| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183] > | Should “native language” claims be verified? Thread poster: XXXphxxx (X)
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S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 18:08
Italian to English
| @'Lilian' : Shakespeare in the 21st century | Jul 30, 2012 |
LilianBoland wrote:
Source language is very important too -- if you don't understand the text, it does not matter how many idioms you use in your target language, or even if you sound almost Shakespearian. (which might not be such a great thing after all -- how many contemporary English speakers understand Shakespeare?)
Are you kidding?
Not that it has anything to do with this thread, but since you have seen fit to question the ability of modern English speakers to understand Shakespeare (!!!): the answer to your perhaps rhetorical question is, to put it mildly, 'a lot'.
Tens upon tens of thousands of English speakers in America alone attend Shakespeare in the Park performances in cities and small towns all over the country summer after summer, year after year (not to mention the droves who go to see traditional indoor performances year in year out in an even greater number of cities and small towns).
They certainly don't attend these events to revel in unintelligible language.
The cultural lacunae revealed in asides of this kind do no favors for their author's primary claims and arguments - on the contrary, it's undermining at best.
[Edited at 2012-07-30 09:00 GMT]
| | | | Nicole Schnell 
United States
Local time: 09:08
English to German
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In memoriam | Addendum - I hope I am not off-topic | Jul 30, 2012 |
Ty Kendall wrote: Me too Nicole - poor, poor Americans 00:35 Nicole Schnell wrote: LilianBoland wrote:
I don't think 90% of Americans could tell if somebody is a British English native speaker or if the person is from another country and just has a very good command of the language.
Sorry, I am still busy laughing my head off. 
People often forget that the US are pretty much an entire continent - and that all kinds of regional dialects and accents are spoken in different states. At home at the kitchen table, that is, not in public or at the workplace. There is only one kind of standard American English - news speaker English, or in written form: New York Times English. Comparable to Germany where the truest and most accent-free German is spoken in the area around the city of Hannover, the same goes for the Pacific Northwest in the US. There is a kind of an "accent-free" belt, spanning from Nebraska towards the Northwest Coast. There is no such thing as "ain't" or "gonna" or "shan't". We will be happy to treat you as a tourist, though. Or as a jerk.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:08
Hebrew to English
| Dwi'n siarad Cymraeg! - Why not? | Jul 30, 2012 |
I've been thinking about adding Welsh as a native language.
Now, I can't really string 2 sentences together in it, but my dad's family is Welsh (but even he can't speak a word, his mom never taught him)...and I do live very close to the border of Wales and I have heard the language all my life so it must be hardwired in there somewhere. I do occasionally watch S4C and (subtitled) "Pobol y Cwm" - for the comedy value more than anything else.
As they say: "Annigonol ydy un iaith / Dyw un iaith byth yn ddigon". (One language is never enough - although I'm sure they didn't have this in mind when coining that phrase).
Why not eh?
Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn
Hwyl!!
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What are you so happy about? I love my legal name and I am registered under it. This is just a screen name -- I did not even realize it would be seen to the users, when I registered. As to the courses --yes all the courses at the English Philological Department were taught in another language -- other than English by British and American Professors. 80% of the faculty at philological departments used to be from Britain and the United states. If you believe they could teach in another language th... See more What are you so happy about? I love my legal name and I am registered under it. This is just a screen name -- I did not even realize it would be seen to the users, when I registered. As to the courses --yes all the courses at the English Philological Department were taught in another language -- other than English by British and American Professors. 80% of the faculty at philological departments used to be from Britain and the United states. If you believe they could teach in another language that's great. You can hold on to your illusions. There was maybe one economy course, which was not taught in English -- it had to do with Eastern Europe -- that's why. 90% of the courses at least were in English, subjects other than Latin and another language. I don't know what is is like now, but I believe it might be similar, unless they don't have the money to pay foreign professors. I learned English at the age of three -- my grandfather spoke English quite well because he had lived in England for many years. His brothers lived in England as well, and their families have still been living in there, since World War II.
