fpb | (no subject)

(no subject)

Language Scholar
You scored a 370 out of 400 on language knowledge.

Outstanding! You've scored higher than even most Anthropology students would. You are probably a Linguistics or Anthropology Professor yourself (or at least a Grad student). You may even speak several languages and are possibly working on a new one. If not, then you just have an endless drive to learn about the different cultures of our world. Regardless, you are one of the gems of any society, always promoting a deeper understanding amongst all people. Unless you cheated of course.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on knowledge

Link: The World Languages Test written by jeremie096 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

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Not as good as you, but not bad either. My wise friend

cheapriboflavin told me I should be a linguist.

Why not? And out of curiosity, what do you in fact study? Or do, if you are of wage-slave age?

I'm majoring in English and Film, but I'm probably going to drop the Film or convert it to a minor. I have the option of concentrating in linguistics, which I've been thinking about, but to tell the truth, I don't even know what a linguist does. Do they read Beowulf all day?

cheapriboflavin is studying psycholinguistics and helping to built a computer program that can inter-act with humans, but I don't know what a linguist would do.

Linguistics is mostly theory, though you have to know more than one language. Or you can study languages, which is the actual thing.

Well, I already do that, but studying languages isn't a job.

Translating and interpreting is, and I can tell you because I do it. As a matter of fact, once I have finished this, I am going to send an e-mail applying for a translation job.

Oo! What languages do you specialize in?

Obviously, Italian-English. I can also do French into either Italian or English, but employers don't generally like you doing more than a couple of languages. You should even always tell which is your native language, which is pretty ridiculous for me, because I speak English as well as most.

Why don't you say you're bilingual?

Because that does not fit into the categories. And, to be fair, professional translating is something that goes beyond simply being able to talk to people in two different languages. You have to be able to find, each time, the expression that fits best, the turn of phrase that contains, not a literal correspondence, but the meaning that the original contains. Which is in principle better that someone should always translate into his or her native tongue - it is, inevitably, the one in which s/he will have the most nuanced understanding.

True. I was thinking more about the ability to speak the language than the age that one acquired it.

So, if Italian is your native tongue, at what age did you learn English?

I got the rudiments at eleven, and learned to speak it between my fifteenth and sixteenth year.

That's pretty young. I'm nineteen and I'm only fluent in my native language.

That is appalling. Italian schools were hardly perfect, but we got both Latin and one foreign language at eleven, plus an absolute hammering of Italian grammar (six hours a week) and literature (six more). Children should be introduced to foreign languages as early as possible; in fact, last I heard, in Italy they were thinking of starting off in elementary school.

I've read that they should start in kindergarten. As a matter of fact, a lot of US schools give the kids a lot of the Español from the early ages, but that depends on how rich the school is. I didn't go to elementary or high school, though, so my experience is different from a lot of Americans.

Personally, I've studied German for ages, and a little Latin, Greek, and Spanish, and I'm currently taking courses in Japanese. My inability to speak any of it fluently is mostly due to me being too shy to speak to native speakers.

The only way one really learns a language is by full immersion. That is how I learned English - I had studied French at school. (My French today is good but not fluent.) You need to spend a holiday in a German-speaking country and BEG your hosts never to speak English to you - a bit of a problem, since very many Germans, Austrians and Swiss speak excellent English. Indeed, some Germans I know break that rule I just stated, that the only way to learn a language is by speaking it - I met people who had learned beautiful fluent and only slightly accented English AT SCHOOL!!

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