Comments on: “Oh, do you speak [X]?”

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:35:12 +0000

Anka: Yeah. I’m really quite sick of all of the “learn a language in 4 days, EASILY!” nonsense. It gives people the wrong idea about how language learning works. There aren’t any special keys that you can get that magically unlock thousands of words; you just have to learn them, typically one slow word at a time.

I’d read such a graphic novel.

By: anka

anka — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:21:57 +0000

my other favorite situation is when people say: “well, that’s some impressive english, how did you do it?” I mostly respond with something around the lines of “well, (duh), you know, twelve years of hard work still unfinished”

just as if there was a some way of learning a language other than hard work. the person who understood the notion best was, amusingly enough, my capoeira professor. he told me that it works the same with martial arts.

hence badass zen polyglots. someone ought to write a graphic novel about them

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:37:20 +0000

Hey Zero,

Your remark about English speakers not understanding the different fluencies a language can be spoken at is quite true. A lot of people seem to think that there’s some magical line in language learning - before you’ve crossed it, you’re not fluent, after you’ve crossed it, you’re fluent. I wish!

I’ve had people ask me things like “Oh, you’re learning German? When do you think you’ll be done learning it?” I don’t know - never? Isn’t there always something more to learn?

By: Zero

Zero — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:12:11 +0000

Yeh, to ask ‘do you speak X’ is a little ambiguous. Most English speakers don’t even understand the different fluencies a language can be spoken at, and so are completely ignorant.
Also the question ‘how long have you been learning X’ is also pretty irrelevant, and the inferences drawn from these numbers cannot be accurate.

Example
person a: 5 years x 20 minutes a day
person b:1 year x 9 hours a day + lived in the X target language’s country

person C: How long have you been learning X?
A: I’ve been learning X for 5 years.
C: (wow you must be very fluent)
B: I’ve been learning X for 1 year.
C: (you mustn’t really know that much then, you’re still a beginner)

By: luke

luke — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:36:08 +0000

yeah i get the same thing with thai … i’ve been studying it for 2.5 years now, can hang out and talk with my friends in thai all day but still find words that i don’t know. what’s interesting is that i know lots of obscure words that many of my thai friends don’t even know, but sometimes it’s the slang or words from thai dialects that stump me. thai also has lots of words that don’t really have an meaning but are used because they rhyme with words that do have meaning ….

so where i’m going with this is that i do tell people i can speak some thai, but it does sound lackluster … especially since i am studying at a university where i’m the only american (the rest are all thai, with a handful from laos, burma, japan).

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:23:37 +0000

Jack: Yeah, whenever I’m feeling adventurous, I’ll open up one of my Russian books to the grammar tables in the back, which show all of the declension patterns. I’m going to have a hard time just memorizing all of them, which is to say nothing at all of those endings coming to me quickly and effortlessly when I try to speak the language.

Hopefully I’ll get there eventually.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:16:34 +0000

Speaking of ‘complexity’, I have a hard time too with the (incredible) complexity of Russian inflection. It does indeed inhibit the flow — but then again, isn’t that the very definition of ‘fluency’ ? — that things “just plain flow”.

By: Syral

Syral — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:37:28 +0000

Yeh, I find I’m like that with Japanese, been at it here and there and it’s added up but i’m not fluent at all. I say YES to speaking French. WHY? because I can say anything I need to say, 95-100% grammatically correct. I also have a vocabulary i estimate to be well over 6000 words. A 6-year old has around that, and you would certainly say that a 6-year old native speaker speaks that language.

Peace out.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:59:44 +0000

Geoff:

The hard part is if you’ve been studying off and on forever but still aren’t competent enough to give yourself a rating you can be proud of.

That’s exactly where I feel I’m at with German.

Ryan:

I’ve dabbled in Italian and French but never claim that I speak them even though, in some circumstances, I can converse in these languages.

Yeah, exactly. With German, I can speak well enough to get by in a German-speaking area if I needed to, but my speaking would be very rough indeed. I’m studying Russian and French, but I wouldn’t dare say I speak any of either - I just don’t know enough beyond set phrases to feel confident with them.

Funny tales about the Portuguese.

Also, glad to see another language blogger commenting here; I’ve subscribed to your blog.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:24:49 +0000

I suppose that I’m a little uptight about this issue. I’ve dabbled in Italian and French but never claim that I speak them even though, in some circumstances, I can converse in these languages. I say that I’ve studied them but that I don’t know them well. Like you said, it’s a lack-luster response but it’s honest and it won’t get me into trouble.

What if the person asking speaks that language fluently and then starts rattling it off? I did that once to someone who claimed to speak Portuguese. I switched to Portuguese and the person’s eyes got huge. Whoops! One of my Portuguese professors also told me about a situation where a girl applied for a job, claiming to be fluent in Portuguese, and it backfired in the interview. It’s generally best to downplay our abilities in a language that we’re not totally confident in.