It's extremely frustrating to have a love for something which you have no talent. For me, I absolutely love languages but I can't speak them well at all and having fully immersed myself in an environment where I have to use my weakest language on a daily basis is very difficult. I don't have regrets and I love living here, but I am constantly reminded how much better others are and how far I still am from speaking Japanese well.
A few weeks ago Akane posted an entry about language fluency, and as much as I hate people who brag about how great their skills are, I must say, that the term 'fluency' itself is very vague. This is not actually a subjective comment on my part, but actually something that we came across in a linguistics class in university.
The concept of fluency is extremely fluid and I personally think it should be seen as something altogether different from perfect or native level language ability.
I consider myself fluent in three languages on account of having lived in environments throughout my life where I had to live using languages outside my native tongue on a regular basis. But never will I say that I speak any of those three languages perfectly. Even my English (especially since moving to Japan) is nowhere near perfect.
I went to university in English. I worked in French. I go to technical school in Japanese. I manage. Even if I may sound like a grammatically and vocabulary challenged child.
Anyways, even though it's probably even less credible than wiki, I thought this page was interesting and worth a glance.
Yeah fluency is a blurry concept and does not equal perfection but I still believe there's a minimum level you need to reach to consider yourself to be "fluent" (i can't say I'm fluent in Spanish although i can kinda understand) and you're obviously fluent in Japanese.
ReplyDeleteI think what gets me is really the "bragging" part :/