Fluency

I work as a Japanese translator and interpreter and I hate the word fluent. Everyone uses it differently. By language acquisition standards, it means the ability to speak a language fluidly, without having to stop and think about what you want to say or what the correct grammar is (anymore than you would in your native language_. Proficient, imo, means that you can do what you need to do with the language. But I think most people think "fluent" means perfect. You can understand any piece of Japanese put in front of you. That is just not possible (or highly unlikely).
 
ariso07 said:
I work as a Japanese translator and interpreter and I hate the word fluent. Everyone uses it differently. By language acquisition standards, it means the ability to speak a language fluidly, without having to stop and think about what you want to say or what the correct grammar is (anymore than you would in your native language_. Proficient, imo, means that you can do what you need to do with the language. But I think most people think "fluent" means perfect. You can understand any piece of Japanese put in front of you. That is just not possible (or highly unlikely).
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I know what I think fluent means. Like you I don't like the word fluent , b/c it has so many interpretations.

Eg, I can add to your interpretation and stipulate that I also think that you you need to be reading and writing at the level of at least a high school student to be considered fluent. Being able to speak the language does not necessarily make you fluent.
 
I knew an incredibly fluent guy who spoke using nothing but present progressive tense. Never got stuck for a word, never had to hesitate....and hadn't the first clue or concern about syntax. His fluency was astounding; his proficiency was abysmal.

"Fluency" only refers to how speech "flows" .
 
I consider myself fluent in Japanese now in a way, after having studied it for three months. I still can't talk or write or read worth a damn, or, in fact, understand anything complex.

Comparatively, I don't consider myself fluent in French. I studied it at school for about 9 years, I can put a grammatically correct sentence together and I can puzzle out a French text. I can talk to a French person - somewhat.

To me "fluency" is about the "feeling" you get when you're in contact with a language. At this point, when I hear Japanese, I no longer hear "foreign language" - sometimes when it's running in the background I don't even realize it's a language I don't understand. When I watch a Japanese show, I get the gist of it and don't look up stuff I don't understand because, like in my native language or in English, I don't feel the need to, I have this implicit trust that I'll start knowing it if it's important enough.

And yes, I know this is a complete misuse of the term fluent. It's just that, like Mike, I consider the term to be useless and therefore built up my own use for it. I know that it'd probably literally translate into something like "being able to talk without interruption and without translating back and forth all the time while having effortless understanding" or something. I don't care. I'm fluent, so HAH!

Now's your queue, Mike, I called myself fluent after studying a language for only three months, dig in! This one's for you :)
 
Zlarp said:
I consider myself fluent in Japanese now in a way, after having studied it for three months. I still can't talk or write or read worth a damn, or, in fact, understand anything complex.

Comparatively, I don't consider myself fluent in French. I studied it at school for about 9 years, I can put a grammatically correct sentence together and I can puzzle out a French text. I can talk to a French person - somewhat.

To me "fluency" is about the "feeling" you get when you're in contact with a language. At this point, when I hear Japanese, I no longer hear "foreign language" - sometimes when it's running in the background I don't even realize it's a language I don't understand. When I watch a Japanese show, I get the gist of it and don't look up stuff I don't understand because, like in my native language or in English, I don't feel the need to, I have this implicit trust that I'll start knowing it if it's important enough.

And yes, I know this is a complete misuse of the term fluent. It's just that, like Mike, I consider the term to be useless and therefore built up my own use for it. I know that it'd probably literally translate into something like "being able to talk without interruption and without translating back and forth all the time while having effortless understanding" or something. I don't care. I'm fluent, so HAH!

Now's your queue, Mike, I called myself fluent after studying a language for only three months, dig in! This one's for you :)
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No need. The etymology of "fluent" makes the meaning readily apparent.

I hope you won't be offended if I point out that in this case you should have used "cue" instead of "queue".
 
Nope, not offended. I'm always happy to make mistakes and find it quite puzzling that our schools penalize for something they should be encouraging.

Edit: And as I said, your "readily apparent meaning" sucks and I choose to ignore it.
 
Zlarp said:
I consider myself fluent in Japanese now in a way, after having studied it for three months. I still can't talk or write or read worth a damn, or, in fact, understand anything complex.

Comparatively, I don't consider myself fluent in French. I studied it at school for about 9 years, I can put a grammatically correct sentence together and I can puzzle out a French text. I can talk to a French person - somewhat.

To me "fluency" is about the "feeling" you get when you're in contact with a language.
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I think most people would highly disagree with that interpretation, including me.


