Basic and Native Fluency

[thenengsta]

I like this video a lot. I try my best to study languages too, and it bugs me when students are in a high school level 3 Spanish (for example) and say they speak fluent Spanish. To me, you have to live in the country, or talk to the natives to actually be nativelly fluent, and even that, it takes a lot of time to become native.

[YouStoleMyTube]

Are you sure about the newspaper thing? Because there were a few studies conducted using popular newspapers. The result was that they used around 600 words only. So I think if you're basically fluent, or even at the high intermediate level then you should be able to read a newspaper just fine.

[lauraleesmithagain]

Depends on one's definition of Native Fluency. I believe the fact is that most people define Native Fluency as not only advanced in communication and understanding, but ALSO with a native accent. By this definition it is impossible to acheive Native Fluency unless you are still young (usually under age 12). Personally, as long as I'm understood nothing else matters to me. What's wrong with Basic-Intermediate Fluency? Fluent is Fluent.

[laoshu505000]

I agree with you. Thanks for the comment.

[shizfergus27]

@lauraleesmithagain I know multiple adults that have been able to develop native sounding accents in both English and Spanish. 

[YouStoleMyTube]

@lauraleesmithagain Nothing is impossible. Accent has nothing to do with fluency of course. But really, you think it's impossible to reach a native accent? I disagree. It just takes conscious effort.

[Luiseut59]

Well, I'm spanish native speaker and I know this girl who learnt spanish by internet she's great at it. She from Germany. She even speaks better than me sometimes.

So, native fluency is achievable but of course, is difficult to get there.

[scarabsl2000]

Maybe as a little inspiration for everyone, it is completely possible to learn a language to a native level and native accent even without being in the country. I was friends with an young man in the Middle East who was from a very poor neighborhood but spoke English so well that I thought he was playing a trick on me when he said that he had never been to the states. Literally, everything was perfect even accent and he learned mostly through TV. It is amazing what one can do with motivation.

[acromel]

An example. This girl is one the best non-native English speakers I've heard from any country. She's Japanese.

English is notoriously tricky for the Japanese in particular due to the completely different grammar, intonation and stress, weird idiom and all the additional sounds.

I think her achievement is truly extraordinary. The clue to how she did it is when she said that people gave her grief about her accent and English and rather than give up it just motivated her.

/watch?v=Q0ugaLTXxSc

[acromel]

Agreed. Of course it's possible to achieve complete fluency. A hell of a lot of work, and I would imagine, a lot of cultural immersion to pick up the idiom and slang.

Of course some people, native speakers, are brighter and more articulate than others, so it may not be realistic to achieve the degree of mastery that the highly articulate and well educated native speakers have reached - but that also applies to the lesser-able native speakers.

It's just time and exposure - and dedication.

[Solstisol]

Tenerife, Spain, Africa.

Well, it's the first time I've ever heard a native speaker of English saying "guist" instead of "gist". Can anybody explain that one?

Best wishes,

Solsti.

[laoshu505000]

It should be ''gist''

[sebtuber]

Moses, when you say native fluency - does that include accent? That is, do you believe that going to the country for a year or two should make you sound like a native? I don't know about that...

[laoshu505000]

I think it's possible if you put all of your heart into it. You gotta be more confident. I think that seems to be the problem with most people.

[zocurtis]

By the way Moses, you look like Darth Vador with that hat on lol.

[laoshu505000]

hahahaha

[jmichaelrout]

haha, good call!

[vinbelgium]

that is so true =D

[zocurtis]

LOL! Wow, dude you taking it to the extreme orangelixir!

[orangelixir]

I've retracted everything I said now. I'm very passionate about languages and it took everything I posted in order to explain what I thought. I simply don't want people to be deluded and think they are perfect when they are far from it. When you realize it can be a big blow to come back down to earth. But people don't want my help and I don't want people to hate me so I'm just going to fall silent and apologize.

[YouStoleMyTube]

@orangelixir Yeah, all of your comments are really offensive. You should really consider calming down and speaking civilly to other people. Are you a native speaker of English? If so, why did you make errors? Your command of punctuation is lacking. You also spelled a word or two wrong... Seriously, go look in a mirror.

[jonmahoney04]

I'm with you man. It's definitely possible to attain native fluency. For those who don't believe, keep on making excuses. For us that do believe,we will carry on achieving.

[laoshu505000]

Yes we can! hahaha

[orangelixir]

Doesn't matter how much you believe something, my friend, it doesn't make it true. You can reach near-native fluency where you are able to converse essentially to the same level as a native speaker but you can never be a native speaker and therefore you can never speak with their intuition. Go and learn a language and learn to respect them for what they are.

[jonmahoney04]

Well, if you want to get technical, of course you can never achieve "native" fluency in a foreign language because you will never be a native of another country. But you can certainly achieve an equal level of fluency to that of a native speaker. Just because you haven't done it doesn't mean it's not possible.

