I do know a couple of people who will brag of their Japanese knowledge, but in fact just add kawaii, baka or something similar in romaji to their speech. More like Weeaboo I guess although I dislike the term but they do speak highly of their knowledge and disregard me as knowing less for some reason, although I'm the one putting the effort in...

hahaha, it definitely goes both ways :-). Most people I know use it in the "narrow" sense, where they know a language very well but don't consider themselves fluent.

I've found that people at lower levels tend to overestimate their ability, and people at higher levels tend to underestimate their ability.

I think the fast pace at the beginning builds (over) confidence, and then you hit that grey zone where you can study and study for years and not feel the progress and realize you still only know a fraction of the vocab of a native speaker, and the humbleness returns.

There is also the tendency of the filthy rich thinking they are middle class

This is the first time that I can see on this forum that somebody explained the term fluency as it should be explained. I just wonder how people can think that having vocabulary of +10,000 (or whatever number you like) will make them fluent when they are hardly able to put two sentences together. Sure, vocab is important but if your access time to your rich database of words is 1 word/second then you can claim anything but fluency. OTOH, if your vocabulary is rather limited and yet your command of it is, hmm, what's the word for this, ah... fluent then your claim to fluency is pretty much justified.

Thora wrote:

Does anybody else agree that people who don't understand that "fluency" does not mean near-native level can be flat out annoying? There have been many times where I have heard people using language at a very high level, while at the same moment saying that they haven't reached fluency. As somebody who studies language very much, it makes me want to grab their shoulders and scream, "STOP USING THAT WORD SO NARROWLY!".

In other words, don't let this kind of stuff get to you?

That's the way I see fluency though...

I think fluency is a highly subjective concept and therefore people should use it freely because technically they're all right about it. If you have a peeve with people calling themselves fluent when you think they're not just ask them for their language certificate like an employer =/.

@Fadeway: Recently I had this British girl over and we started talking about English, mainly because she was scared of my English (ended up giving her a grammar lesson at one point, at her request). I've had quite a few people over the years be flabbergasted by the level which some foreigners had reached and few had qualms about admitting that it was probably above theirs. If this chick didn't know you then I don't see why you'd be offended by the fact that she assumed you might want an English practice buddy, especially if she reconsidered her approach once you've actually met. People go by the assumption that foreigners aren't fluent in a language until they are proven wrong and you shouldn't take that too personally.

Pretty much agree with Fillanzea.
I also think anyone who wouldn't be able to do rudimentary translation and interpreting in both directions probably shouldn't call themselves fluent (if only because it could come back to bite them in the arse). I'm not talking about deep political debate for the UN or translating legalese or things that require specialist knowledge, just basic real life situations. I mean fluent should mean something. If I read "fluent japanese speaker" on a resume and then found out they weren't capable of understanding/expressing basic things or they had to look up every 5th word in order to do some basic translation, I'd think they're kidding themselves.

Inny Jan wrote:

This is the first time that I can see on this forum that somebody explained the term fluency as it should be explained. I just wonder how people can think that having vocabulary of +10,000 (or whatever number you like) will make them fluent when they are hardly able to put two sentences together. Sure, vocab is important but if your access time to your rich database of words is 1 word/second then you can claim anything but fluency. OTOH, if your vocabulary is rather limited and yet your command of it is, hmm, what's the word for this, ah... fluent then your claim to fluency is pretty much justified.

I agree but I think you really need both, after all understanding other people is part of being fluent. I also think for all sorts of practical reasons it'd be really difficult to learn to speak fluently without getting a high vocabulary. I mean without the high vocabulary you severely limit your access to materials.

Fadeway wrote:

Nadiatims, you reminded me of another pet peeve of mine: People asking me to translate random stuff for them, or to tell them how to say y in a given language, especially when they don't know it themselves, just to test me. I don't mind helping out when navigating a Japanese website, but I go sour and refuse outright when someone tells me to "say something in Japanese". Translation generally takes away meaning and I dislike doing it, but I can compromise for practical reasons. Doing it to prove myself to someone...eh. Maybe this is eccentric of me, I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.

This is something I dislike very much. I had to translate stuff in both directions for practical stuff, it is not fun but you do what you've got to do. The problem is being asked how do you say "insert stupid wordplay" in english or how to say something unique to your culture, out of the blue by people, usually, as you mentioned, who either do not speak the language at all or wouldn't have the opportunity or occasion to use it in the first place.

I also hate (well not really) people (especially my father) trying to use me as a personal lyrics translator. I find it hard enough to understand lyrics in turkish songs and you expect me to translate something I happened to hear sung for the first time. It is not gonna happen.

Last edited by qwarten (2012 August 11, 7:46 am)

Sure, but people do that without the fluency keyword. Pretty much everyone I meet tells me to tell them "something in Japanese" merely when they hear that I'm learning it, even at a very early stage of the learning process. And this "something" is the worst part, they don't even want a specific phrase, they just want to hear a random sentence.

When people are testing for fluency, they tend to pull out a dictionary and ask for translations from there (this only happens to me for English, since it's the only language I claim fluency for). Annoying as well, one of the reasons being that obscure words are often those that don't even have a direct translation (or they do, but it doesn't come to me), forcing me to do roundabout explaining of the meaning.

I dislike translating in general because sentences have varying secondary qualities that almost never perfectly transfer to the target language. Wordplay aside, even translating something basic, I can't resist throwing in a few synonyms and explaining how it's closer in frequency of use to sentence A, but nowhere near it in harshness levels, where it's slightly better than sentence B, etcetc. The people who want to test you are generally not interested enough to stay around for the lecture, while I'm not detached enough to skip it without feeling like I've misrepresented the language. For practical use I don't feel the same urge (unless it's media, but I generally don't watch untranslated movies with people who aren't at least dabblers themselves) - it'd be even more ridiculous if I had to urge to find and explain nuances in the restaurant menu or ingredient list, so lucky me.

@Fadeaway, I'm very curious what environment you were in. Would you mind sharing that information?

Last edited by Arupan (2012 August 12, 1:34 am)

Ahah, that makes sense! I got a lot of that stuff in high school too because high school kids are annoying as hell.

After high school people are also annoying as hell, but the percentage goes down.

I used to want to be a translator, though. I gave up on it when I realized that my chances of making a living as a literary translator were slim to none, and it was going to be hard for me to break into technical translation without a couple of years living in Japan. Now I'm a writer (well-- I've published one book, anyway) but I still think translation is really interesting because I spend a lot of my time figuring out the right words to use for what's in my head. Translations can never be good enough, but that's what's interesting about them -- finding clever compromises and work-arounds and, failing that, finding the most graceful way to navigate an unbridgeable gap. Sometimes I come to a particular sentence and think, "Now, if I were to translate that into English, how would I solve that problem?"

There is an Italian saying, "Traduttore, traditore" -- "Translator, traitor." There is a saying that translations are like mistresses: they can be beautiful or they can be faithful, but they can't be both. So a lot of people have recognized the impossibility of a perfect translation.

But as in most things, I think the most interesting things happen after you've given up on perfect.