I spent a lot of time there as well, and I lived in England before I ever moved to the United States. I have not written anything more serious in another language than English since the age of fifteen, sixteen, except a dissertation in Swedish. Are happy now? Great. As to whether British English speakers would be recognized right away as native BE speakers or Dutch, or South African people or someone else who spoke English very well, it is absolutely true that they might not. This is not something based on my imagination. When my relatives from England visited -- they are of Welsh and third generation Eastern European descent -- my plumber -- a great Black guy from the Bronx though they were Norwegian. When British people ask for directions in the street, they have to repeat what they want at least three times, before they get understood -- some of them, perhaps not all. This is at least the situation in New York. I don't know what it is like in the West. Even someone from other parts of the United States may be taken for a foreigner,a Brit perhaps, in New York.
Add Welsh, Ty. It is a great language. My cousins are half Welsh. I only know bore da and nos da.
I have lived in the United States for 27 years out of my forty something, and have spoke English for forty years. Just so you do not have to waste time looking for this information somewhere else. Dioh.
My Welsh might be a little rusty.
[Edited at 2012-07-30 10:29 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-07-30 11:51 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Michele Fauble
United States
Local time: 09:08
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
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Ty Kendall wrote:
I've been thinking about adding Welsh as a native language.
Maybe we should all just start claiming that we are also native in our source languages.
[Edited at 2012-07-30 10:49 GMT]
| | | | Michele Fauble
United States
Local time: 09:08
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
| | Yes, you could if your parent was a native speaker of that language or | Jul 30, 2012 |
if you have lived, for most of your life, in the country where the language was spoken and you had your higher education in that language.
To Nicole: You must live in a very conservative part of the United States, or a conservative neighborhood, at least. Most of young people in New York speak slang, in everyday life. The rap took it over. I cannot even tell who is speaking anymore, if I don't look at the person. Perfect rap.
And to Michele: if I am not ... See more if you have lived, for most of your life, in the country where the language was spoken and you had your higher education in that language.
To Nicole: You must live in a very conservative part of the United States, or a conservative neighborhood, at least. Most of young people in New York speak slang, in everyday life. The rap took it over. I cannot even tell who is speaking anymore, if I don't look at the person. Perfect rap.
And to Michele: if I am not wrong, I think you had some problems with a translator who could not translate legal texts into English. Did you check if that person had any legal education or long-term experience, somewhere where legal language had conventionally bee used? Or, did you automatically assume that if the person's mother' L1 was English, she would produce a perfect legal translation into English?
To: Nicole. I never said anyone in the United States was stupid or dumb. Where did you get it from? I am an American myself and I love this country and I would have never said anything like that. I just said certain varieties of BE sound so unfamiliar to the general population, especially in certain locations, like New York, that the speakers would be taken just for someone from an a place other than New York -- not necessarily from the British Isles. This has nothing to do with stupidity -- this is just a proof that certain varieties of English are quite remote from one another.
As to Shakespeare -- no, an average English-speaking person, with high school or more technical education, would not be able to easily understand Shakespeare in the original form, especially some of the tragedies. This is not just my opinion, by an opinion expressed by a friend of mine who is an English teacher in England.
[Edited at 2012-07-30 11:09 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-07-30 11:15 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-07-30 11:28 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-07-30 11:34 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:08
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
Wow, thanks for the link! This really made my morning! Too bad she didn't do Dutch;)
Michael
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:08
Portuguese to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Allow me to clarify Lilian | Jul 30, 2012 |
It appears that you are still in doubt:
What would the L1 of the thread starter be? Have you ever thought about it? Malaysian? Portuguese?
I am just surprised that a person born in a non-English speaking country, whose mother's L1 is unknown, would start this kind of a tread.
So once more (and for the last time) I will go through the details of my language acquisition. Having started the thread, I realise I should probably be the guinea pig and be grilled on why I consider myself to be a native speaker of English.
Firstly, I was born in Malaysia but my Malay (not Malaysian) vocabulary extends to about 20 words. Neither I nor anybody in my family is Malaysian. We left Malaysia when I was one and although my mother has a smattering of the language it was never spoken at home. So, I think that counts Malay out.
