native level

[aristotle1990]

I have never seen or heard direct evidence of people who have studied a language for 1-2 years and becoming fluent, except in the cases where the person already spoke a language closely related to the target language. Until I get some more evidence, I take all such claims with a grain of salt.

Depends what you mean by fluent. Native? Yeah, impossible. But genuinely fluent? Julien Gaudfroy did it in two or three years. AJATT did it in less. Both of them reached a point after a couple of years where they could talk freely and comfortably on just about anything they wanted to talk about, with accents and conversational ability that would have made them indistinguishable from native speakers during a phone conversation (at least a relatively short conversation). This was probably the level Emil Krebs was at -- it's a different thing from native, but it's definitely, absolutely fluent. Read what Khatzumoto could do after 18 months:

• Speak and understand adult Japanese-sounding Japanese. Many people assumed (and continue to assume) that I had either been raised in Japan or lived hear for 10+ years. Neither are so, at this writing.
• Conduct a job interview 100% in Japanese
• Conduct my visa processing with the Japanese Consulate in the US, 100% in Japanese
• Make convincing, logical arguments.
• Write business and personal emails.
• Understand TV and radio news 100%.
• Understand and enjoy Japanese comedy shows.
• Make intentional errors, jokes, witty comebacks and double entendres in Japanese.
• Read aloud and understand any general-purpose Japanese document (i.e. one intended for a lay audience), such as a newspaper.
• Read aloud and understand any IT/physical science/computer science expert document (manuals, software docs, academic papers, even legal documents).
• Write 4500 kanji from memory, 90% retention.
• Read aloud common Japanese personal and place names (prefectures, major cities).
• Talk my way around words I did not know or had forgotten. For example “cable splitter” was “small device for splitting a single cable TV signal such that it can be shared among multiple terminals” or something to that effect.

I think he's almost certainly exaggerating with "understand TV and radio news 100%" (probably more like 70%-90%, but the shows he understood where the ones he paid attention to, and he thus got an inflated estimate of listening abilities) and "read aloud and understand any IT/physical science/computer science expert document" (any? really?), but the rest is all plausible.

It took Da Shan longer, but he got there eventually.

[anonymoose]

When some claims are clearly inflated, it makes one doubt the validity of other claims, even if plausible.

[jbradfor]

Many people assumed (and continue to assume) that I had either been raised in Japan or lived hear for 10+ years.

Too bad he's not fluent in English.

The link from aristotle1990 is very interesting. Right after the part aristotle1990 quoted, the person admits the stuff he is not able to do. I really applaud him for that level of honesty.

[renzhe]

Read what Khatzumoto could do after 18 months:

None of these things imply in any way that he is fluent, nor require you to be fluent.

[aristotle1990]

Right after the part aristotle1990 quoted, the person admits the stuff he is not able to do. I really applaud him for that level of honesty.

That's what I'm saying -- despite what he says, he's nowhere near "native", but he is definitely fluent.

None of these things imply in any way that he is fluent, nor require you to be fluent.

How do they not imply that he's fluent? Okay, maybe he hasn't said "can have a lengthy, grammatically accurate conversation with a native speaker on a whole bunch of topics", but he's certainly implied it, no? I mean, surely the ability to do all of those things presupposes fluency.

[renzhe]

I don't want to get into a Katzumoto bashing discussion, which the Internet is full off. I actually like the guy, and much of what he says makes some sense, even if he was not born to be a writer and I wouldn't do everything his way.

But you can learn to do anything on that list without actually ever becoming anywhere near fluent. There are many Chinese post-graduate students abroad who can do all these things in English without being fluent.

[imron]

In that link above to a post (on another forum) written by Julien Guadfroy is really good and worth a read for anyone wanting to know the effort involved in learning Chinese.

Quotes I like:

Give three intense years of your life to Chinese, and you will be superficially fluent.

Some always say the reason my Chinese is so good is because I'm so gifted. Indeed I think I have that luck, to be gifted. But it does not replace the hard work,

(emphasis added by me).