And yes, I know this is a complete misuse of the term fluent. It's just that, like Mike, I consider the term to be useless and therefore built up my own use for it.
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This will not help in your communications with people, especially employers who are looking to hire you based on the proper definition.
 
Mike Cash said:
I knew an incredibly fluent guy who spoke using nothing but present progressive tense. Never got stuck for a word, never had to hesitate....and hadn't the first clue or concern about syntax. His fluency was astounding; his proficiency was abysmal.

"Fluency" only refers to how speech "flows" .
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I must admit this is very true.

I know quite a few people who have kids or a friend living in Japan and these kids or friends are apparently "fluuuueeeent". Something which seems important to point out. However, in many cases these people also seem to have an incredibly limited vocabulary and understanding of the language overall. They can't even read most headlines for newspaper articles and they reuse the same words over and over for everything and throw in wasei eigo even for standard words where it's not typically used.

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Zlarp said:
I consider myself fluent in Japanese now in a way, after having studied it for three months. I still can't talk or write or read worth a damn, or, in fact, understand anything complex.

Comparatively, I don't consider myself fluent in French. I studied it at school for about 9 years, I can put a grammatically correct sentence together and I can puzzle out a French text. I can talk to a French person - somewhat.

To me "fluency" is about the "feeling" you get when you're in contact with a language. At this point, when I hear Japanese, I no longer hear "foreign language" - sometimes when it's running in the background I don't even realize it's a language I don't understand. When I watch a Japanese show, I get the gist of it and don't look up stuff I don't understand because, like in my native language or in English, I don't feel the need to, I have this implicit trust that I'll start knowing it if it's important enough.

And yes, I know this is a complete misuse of the term fluent. It's just that, like Mike, I consider the term to be useless and therefore built up my own use for it. I know that it'd probably literally translate into something like "being able to talk without interruption and without translating back and forth all the time while having effortless understanding" or something. I don't care. I'm fluent, so HAH!

Now's your queue, Mike, I called myself fluent after studying a language for only three months, dig in! This one's for you :)
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It seems to be quite common with people who out of complete ignorance think they are "on the verge of reaching some higher proficiency" by watching anime. I knew a lot of people like that in school. Not a single one graduated after three years with anything resembling any sort of real understanding of japanese and most gave up the "I became fluent through anime!" talk soon thereafter. This is what motivated me to approach japanese from a completely different angle far from the average genki lessons in school.

An example of someone like that (they were mostly really sharp english speakers btw) was someone who told me "yeah riiiight! As if you will EVER have any need for the word Yuubinkyoku". What a completely moronic statement. However it shows clearly what "fluency" means to some.

I suspect if you keep that attitude, you will eventually just give up like those people did. Or possibly, you will be happy reaching a comfort level where you are in a way "fluent" although you don't understand eighty-five percent of what is said or written.

Maybe I'm just stupid or a slow learner, or both, but I insist that learning japanese properly takes time and requires at times an almost fanatical dedication to the point where you lose track of the bigger goal and get lost in the details, just to realize in the long run you've advanced without even noticing.
I have this attitude, as long as there are things I don't understand I will keep improving. I will never just leave things be, shrug and think "it's not important". Based on this, I also see endless room for improvement.
 
I know the people you talk about, Macrobiotic, and I can assure you I'm not one of them. True enough, I watch anime. I also read manga, watch dramas and movies, listen to audio books, and play text-heavy video games. As soon as I can work up the courage (no, not the proficiency, I'm just a scaredy cat, I know I should already have started) I'll also get started on reading novels.

As for "Yuubinkyoku" - yes, I consider that word useless. However, 窶嚢窶｢ﾃ問?ｹﾃ seems like it would be quite the common term and I'd think it weird for someone to call that unimportant. In fact, I don't think anything I don't know about the language is "unimportant" as such, it's just that there are so many important things that I have to know that it doesn't matter if I know them right away - as soon as I see them. I'm always, always learning new things, and that will never stop no matter how much I know. Stopping every sentence to look up a new word isn't gonna get me there any sooner, it would just give me the illusion of progress by adding to the number of words that I know so I can boast "hah! I have a vocabulary of 10'000 words, take that!"

I also don't consider fluency in Japanese as my goal. I want to be able to write a novel and I want to be able to do that easily and effortlessly, as if I were some sort of Japanese literary genius. Before that happens, and probably even if that ever did happen, I still wouldn't consider my goal reached.
 