There is a lot more evidence against you and a lot of people with excuses claiming they aren't "born with the gift" on your team.

[orangelixir]

You say 'he had to be native level because he sounded really good'.

But you are not a native. How can you know?

I don't think you understand and respect the complexity and depth of human language.

[laoshu505000]

I respect your reply. Well, I speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. My wife is from Taiwan and speaks Mandarin. When I listened to both of his languages, he had a very good command of them and his word usage was excellent in both languages. My wife even said that he passes for native.

There are some other Cantonese speakers that concur with this. If that's what you think about me, hey I respect that. Thanks for viewing my video.

[orangelixir]

I first want to assure you that I'm not saying any of these with the intention of annoying you or anything like that.

Firstly, I would like to define what real language is. REAL language is the language that everybody knows when they leave school. I'm talking about all the words, expressions, usages and so on that you would expect 99% of people to know. That is REAL language. That's what English really is. Any words that are written in a huge dictionary are not real English.

[orangelixir]

correction - *this

[orangelixir]

PART 2

They are simply a record of technical terms, old words that are no longer real words, words that have been imported to English from other languages in the thousands and such. That's not real language to me. That's book language. I don't care if you know how to say something in Swahili that 99.99% of people don't know. That's because that's not REAL Swahili. The same goes with English. I don't care that you know an ancient expression that no one knows of and never uses because that's

[orangelixir]

PART 3

that's not real language. Language is the tool of communication between two people. Everyone in a language is expected to know certain things. This expected knowledge amongst 95% of people is what I mean by perfect. And by perfect I also mean, no errors, ever, that you don't know are errors. And I don't mean by the standards of grammar in the text books. I mean by the REAL language grammar that everyone grows up with . The natural fluid and unconfined grammar.

[jmichaelrout]

Why would you want to dilute your vocabulary down to the lowest common denominator? Language is a communicative tool and books are written communication. If you can communicate your point with an atrocious accent, simplified grammar, and outdated words then you've succeeded. You're only goal now should be to improve. I don't understand what you're ranting about, orangelixer.

[orangelixir]

PART 4-

We don't make errors in our speech as natives, we only use informal grammar. Sometimes we slip up but that is a rarity and we always know if we did. We don't make expressional mistakes either. That's the most important thing. I can't count the amount of times I've heard a French person say 'We are two here' instead of 'There are two of us here'. I do not believe that anyone has ever learned to have the same intuitive feel as a native speaker.

[laoshu505000]

I see. Thanks a lot for using your time to write all of this for us. Thanks for viewing my video again.

[orangelixir]

No problem. I just think it's strange that people are flocking to you when all you have done is learn many language to a low level where you absolutely rape the pronunciation and grammar. Just because you can speak on a video about basic things in a language doesn't mean a thing. Monolingual people are amazed but people who have studied languages know how easy this is to pull off. I'm sorry, I appreciate your passion for languages but you have a bad case of intellectual language masturbation.

[orangelixir]

PART 6

You can reach a near-native fluency. But eventually, if you talk to a native for long enough no matter how good you are you will slowly show that you are not a native. A tiny error here or there that absolutely no native would make will show up at least on the rare occasion. People thumb me down because they don't want to believe it. Don't shoot the messenger. Native is native. You can't come up with your own creative standards.

[orangelixir]

You cannot reach perfect native fluency.

[laoshu505000]

Thanks for your reply. I wanted to ask you one question here. What is your definition of ''perfect'' when dealing with foreign languages? I look forward to your reply.

[orangelixir]

PART 5-

I also expect for there to be no pronunciation mistakes. I mean you must pronounce everything properly. You, for instance, rape Japanese pronunciation to no end. I'm sorry but it's true. I'm not even sure if you realize that the 'sh', 'r', and 'f' sounds are not the same as in English but completely different phonetic sounds. You may have a slight accent if that accent is within the accents already in the language. You cannot have a foreign accent because that is not native

[saiyouken]

accents are really hard to shake. Its not impossible but very few people pronounce every word all the time like a native.

I believe once reaching fluency, aquiring a native prononciation level requires desire, hard work but also psychological training.

[snovymgodom]

You raised a lot of good points here. I've spent a lot of time studying Russian and am comfortable in the language but I still make plenty of mistakes. I'll be spending the next academic year in Russia and I hope to boost my level to something that approaches native (according to your scale, what I have now would probably be basic fluency).

[nephrenmalinari]

So would you say that one could be considered at a "native" level fluency, even without understanding all of the jargon of said language, including idioms and other such expressions?

[laoshu505000]

Well, they would definitely have to understand at least the most common idiomatic expressions. So far as jargons, there are jargons in English that many native English speakers don't know; especially the older generation.

[ImAlwaysR1ght]

I have a friend from South Korea and she became native-level-fluent in English after 10 years of dedicated study even without living here. She even has an American accent. It's all about hard work. I know I can become natively-fluent in japanese with many years of hard work everyday.

[laoshu505000]

That's interesting.