Now, to my English. My father is a Londoner, born and bred. My mother was born in Singapore and was brought up speaking English and Hokkien. English is the only language she reads and writes fluently. She has spoken English from earliest childhood and was entirely educated in English (apart from a period during the Japanese occupation in WWII when she was taught in Japanese). She was educated in Ireland from her early teens to her twenties. Having left Singapore 40+ years ago she no longer has a Singapore accent. A very close relative of my mother’s who changed his name by deed poll was an author called Leslie Charteris. He shared the same surname as my mother and a very similar background to her but, for those who know who he is, I would hazard a guess that they would think of him as quintessentially British. As for me, the only language we spoke at home was English. My mother spoke some Hokkien with my eldest brother but none with me. Several languages “floated around in the background” but none were my native language. Both my parents only ever spoke to me in English. I was educated exclusively in British schools in Brazil (São Paulo and Rio) where, apart from Portuguese language and literature lessons, all instruction was in English. Portuguese was not allowed in the classroom, only in the playground. The only exception was a period in my early years when the military government dictated that Brazilian history and geography be taught (in Portuguese of course) in ALL schools. Off the top of my head, that probably accounted for about 1/5th of the timetable, if that. We followed an English curriculum and did O’levels. My entire education has been English: O’levels, A’levels and university (undergrad and post-grad) in England. Michele came up with the best description for my particular situation earlier in this thread:
To claim a language as a native language is to make a claim about the age at which it was acquired and the circumstances under which it was acquired. A native language is acquired at a young age and as a member of a community of native speakers.
You also seem to believe that one could consider any language one has had extended or even passing contact with to be a native language. Why don't I consider Portuguese to be my native language? Well, only a small part of my education was in Portuguese, and although I spoke it every day in and outside school, watched TV and read comics in Portuguese, it was not the language we spoke at home, nor the language I was educated in. Those two, I believe, are the two crucial elements that determine what your native language is. I am 100% comfortable with the language and speak it without any accent at all, anybody would think I was Brazilian - plus I cheer for Brazil during the World Cup but it is still not my native language. Why not French? I have spoken it from an early age, lived there for ten years, I’m a dual national, my children are French and their primary school education was all in French. I have a strong emotional attachment to the language, but it is not my native language either. Some people think I’m French when they meet me, but I wouldn't dream of claiming that my French is on a par with someone who has spoken it at home as their mother tongue all their lives, you’ve got to be joking. It would be an insult to the French.
I don’t deny that my background is more complicated than some, which is why I find it difficult to answer Bernhard’s question on what my country of origin is. However, I am very clear in my mind that English is my one and only native language and I might add that I would be more than happy to undergo any test. I have nothing at all to hide.
With respect Lilian, you increasingly appear to have a very low threshold for what you consider to be your or anyone else’s native language. Might I suggest that in the context of working with languages at a professional level, you may wish to reconsider your assessment of how a native language is actually acquired?
[Edited at 2012-07-30 11:55 GMT]
| | | | psicutrinius
Spain
Local time: 18:08
Member (2008)
Spanish to English
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| Yardsticks for native languages.. | Jul 30, 2012 |
I am surely mostly repeating what I wrote in a post buried back here, but I will nevertheless:
I am bilingual Catalan / Spanish. I have been raised in both and, in fact, I have been, and I am, speaking more Catalan than Spanish. My father spoke Spanish (as a mother tongue) and my mother and her family spoke Catalan. Among brothers and sisters (and with mom), we spoke Catalan, and with dad, Spanish. BUT
BUT I was educated in Spanish. In fact, I had no possibility of LEAR... See more I am surely mostly repeating what I wrote in a post buried back here, but I will nevertheless:
I am bilingual Catalan / Spanish. I have been raised in both and, in fact, I have been, and I am, speaking more Catalan than Spanish. My father spoke Spanish (as a mother tongue) and my mother and her family spoke Catalan. Among brothers and sisters (and with mom), we spoke Catalan, and with dad, Spanish. BUT
BUT I was educated in Spanish. In fact, I had no possibility of LEARNING Catalan (and specially WRITTEN Catalan) at the time (that has changed now, of course: Vehicular language is now Catalan here and you are also taught Spanish so as to be bilingual).
Result?. I speak and read and write Catalan quite well (and certainly better than some self-proclaimed English natives write English here) BUT I CANNOT BE FULLY SURE THAT I will not commit errors (orthographical) and, since translation refers to writing, I do NOT say I can translate into Catalan.
My yardstick here is that your ERRORS in your target language are zero point zero zero. I cannot be fully sure I can do it in Catalan, I do not quote Catalan as my target language.
PERIOD.
(Attention the nitpickers: I said ERRORS, not ERRATA. That's quite different and includes typos. Nobody, ever, is immune to these).