Zlarp said:
I know the people you talk about, Macrobiotic, and I can assure you I'm not one of them. True enough, I watch anime. I also read manga, watch dramas and movies, listen to audio books, and play text-heavy video games. As soon as I can work up the courage (no, not the proficiency, I'm just a scaredy cat, I know I should already have started) I'll also get started on reading novels.

As for "Yuubinkyoku" - yes, I consider that word useless. However, 郵便局 seems like it would be quite the common term and I'd think it weird for someone to call that unimportant. In fact, I don't think anything I don't know about the language is "unimportant" as such, it's just that there are so many important things that I have to know that it doesn't matter if I know them right away - as soon as I see them. I'm always, always learning new things, and that will never stop no matter how much I know. Stopping every sentence to look up a new word isn't gonna get me there any sooner, it would just give me the illusion of progress by adding to the number of words that I know so I can boast "hah! I have a vocabulary of 10'000 words, take that!"

I also don't consider fluency in Japanese as my goal. I want to be able to write a novel and I want to be able to do that easily and effortlessly, as if I were some sort of Japanese literary genius. Before that happens, and probably even if that ever did happen, I still wouldn't consider my goal reached.
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Yuubinkyoku and 郵便局 is the same word. I wrote it like that within a quote to emphasize the lack of knowledge of the one who made that statement, he definitely did not know the kanji for it.

I think you will notice that your practical understanding is in relation to your theoretical knowledge. I can read newspaper articles without too much trouble today and the only way I could have gotten there is by actually analyzing sentence structures and building vocabulary. What I noticed is that my listening comprehension (actual comprehension of what is being said that is) is in direct relation to my reading ability and my knowledge of vocabulary. If I have followed a news story in the newspapers and then hear it on for example NHK news, I understand most of what is being said. If it's a completely unfamiliar topic, I understand less and have to go by words I recognize (or am able to process fast enough) such as the names of government branches, ministers, geographical regions and specific actions (crimes etc) being recounted for through specific nouns and verbs. However, my comprehension of both reading, listening and actual nuances of the language has steadily increased through doing what I do. That is no illusion.

What is an illusion is the idea that you are starting to approach "fluency" just because the language feels more familiar.
Do you understand the text heavy video games or do you just skim through them thinking they will magically grant you knowledge? You can listen to news reports or play text heavy games for the rest of your life without ever becoming proficient if you don't actually study what is written and read things related to what is being said.

I would guess neither you or I could even write a novel in english properly. I have seen people with english language skills far superior to mine having their attempts at novels butchered by the native speakers.
 
I already explained my use of the term "fluency" extensively in an above post. You are free to use it yourself in whatever way you'd like, but I was quite clear when I described what I meant by it. I do not use it as a term for some sort of high-level proficiency at all, I think it's nebulous and useless and because of that I might as well call myself fluent.

I don't skim read (unless I reload and already know what's been said), but I sometimes do skip over words and just sound them out with furigana (or listen to the voice actors sounding them out if the game has them). I'm getting good enough at kanji by now that I can often guess at the correct pronunciation when I find compound words and the whole process is getting smoother and smoother.

I am not disputing that your way of doing it works. You can intricately study the language all you want. However, I proclaim that your success with that method is a direct consequence, not of the efficacy of your method, but of your time spent with the language. I find the idea that "children are better at learning languages than adults" to be completely ludicrous, I simply think that adults don't spend anywhere near enough time with languages that they want to learn and are then surprised that children with 50 times their experiences are better at it than they are.

You must be one of those people who think children are magical language learning machines, I assume, and I'm sure you'll be linking me to an article about some nebulous study related to the subject that doesn't even cite sources next.

Edit: Sorry for phrasing what you do as an "illusion of progress" - that didn't convey what I was trying to get across. I didn't mean to diminish your efforts at all. I meant that as in "a measure for your progress" - which you don't have if you learn a language by immersion.
 
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I know people who spent years living and working in Japan. They have been exposed to the language daily and yet they only understand very basic japanese.

Even if we assume you know most grammar, nuances, sentence structures (which I highly doubt), If you play a video game and encounter the expression 一筋縄では行かない or しらを切る or らちが明かない how will furigana (a lot of games don't have it) help you unless you have a close to perfect understanding already and intuitively can guess these expressions from context? You have to consciously look these phrases up in most cases the first time you encounter them since you will encounter similar expressions all the time while simultaneously trying to get a grip of the language overall, or you have to accept that the main verb and point of the sentence, important parts of the plot etc, are being lost to you.

