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Atlas · Joined: 09 Jun 2003 Posts: 662 Location: By-the-Sea PRC

Atlas said:

Atlas · Joined: 09 Jun 2003 Posts: 662 Location: By-the-Sea PRC

*
I'm sorry, I was thinking of the word fluid, not fluent. Kinda sound the same though, so I thought they might bear resemblance.

johnslat · Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 2:51 pm Post subject: Flowing

Well, the English word has its root in the Latin "fluere", meaning "to flow",
so I guess a general definition of "fluent" would be - being able to speak a language without having to slow down or pause to think of the words, etc. that you want/need to use to express your ideas.
Regards,
John

Will. · Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 783 Location: London Uk

The ability to invent a lie to excuse your lateness, absence, forgetting a birthday, anniversary etc.................be believed........ and get away with it. To apply inventiveness to your spoken skill.
So far we have concentrated upon the speech aspect. There are other skills.
Would we classify fluency as the ability to read The Times and understand the majority of the articles within or the capacity to respond to letters to the editor with our own letter?

hesterprynne · Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 386

If one is fluent in a language, one can think of all aspects of the world around him in that language. If you speak a second language, surely you remember the exciting moment when you realized "Wow! I just thought in the second language!" - or perhaps the moment when you were not listening actively to a radio or television program or to native speakers - yet you caught the entire conversation.....heady stuff- don't think I will get there in chinese without university study of the written language

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Or that moment when you realise that you know the word in your second language but not your first !

Incidentally have you noticed that amidst all the b***sh** about "globalisation" more and more anglosaxons are monoglots !

In the good old days to get into a university in the UKofGB&NI you needed a pass in a foreign language at matric level. No longer. You can now find people graduating with degrees in the Humanities who have ZERO knowledge of a foreign language.

We are plunging into the new Dark Ages !

Sara Avalon · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 254 Location: On the Prowl

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Sara

The answer is YES ! You see I am of that generation of Brits who actually learned foreign languages, before the rot set in.

To my shame my Arabic is not particularly good but I have near-native-speaker competence in German. French is good and Bulgarian too. For Latin I have not much use since the Catholic Church excommunicated me.

I can also spell "curious" and "curiosity"

Why this sudden interest in Scot47 ?

Sara Avalon · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 254 Location: On the Prowl

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

Sara Avalon · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 254 Location: On the Prowl

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Like another poster I always thought "-ise" was Br and "-ize" was Am

Just checked in my dictionary but it is a Webster's so I cannot believe that ! Someone please check online and report back ? Can we ask johnslat to be the ref ?

Sara Avalon · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 254 Location: On the Prowl

I found this link to an American-English English-American dictionary:
http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html

latefordinner · Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 973

Scot47:
>Like another poster I always thought "-ise" was Br and "-ize" was Am

I grew up in Canada with British spellings and American pronunciations. When I was in school, anything spelled with -ize was marked wrong. We used to say that the British could spell but couldn't speak their own language, Americans could speak it but couldn't spell, and that Canadians spelt like Britons and spoke like Americans. That apparently has changed.

Aside from the cultural implications for the emerging colony of Canada, does it really matter? I believe not, and am somewhat amused when Chinese teachers tell me that there is a big problem with the textbooks; the children are taught "zed", and in school they are taught "zee". Oh, if only all of our teaching problems were so great!

Capergirl · Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 10:20 am Post subject:

It amazes me sometimes how many "English" words exist that I don't know. Yesterday, my Kuwaiti student asked me if the word "kirk" meant "church". Kirk? Shocked

He said that his dictionary gave the same Arabic definition for both words. Unable to find this word in any of the dictionaries I own, I looked it up on dictionary.com. Lo and behold, kirk is a British word meaning "a Scottish church". I learned a new word. Cool