in the future, intelligent creatures are likely to communicate telepathically (by using/projecting ideas, and not spoken words) 2. when it is necessary to write things, it will be easier to write ''ideas'' than pronunciations (in ufology literature, there are cases of people being abducted by aliens, aliens don't talk, their speech apparatus is underdeveloped, they are said to communicate telepathically... some abductees claim having seen ''alien script'', which is, reportedly, more similar to Egyptian script and Hanzi than to any ''phonetic'' alphabet we know). Edited by Medulin on 31 March 2014 at 9:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
