Who wants cheese?

[apple_pathways]

The POLL to accompany my post about languages. As usual, I cut myself off because I ran out of time, and not necessarily because I finished asking everything I wanted. So take note: there may be follow-up questions! XD

For the purposes of this poll, we will use the following definitions from Wikipedia, that bastion of academic rigor and accuracy: (Also see this article on multilingualism.)

Language fluency is used informally to denote broadly a high level of language proficiency, most typically foreign language or another learned language, and more narrowly to denote fluid language use, as opposed to slow, halting use.

Conversational means able to carry on a casual conversation, but not necessarily without halts in speech, or gaps in vocabulary.

Skip any questions that don't apply. Pretend that it's not weird I spend so much of my free time coming up with meaningless LJ Polls written in unneccessarily-academic language.


[Poll #1706752]

Please leave any details you're willing to share about your language abilities and experiences learning foreign languages in the comments below!

Comments

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Translations are an interesting beast! Once you get into more advanced study of a language, you really realize how much of an art they are as opposed to a science. My dad is always asking me what things in Spanish mean/what the word for something is in Spanish. There's always those concepts that just don't translate exactly. "Well, yes--it does mean that. But you wouldn't use it in that context, and it has a slightly more negative connotation..."

I, too, wish it were harder to get by on English! I haven't done any foreign travelling, but any time I'm in a situation to use my Spanish skills, the person I'm speaking with is almost always better with English than I am with Spanish, and makes the switch pretty early on. It just contributes to how self-conscious I am about speaking the language.

I was incredibly surprised by the responses to the most and least difficult aspects of foreign language question--I expected most people to answer the way I did: understanding spoken language is the easiest, and speaking is the hardest. While I can follow a conversation in Spanish pretty well, it takes me so long to come up with my response that it makes participating incredibly frustrating! (My OCD and obsession with 'perfection' probably gets in the way here!)

What I find funny is that, like most white Americans (I'm sure)--no one ever expects me to speak another language. Once, when I worked as a cashier in a clothing store, a mother and daughter were up at the register and I was ringing them up. The mother spoke mostly Spanish, and was talking to her daughter while the daughter dealt with me in English. The mother started asking the daughter (in Spanish) what I'd done with the sunglasses they were buying. I had set them aside in their own bag, and so when I heard her ask, I picked them up to show her and said, "Here they are." (When caught off-guard, I'm likely to respond to Spanish in English.) I smiled at her, and she smiled back at me--and then it hit her that she'd asked the question in Spanish, and that probably meant I'd been listening to the entire conversation she'd been carrying on with her daughter. (It wasn't anything bad--at one point, she did ask why our clothes were so expensive, a question I'd often asked myself.) The look on her face! Priceless...

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I used to be mortified by having to speak another language, but my university classes pretty much drilled that out of me. In practice I find it way harder to get my head around casual speech than to come up with a response (at least in French, which is the only other language I'm passable in). That may be because I'm very much out of practice, though. I don't come across much French in the wild in Chicago. (In fact, I probably have a better grasp of casual, idiomatic Spanish than I do French, just because I hear Spanish every day.)

I always find it amusing when people have conversations in their first language expecting you not to understand. I learned to recognize a lot of Mandarin insults just for that purpose. (I also know a lot of cursing, from listening to one of my roommates shout at her mom for an entire school year. Funny thing is, the bits of Mandarin I know from her doesn't translate at all to what my friend from Shanghai shouts at his parents, because Shanghai has its own special dialect, complete with a fifth tone that no one else uses).

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I think what keeps me from formulating a quick response is my fear of mis-conjugating or using the wrong word. (That, and being just incredibly out of practice!) However, I find it much easier to get the gist of a conversation listening to someone speak.

I need to come to Chicago. In fact, I'm thinking about planning a trip! When I come, we'll have to find a way to throw me into a Spanish-only situation: sort of a Rapid Exposure to get me over my hangups! XD

Shouting in Chinese is scary. When I visit my friend's parents' restaurant, her mom is always shouting at everyone. It's especially terrifying where there's just a long string of Cantonese and then my name! 0_o

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I can get the gist of conversations, but I rely really heavily on context. If someone says something random to me I just kind of sit there and stare helplessly.

Hmm... I'll see what I can do to engineer a Spanish-only situation. Most of my Spanish pseudo-immersion comes from the fact that all our temps in the office right now speak Spanish, so I overhear a lot of it. Though there are a few restaurants I've been to where the waitstaff would've been much more comfortable in Spanish (there was one place in particular where the waiter and I were incomprehensible to each other, so we had to do the pointing-at-the-menu thing, but that was waaay out on the west side where my friends and I simply were not expected to turn up. Great restaurant, though. We had alligator and goat.)

Chinese shouting always sounds angry, even when it's not. At least you keep your name, though. One of my friends, her mom can't remember anyone's English name, so they get homophone Chinese names. Apparently my name sounds like the word for "shoelace," so that's who I am now.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

One of my friends, her mom can't remember anyone's English name, so they get homophone Chinese names. Apparently my name sounds like the word for "shoelace," so that's who I am now.

That is pretty fucking fantastic! I would gladly trade my name in for a monicker like "shoelace"!

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I'm actually a little more proud of it than I should be. While I was on the train this afternoon I remembered that it's actually even better than just a straight homophone. My friend had tried to help her remember my name by reminding her of the verb "to carry". So she took a homophone for my name, translated that to Chinese, and then picked another homophone (携带 and 鞋带, both xiédài, as confirmed by the google). ...I love really complicated multi-lingual punning.