If everybody uses the same yardstick, I am afraid that NO vetting would be needed (and also that, for the declared target language, nobody would give a damn about passing any vetting / review). But it is not the case here... ▲ Collapse
| | | | | This has been a fascinating story, Lisa | Jul 30, 2012 |
it is a pity your mother did not teach you Hokkien. I love rare languages. What about Portuguese? I think you could most likely claim it as your second native language, unless you don't feel the connection to that culture -- I understand. I don't think you can claim any language as your native. If you are referring to Russian and Lithuanian. my father's native language was Lithuanian and he absolutely loved it. He was also considered a native speaker of Russian, because he was mostly educated in... See more it is a pity your mother did not teach you Hokkien. I love rare languages. What about Portuguese? I think you could most likely claim it as your second native language, unless you don't feel the connection to that culture -- I understand. I don't think you can claim any language as your native. If you are referring to Russian and Lithuanian. my father's native language was Lithuanian and he absolutely loved it. He was also considered a native speaker of Russian, because he was mostly educated in Russian -- you could not study in Lithuanian at a certain time in history, but he also liked Russian and Russian literature. So, my Russian is really good, not like someone's that had just a brief brush with it. My Lithuanian is good too and I love it, but I don't know any legal or business vocabulary in it, so I would not be able to discuss anything related to business, or law in it. I learned English at about the age of three because my grandfather spoke it, I could read childrens' books by the age of six and more serious books by the age of twelve.
I have lived in England for short periods of time -- like a few months at a time, and I have lived in the United States for 27 years out of my forty something. All of my higher education is in English, except one economy course and Latin, some from Europe from a Philology Department, some from the United States, English -- Creative Writing. I also have some summer university courses in linguistics mostly from two other places. I have been speaking in 95% of my work, study and regular life activities for the lat 27 years, at least, not counting the few moth periods in my childhood, and early teenage years. If you count the university which though in a different country but had 90% of course in English, I have been speaking English mostly (95% of time) for the last thirty years.
What kind of language is Hokkien? This is really fascinating. I am really a language freak. ▲ Collapse
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| Maybe you should claim Catalan as you native language Mr. P | Jul 30, 2012 |
I think you said this was your L1. Maybe you should claim both, just explain you cannot write in it.
As for your English is concerned, it is really good, but I don't know how much time you spend editing. If I edit my posts two of three times they are perfect. I just don't want to bother the stuff to spend too much time on vetting, plus I don't really have time to check every single thing I write on the forum, for commas, run-ons and things like that. I am a very busy person. If yo... See more I think you said this was your L1. Maybe you should claim both, just explain you cannot write in it.
As for your English is concerned, it is really good, but I don't know how much time you spend editing. If I edit my posts two of three times they are perfect. I just don't want to bother the stuff to spend too much time on vetting, plus I don't really have time to check every single thing I write on the forum, for commas, run-ons and things like that. I am a very busy person. If you have never lived permanently in any English- speaking country for years, and you do not have education in it, other than language classes, no matter how good it is, you cannot claim it as your native.
[Edited at 2012-07-30 13:09 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Responses (changing nothing!) | Jul 30, 2012 |
Phil Hand wrote: Few things: the straightforward answer is that the private email to site staff should not be non-functional, and that policy by the site needs to be reviewed. Yeah, so this is where I see the problem. We've just had Jared say he's not doing this. In the interests of a realistic chance of a change, what are you suggesting we say to Jared or to the wider membership to drive a change in policy?
1. The site has been known to change policy in the past (e.g. limits on questions) in light of popular demand
2. Those changes tend not to be drastic (e.g. the ridiculously high limits on questions)
3. Unlike universal testing, the pared-down approach to challenge-based verification does not actually require any changes, it merely requires the staff to knuckle down and do some enforcing of existing rules using existing reporting procedures, which they are keen enough to do when it suits them.
Phil Hand wrote: Proz is a coop,
Indeed, a veritable henhouse, full of clucking idiots.
Phil Hand wrote: If the user posts nothing, then, frankly, the main issue that many of us have solves itself. Our reputations are not sullied by those that stay silent, they are sullied by those claiming "N" and writing ungrammatical nonsense. Not sure about that, because these people are still bidding on (and getting) jobs - they write their nonsense in emails to outsourcers, and I suspect outsourcers are more interested in those emails (and CVs, and translation output) than forum posts.
Yeah, but that's because on your own admission you have a turf-protection element to your support for this cause. I haven't. I'm just fed up being associated with liars. I happen to think the end result will be similar, in terms of the market that runs through here, but I think you've seen that some people do not hold a turf-protection justification in high regard (including me, frankly).