There is a reason very few westerners are really highly proficient in japanese. Many drop out. Many don't learn much even after years in Japan. Many are oblivious after 3 years in high school despite the fact they watch anime 24/7 and skim through text heavy video games they import from Japan.

Learning japanese through immersion is possible but the reason why most westerners, even those living in Japan permanently, do not master the language through immersion is the fact that japanese is unrelated to all western languages and therefore it requires a good deal of theoretic knowledge as a foundation for immersion. What you can gain by immersion stands in direct proportion to your study efforts in the form of acquisition of theoretical knowledge. I guess in japanese you could say, その前提としてそれなりの知識が必要になる, feel free to correct me.
This is not the case if you try to learn spanish, dutch or english as a german or swedish speaking person.

Learning english as a german or swedish speaker is like swimming across the river. Learning japanese is like trying to cross an ocean. You will need a ship. That ship will require engineering. Engineering will require theoretical knowledge. Regardless if you are in Japan or somewhere else, what you will be able to grasp will be determined by your efforts.
 
Macrobiotic said:
I know people who spent years living and working in Japan. They have been exposed to the language daily and yet they only understand very basic japanese.

Even if we assume you know most nuances and sentence structures (which I highly doubt), If you play a video game and encounter the expression 一筋縄では行かない or しらを切る or らちが明かない how will furigana (a lot of games don't have it) help you unless you have a close to perfect understanding already and intuitively can guess these expressions from context? You have to consciously look these phrases up in most cases the first time you encounter them since you will encounter similar expressions all the time while simultaneously trying to get a grip of the language overall, or you have to accept that the main verb and point of the sentence, important parts of the plot etc, are being lost to you.

There is a reason very few westerners are really highly proficient in japanese. Many drop out. Many don't learn much even after years in Japan. Many are oblivious after 3 years in high school despite the fact they watch anime 24/7 and skim through text heavy video games they import from Japan.
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It's the same old argument again about people in Japan, yet these kind of people usually don't watch Japanese TV. They don't talk to Japanese people. They make English friends. People do that around Switzerland too, for example. Humans will go to ridiculous lengths not to have to be confronted with a foreign language, they're so afraid to sound silly.

Those are indeed peculiar expressions, and if it were indeed vital to understanding, I'd definitely look them up (while I might not get their meaning from context, I could definitely decide if they were important enough to know at that point). However, I don't see all that many of them, to be honest.

Show me even one of those "many" who are "oblivious" after 3 years of watching anime even just 4 hours a day and "skimming" through text heavy video games and I'll happily agree with you. However, I find that you probably won't be able to procure such a specimen.

Edit: I look up maybe 1-5 percent of the unknown words I encounter. To put that into perspective, here's some statistics - I save all the words I look up in my app that I use to look up words in a folder so I can re check on them later if I ever feel like it.

I have these folders with the respective amounts of expressions looked up:

Names: 3
Persona 4: 165
Dragon Quest: 2
Death Note: 164
Super Robot Taisen Menus: 13
Super Robot Taisen: 236
One Piece: 214

- I consider these to be very few lookups indeed. Maybe that puts things into perspective a bit.
 
I doubt you will be able to prove it is more of a rule than an exception that the anime watching skim readers in high school actually reach high proficiency without dedicating themselves to further theoretical studies, not necessarily but possibly on university level.

I'm also surprised you claim you don't encounter many peculiar expressions. Many times the entire point of a sentence is expressed through an idiom in japanese and these are virtually impossible to grasp unless you already understand everything else perfectly and logically can exclude other possible meanings. If not, the dictionary is your friend. Many expressions, such as 歯が立たない are not rare, they are commonly seen in standard japanese rpgs.

When you actually realize you learned some real japanese, for real, you will also realize you don't know just a handful but hundreds and hundreds of these fixed expressions and that you can't live without them. Then I haven't even taken into account other somewhat difficult aspects of the language. I learn new things all the time even after 3 years and I currently see no end to it either.
 
Macrobiotic said:
I doubt you will be able to prove it is more of a rule than an exception that the anime watching skim readers in high school actually reach high proficiency without dedicating themselves to further theoretical studies, not necessarily but possibly on university level.
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I'm not trying to prove it, I'm trying to tell you that there probably aren't all that many that do these things as heavily as I do. I'm not trying to brag, but I guess this will inevitably devolve into that, so I'll try to get it out of the way: I did Heisig's Remember the Kanji in 3 weeks and Tae Kim's Grammar Guide in about 2 weeks. Now I'm spending the time I used on those things before on actually reading Japanese texts. I'm not trying to say I'm amazing, but I am doing a *lot*. I don't have a complete lack of theoretical knowledge, but I don't consider the theoretical knowledge I have as important because it's such a teeny tiny part of my studies. Anyone can go through a grammar book quickly, but actual language practice is what's gonna take a lot of time.