[rezaf]

There are a few certain topics that I have written many essays about them in Chinese and have talked about them many times. When I talk about them I really might sound like an educated native Chinese but if someone changes the topic then you will know how awful my Chinese is. I have seen a few people much smarter than me who have intensively studied Chinese for 2 or 3 years and have got fluent in certain topics as well but the more I learn Chinese the more I understand how vast this language is. Apart from the vocabulary and grammar you have to carefully read and memorise lots of literary and other kinds of books to become fluent in a big number of topics like an educated native speaker. 2 years is just not enough for flipping the pages of those books.

[gato]

True. It's impossible to learn 5000 years of culture in two years. Haha.

[valikor]

@Skylee: Reading your last comment as having a strong sarcastic tone, I'd like to say that despite how obvious it may have appeared to you, that distinction had actually not been stated by anyone in the discussion.

For this discussion, the we are talking not only about educated/non-educated, but educated/"well educated". For this particular discussion, it could prove to be a relevant distinction.

But, it seems that the discussion isn't going to go anywhere, since we have no real information about the subject. :rolleyes:

[skylee]

@Skylee: Reading your last comment as having a strong sarcastic tone, I'd like to say that despite how obvious it may have appeared to you, that distinction had actually not been stated by anyone in the discussion.

Valikor, I find this comment very weird. In my #18, I quoted "important distinction that everyone has been pointing out" in your post #17, which you have subsequently amended to its present version. And I didn't even use the quote function or "@ Valikor". And I without hesitation admitted my oversight, whether it was true or not.

PS - And all I did was provide information on something that you said you didn't know, i.e. what a "well-educated native" in China meant 100 years ago.

[mfgillia]

Clearly there are people with the ability to reach close to fluency in Chinese and other languages in two years.

I have a good friend that speaks 5 languages relativity fluently without ever having had a formal class, studying from textbooks or reviewing vocabulary. Regarding Chinese, appears she was conversational within her first year living in Taiwan and would be routinely confused as a native speaker by her second year.

Unfortunately, I certainly am not blessed with her ability and generally believe the advice from such a person as to how to duplicate their success is mostly useless for us mere mortals.

[gato]

I have a good friend that speaks 5 languages relativity fluently without ever having had a formal class, studying from textbooks or reviewing vocabulary. Regarding Chinese, appears she was conversational within her first year living in Taiwan and would be routinely confused as a native speaker by her second year.

Which 5 languages? She never used a book to learn things like conjugation?

[rob07]

I was routinely confused as a French native speaker within one week of arriving in France. Unfortunately, only by other tourists.

[aristotle1990]

I have a good friend that speaks 5 languages relativity fluently without ever having had a formal class, studying from textbooks or reviewing vocabulary. Regarding Chinese, appears she was conversational within her first year living in Taiwan and would be routinely confused as a native speaker by her second year.

Which 5 languages? She never used a book to learn things like conjugation?

I can believe it. I think it's possible for someone very talented and willing to put in an ungodly amount of time to do -- you can find most of the basic information online, and you can get someone to tutor you / have a lot of friends for the rest. The only thing I'm curious about is the "reviewing vocabulary" bit -- I can believe she did it without Anki or vocab lists or books, but why would you deprive yourself of such resources? Unless, of course, she was constantly immersed in the language environment the whole time, though that would nevertheless be difficult.

[roddy]

When you say relatively fluent, where does that stand in relation to what you said about fluency at the top of the page?

These discussions pretty much always end up being an attempt to define fluency. Personally, I'd go for 'Can live there for two weeks without hideously embarrassing yourself', but I have low standards. Which I one day hope to meet.

[gato]

Of if the 5 languages are Swedish, German, Dutch, English, and maybe French, then it's very possible because the first three are so similar.

Or if we use a Chinese analogy, if the 5 languages are Mandarin, Cantonese, Sichuanese, Kunmingese, and English, then it's very possible. There are many Chinese who are proficient to fluent in all 5 of these languages.

[daofeishi]

As an aside:

...I have a friend who...

...and I have several friends who claim to other people that I am fluent in 7 languages. How do they get to that? They know I speak Norwegian, and therefore they count that I "by extension" speak Danish and Swedish. I know English, I've taken 3 years of German, 2 years of Arabic and have studied Mandarin the last 4 years or so. I sometimes actually have people coming up to me asking "are you the kid who knows a gazillion languages."