I think, in contrast, the integrity, honesty, professionalism angle is something everyone can buy into. Except for lying, dishonest charlatans, naturally.
There would need to be a threshold, about which I look forward to massive arguments This is my problem with using existing stuff - if the input to the review process is non-standardised, how can you set a threshold?
Some kind of proportion to the volume, I would imagine. But as I said yesterday, once a challenge has been triggered, there is an argument that using the kind of standardised test proposed for universal testing could be handy.
There are some points that need sorting, naturally. Yeah, but I think we need to sort them ourselves. The signal from the staff is "not interested". No-one is going to work out these details other than us. If there is to be any possibility of change, I think we need to be presenting fully fleshed-out plans (possibly costed), and applying some serious pressure.
I'm more interested in getting majority agreement in principle before delving into details - in my experience it saves time. Which is why, for example, I found some of the early proposals for scoring nativeness somewhat OTT, since it was by no means clear at that point that such mechanisms were needed, and indeed it has subsequently proved they probably aren't.
We'd need much more background info too, e.g. what happens (or potentially could happen if the site showed some willingness) within the existing system when a member reports another member.
Phil Hand wrote: Otherwise we are just completely wasting our time here.
I'm afraid we all have to face the possibility that, while this has been an interesting discussion on many levels, it could indeed ultimately prove to have been just an exercise in debating and logic skills.
| | | | | origins can be complex but | Jul 30, 2012 |
Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote:
...
I don’t deny that my background is more complicated than some, which is why I find it difficult to answer Bernhard’s question on what my country of origin is. However, I am very clear in my mind that English is my one and only native language and I might add that I would be more than happy to undergo any test. I have nothing at all to hide.
...
... people are usually clear in their mind that language X is their native language. Indeed!
Hi Lisa,
I believe I used the term "country of origin" to account for cases where someone is born in one country and then immediately leaves and grows up in another. In that case if someone asks that person where they're from, they probably won't consider Country 1 as their country of origin. As you and I know, this term is used most often for products, not people, and usually means the country where a product came from after it was "put together/manufactured, usually in that same country". As you know, parts for products can be manufactured and come from all over the world, even a German car doesn't only contain German parts or processes in Germany, but it is a German car, even if it was built in Mexico. Country of origin? Well, it could be Mexico for a German car and the US for a Japanese car.
So I don't want to directly apply this type of use to people; I want to prevent claims such as "well it obviously doesn't matter where you're from, you could be growing up in Germany (country of origin) and be a native speaker of English." Someone could say: "My parents only spoke English with me." However, it usually matters where you grow up.
In any case, country of origin should mean that a person spent a significant time of their childhood and schooling there in order to absorb all that the culture entails, including native language skills. But we'd probably have to define the term more clearly or not even use it. I used "origins" at another place here and that would include all kinds of details, ranging from parents to country of birth/residence, schooling etc. So, as you say, it's not easy to answer that question about your country of origin. But maybe we don't have to anyway.
However, no background is too complicated to know what one's native language is. And again, that must mean one is on a par with the vast majority of people/the average representative speaker claiming the same native language. But if you lived somewhere and were never exposed to the language to a degree or at an age that allowed for this native language acquisition, you couldn't be considered a native speaker. Some will say where do you draw the line, but the line is usually pretty clear. And if the claimant is honest enough, they will know which language they can claim as their native language or if they can claim a native language at all (in the sense that is acceptable to someone who grew up in one country and learned one (or more) language(s) within the critical period and never lost that language proficiency).
And coming back to your main question, I got the impression that most participants in this thread are indeed interested in native language verification, especially with regard to more than one native language. It's the "how do we do it" that we're working on. I favored an informal chat, but a more formal test including questions for which only a native speaker would know the answers and writing samples also seem to make sense to me.
The verification doesn't have to be difficult because I still believe most who claim to be "native" but are clearly not will not want to verify that language. If it is (as I believe it should) be mandatory to getting verified in order to display these languages as native languages, they might give up that claim rather than go through with verification.
And because others posting their comments here have asked for verification of those who only claim one native language (such as you and me), I don't have a problem with that either. It might be necessary because once verification of two native languages becomes mandatory (in order to get the verified status), some might think by declaring one false native language, they can get away with it.
B
[Edited at 2012-07-30 14:40 GMT]
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