Jack Seward Defines Fluency

[Greji]

... I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities for such study, beginning with a Booble search.

Oppai-tunities?

Pehaps Tit-illating?

[Socratesabroad]

Just a few belated thoughts (apologies, but work's now slowing)...

I can certainly understand gboothe's point about "fluency." When I moved to Japan I came straight from managing Hispanic day laborers on a construction site. When asked if I spoke the language, I answered 'a little' whereupon a fellow JET from England said 'I thought you were fluent. I'm fluent in German.'
Yeah, those two years in Germany while she was a grad student must certainly have made her fluent.

Even now, after 6 1/2 years in Japan and J-go translation/programming to pay the bills, I wouldn't label myself fluent. As Kamome said, proficient maybe, but never fluent. Japanese comedy, for example, is an easy example of where my proficiency ends.

That said, I also understand Charles' point.

The language is the culture and vice versa, they cannot be seperated. Also this whole idea of fluency among natives is silly. Fluency doesn't apply to native speakers.

Bollocks. Being a native or native speaker does not equal fluency]definition of literacy[/url] (and thus reading proficiency/fluency) varies depending on where you live:

Literacy: A Chinese definition:

Definition of literacy for Chines peasantry:
Knowledge of 1500 characters - plus -
Ability to keep simple accounts
Perform basic calculations on an abacus
Write short notes
Read specially prepared simple newspapers and journals.

By 1995, the national illiteracy rate had been brought down to to 12%, amounting to 16.5% of the adult population.

Nationwide, there are still 30 million Chinese between the ages of 15 and 50 who cannot read at all. Adding in all those defined as "semi-literate" and those, like Hua Lijun [who 'can crudely scrawl her name and address, but little else. She recognizes only a relative handful of Chinese characters'], who are above 50, the total approaches 150 million.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/02/12/rchina.t.php

Building on this, what about non-natives who surpass the language level of ordinary natives in some areas? My Chinese teacher in Japan was a medical grad student at Todai. Her scientific, mathematical, and medical knowledge in Japanese far exceeds that of an ordinary Japanese, but she "can never be as fluent as the Japanese day laborer sitting next to us in the yakitoriya"? Sorry, I just don't buy that.

Why care? Well, for me this fluency debate is extremely apropos since I'm studying at a Chinese university. Assuming I do graduate and work full-time for a while in China, then I'll have eclipsed the level reached by most Chinese. And yet some of the posters here are saying I'll never reach the level of fluency of, say, the manual laborer on the roadside. If

fluency is the ability to live, work and exist with the language

then I certainly don't buy it.

[drpepper]

[quote="Socratesabroad"]
Bollocks. Being a native or native speaker does not equal fluency]

Opinions are like charles'....


I disagree 100% illiteracy and fluency are 2 completely seperate things.. if you heard some fg stuttering through poor Japanese you would not say he is illiterate you would say he is not fluent, if a native urbanite was speaking poorly you would call them uneducated or illiterate, the fact that this is proves that they are two different things. Fluency does not apply to native speakers, you gonna tell me a 5 year is not fluent in Japanese cause he is 5? BS! Education nor intelligence determines fluency. And no Socrates you will never be as fluent as a Chinese day laborer, when the day comes that people blindfolded listen to you speak and the native speakers pick you as being native then you are and I think that day will never come. Dave Spector speaks Japanese perhaps more fluently than any foreigner that has not been brought up with the language that I have ever heard and yet no Japanese would not be able to pick him out a room blindfolded as being the non-native speaker (unless he spoke in very very short sentences... as even I am mistaken as Japanese on the phone at the beginning of a conversation).

[Greji]

Just judging from the tone he generally uses in his written work, and some of the comments in his piece, I don't think he means to be snotty.

Well, that's part of the problem, he appears to be totally serious. He's like an old crank that says "you little whippersnappers don't know how easy you have it, back when I was your age, we had to walk to language school 10 miles every day through 6 foot snowdrifts to practice soushou and 4000 kanji. And we LIKED it!"

Charles, you must be very perceptive, or it least it would so appear. As I mentioned somewhere else herein, Jack Seward has written about 44 books concerning Japanese, the language and the people, none of which you have claimed to have read, nor have you ever met the man. Yet you can completely disect him and his thinking based on that one page you did read!

When he received the award from the Emperor for his contributions to Japan, perhaps they errored in not having you present for rebuttal?

Somebody must have read his stuff, I don't believe there is an over-abundance of other FGs who have received Imperial notice for Japanese language books, dispite there being tons of FG written tomes on the topic.

I certainly hope it's not penis envy on your part!

[Socratesabroad]

[drpepper]

I never said that a non-native cannot be fluent, my first post stated clearly that what is considered fluent is subjective. Since I also state that fluency doesn't apply to a native speaker it can only apply to a non-native speaker. Kissinger is fluent in English in my opinion but nobody would mistake him for a native speaker, he makes awkward sentences at times and has a discernable accent, he will never be equal to me in the English language. I never stated what I considered the standard for what fluency is, merely that no matter how fluent you become you will never equal a native speaker. That doesn't mean you cannot obtain fluency, quite the contrary. I think fluency is measured by how close you become to being equal to a native speaker. Where the line is from beginner, to advanced, to fluent can be drawn any number of places. Since you are not a native speaker of chinese (and I assume started to learn chinese while an adult) you will never be mistaken for one, though of course you may become quite fluent in the language.

As for your quotes from the dictionary well there are other meanings of the word fluent, as in to be smooth, clear or easy to understand but I was speaking within a specific context and dictionaries don't always equate that. We are talking about native to non-native in a specific context (i.e. the learning of a language) and here I think fluency only applies to non-natives since the native speaker is the yardstick to which these things are measured. If you and I were to give a speech somewhere we could debate as to who was the more fluent speaker and that would be a correct usage as well.