What is the truth value of my friends' claims? Nil. I have never spoken or written neither Swedish nor Danish. I can communicate "fluently" in Norwegian and English and can get by in Chinese, but I've forgotten the rest to the point where I can only muster up some set phrases if I have to.

Of course I tell my friends that whenever it comes up, but some interpret it as modesty and some just disregard it. It makes for a good anecdote when they need one. Friends like to hype each other up that way, so as I've mentioned before in other posts, I always take anecdotal claims of fluency, especially "fluency in n languages" where n>2, with a grain of salt.

(Of course, things often boil down to a definition of fluency. My standard is fairly high, including being able to understand the content of any written or spoken material a native speaker would be able to understand, handed to you outside of any context. On the other hand, within the limits of intelligibility, pronunciation and accent doesn't factor into it at all, and I don't understand people's obsession with it.)

[mfgillia]

Which 5 languages? She never used a book to learn things like conjugation?

To me, she is quite an interesting case. She is from Nepal and speaks Nepali, English, Hindi, Mandarin and something else I can't remember. When she first came to Taiwan she worked in bars and restaurants and dated mostly English speakers learning both English and Mandarin essentially at the same time.

To me, a native English speaker from the U.S., her English is functionally fluent in that she sounds like a normal, college educated American to me - I can't hear any accent, which is a bit strange since she dated mostly foreigners from England with distinct British accents.

Regarding her Mandarin, she is definitely way beyond my fellow intermediate level speakers. Our native Mandarin speaking friends swear they can't hear any accent compared to Taiwanese. She watches news, TV and movies in both English and Mandarin without any difficulty.

Regarding reading and writing, she is practically illiterate. She can't really write Mandarin at all nor read much more than food items. Her written English, her preferred language to use for text messages and such, is probably around that of an 8 year olds.

By the way, the only other person I have run into that has really reached a high level in Mandarin in a short time without formal study can also speak Nepali. However, I definitely hear a distinct and heavy accent to both his English and Mandarin and his English grammar is a bit rough in spots. Plus, I believe it took him longer to get to his current level.

Both friends know I am passionately studying Mandarin and both honestly can't understand why I ever wasted time studying textbooks, attending classes with private tutors and using flashcard programs. They both swear there is nothing unique about their accomplishments and their advice two years ago when I started down this journey to learn Mandarin was quite simple - do what they did and just start speaking immediately while listening to everyone around me, the radio, watching TV etc. :rolleyes:

Ah, if only life was that simple. I couldn't pick up tones and proper pronunciation without working on it diligently with a skilled tutor. I couldn't get a handle on basic grammar patterns without the advice from my tutors combined with studying grammar books written from the perspective of a native English speaker (e.g, Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar by Claudia Ross). My functional ability to really use my theoretical knowledge still lagged well behind and is only just now starting to catch up after countless hours practicing with native speakers.

I suspect my friend is blessed with a very highly developed listening ability and can intuitively distinguish and memorize different sounds much easier than most of us. Unlike most non-native speakers I run into, when I speak to her in Mandarin she is much more sensitive to my Chinese tonal mistakes than the average Taiwanese. She is so self depreciating about her language skills and seems to honestly believe its quite natural to pick up languages simply by being exposed to them that at times I want to strangle her senseless. :angry:

[anonymoose]

As I think others have pointed out, there is a big difference between being fluent in a language, and having a level equivalent to a well-educated native speaker.

Speaking English fluently is one thing, but if your friend has the written level of an 8-year old, then it would suggest that her English is far from that of a real well-educated (and presumably this means adult) native speaker. I mean, 8-year old native speakers also speak fluently.

As for her Chinese, I suspect it is a similar situation. She may be able to speak fluently, but without the ability to read, there is no way she could have attained the vocabulary and depth that someone who's studied in school for several years could have.

I would also like to point out that if you don't speak a language well yourself, then when someone else speaks it better than you, you cannot really judge how good it is. I mean, if someone speaks fast and smoothly, it sounds as though they are fluent, but you are not really in a position to judge if their grammar and use of vocabulary is appropriate or not.