Edit: sorry, about all those edits, but I find this discussion intriguing because Japanese has made me grow interested in people's different learning strategies. About the idioms - yes, I look up a lot of them. I haven't looked up "歯が立たない" because I've only seen it once before - I remember that instance very clearly, though. If it kept popping up, though, I'd have looked it up because I'd become so annoyed about not knowing what it means that looking it up would be a relief.

However, you can get many idioms from context. 手伝い comes to mind - transmit a hand, along with the context it's said in, pretty easily turns into "lend a hand" - to help out. I guess this is where Heisig helps a lot by letting me make educated guesses.
 
I agree actual language practice is what will take time. Grammar can be learned swiftly. I memorized 1200 kanji myself in one month back when I started while in the same time learning verb conjugation and the general function of particles. However, there are layers and layers after this which need to be broken down in a fairly theoretical manner if you're actually going to gain higher knowledge. You don't have german as reference the same way you did with english, you have no paved out road. This road must be constructed step by step and this is where the dividing line between the great masses of mediocre gaijin japanese speakers and the few who actually learn well becomes obvious,
By not paving out this road as you continuously walk you will end up just like the average japanese speaking gaijin. I will never settle for this so I don't skip over things, even though my pace is slow it is steady. As long as there are things I don't understand I will keep taking notes and asking questions, otherwise I (like many who learn japanese) risk never really learning them properly.

You say you hardly take notes, let's take another example. If you play and encounter a standard "triple negation" such as 絶対に近寄らないわけじゃないかもしれない for the first time, do you understand this immediately after 3 months study, including the verb and the adverb and the function of わけ here without having to consult any source? If so I must admit you are a lot smarter than me. I had to look these things up at such an early stage, only 3 months.
 
I guess here we arrive at the "agree to disagree" point of our discussion, huh? I am not disputing the validity of your method and I can only prove to you the validity of mine by learning Japanese and writing that novel - and even then you'll probably assume I broke down at some point and studied the "intricacies" to gain "higher understanding" (which, sorry for swearing, but I consider that bull feces, nuff said. There's no such thing as "higher understanding").
 
I consider myself fluent in Japanese now in a way, after having studied it for three months. I still can't talk or write or read worth a damn
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"In a way" = not at all, based on the second sentence. There is no middle ground here.

No talking, reading, writing. Uh, just listening? To what degree?

Face it. You can't communicate. You aren't fluent, even by a microscopic bit. Don't make up your own dictionary. You only look foolish.

Grammar can be learned swiftly. I memorized 1200 kanji myself in one month back when I started while in the same time learning verb conjugation and the general function of particles.
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Verb conjugation is a fraction of grammar, so don't try fooling people with the statement above. There is far too much grammar (and exceptions) to be learned "swiftly". And, kanji is not grammar.
 
Glenski said:
Verb conjugation is a fraction of grammar, so don't try fooling people with the statement above. There is far too much grammar (and exceptions) to be learned "swiftly". And, kanji is not grammar.
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Yes, you're right. It was a careless use of different concepts. What I meant with "layer after layer" however was all these additional elements (exceptions, additional grammar, idioms etc) which are not even touched at even in most intermediate textbooks and funnily enough not even in many advanced either.

I stand by my statement that it is necessary to cry some blood in terms of effort to actually learn these things and not get stuck on an eternal comfort level of dodgy language comprehension.
 
Glenski said:
"In a way" = not at all, based on the second sentence. There is no middle ground here.

No talking, reading, writing. Uh, just listening? To what degree?

Face it. You can't communicate. You aren't fluent, even by a microscopic bit. Don't make up your own dictionary. You only look foolish.

Verb conjugation is a fraction of grammar, so don't try fooling people with the statement above. There is far too much grammar (and exceptions) to be learned "swiftly". And, kanji is not grammar.
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I'm not making up my own dictionary, I'm redifining a word that otherwise has no concrete definition to suit my purposes. Without my definition you're back to square one and "fluency" doesn't mean a damn thing and it's a ridiculous concept.

As for grammar and learning it "swiftly" - people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year. You, Sir, only come off as bitter.
 
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