Academic post ahead, you've been warned.
So since the all of the applications I've been making on things to do for next year revolve around being abroad, I've naturally been thinking a lot about foreign languages recently. In addition to this, I received Goethe-Institut certification as being fluent in German (German version of the TOEFL).
It's an interesting point because, I guess, it was nice to receive official confirmation of my ability to speak the language. Having studied the language for almost 8 years now in addition to spending a language-intensive 6 months in Vienna, I had already felt pretty confident at calling myself at least "conversationally fluent" although I had always hesitated at calling myself fully fluent.
The reason for that is that while although I could hold almost any level of conversation with a native speak without any major comprehension or expressive problems, with engaging in some texts I still have comprehension problems. For instance, I'd occasionally miss major things in some of the plays I was reading for this semester (although in my defense I often wasn't read as carefully as I should, and I have the same thing happen with English texts) and complex texts like Nietzsche still present a number of problems.
However, after receiving the certification, it got me reconsidering that aspect of my language ability: specifically, I was comparing my ability to read advanced texts in German to the same ability in English. I realized, however, that a large percentage of the population would be unable to read and/or understand similarly complex thoughts in English. Likewise, many native German-speakers are unable to truly understand a work like Nietzsche despite being native-speakers.
For reasons varying from lack of vocabulary to trouble following the logic/train of thought, I'm at least under the impression that such works are regarded as "complex" with good reason, and that I've kind of taken it for granted that I'm educated enough to tackle such pieces. Although I'm relying on outside information on this (so I could be very wrong) but I'm in the minority in being able to do so.
That raises the question, for me at least, at where we draw the line for fluency? Is it the ability to simply communicate and read simple sentences? Does it extend to the potential to create logical arguments and understand the same? Does fluency mean being able to understand potentially any grammatically correct sentence with almost any non-specialized vocabulary, and if so, does that mean the vast majority of the population is not truly literate?
Unfortunately I have no answers to my own questions, but they're thoughts I've been tossing around for a while now. For a long time I sort of assumed there was a working, easy definition for "fluent," and now I am incredibly far from being sure. I don't even know if this is answerable at any level, but I guess this is the kind of thing a language major is supposed to think about :-D.
-HTMC
I began questioning my fluency in English when I started seeing words like "autocthonic" in my English text freshman year. (Turns out this word has nothing to do with Cthulhu, shockingly enough.)
ReplyDeleteI've gone through a similar thought process on the subject of fluency and foreign languages. The truth is, there's no clear and certainly no objective cutoff that determines whether one is "fluent" or not, there are native speakers of any language who are better or worse at understanding the workings of their own language, there are topics that are horrendously difficult to discuss in any language, and there are people who, despite being technically adept at their chosen language, are abysmal at expressing themselves in it.
ReplyDeleteI know a couple people who call themselves "fluent" in Japanese when they would be hard-pressed to carry on any sort of difficult political conversation in the language and probably couldn't write (by hand, at least) on even an elementary level due to the madness that is kanji. I know other people, who, despite being raised in Japanese-speaking families and surrounding themselves in Japanese media, consider themselves to be "barely fluent" in Japanese and no better at English.
I guess I consider someone "fluent" if -- true to the root of the word -- the words just flow out, and they can speak or write in most normal circumstances without hesitating and stumbling much.
Interesting examples with Japanese, I don't have a good comparison with German since it uses the same alphabet as English. I can definitely believe it though.
ReplyDeleteGood idea to go with the literal meaning of fluent :-P I haven't considered that, good point :-D