What a fascinating topic languages are! And everything here resonates with me, in particular recognising fellow Spanish but also Italian people without them even speaking and getting it right all the time who is who. And on the accent point I often wished Spanish were a more complex language phonetically as it would have made it easier to sound more native-like in English, which has a bigger vowel range (12 vs 5 in Spanish). But then again I’ve met people with perfect Spanish accents and yet something was off in the communication because they were second generation perhaps and had never lived in Spain so many of the figurative language -or cultural references- was simply lost on them. But this is the topic for another language-related question: when can one truly say they’re fluent in a language? When they speak it perfectly or when they can use it in the same contexts a native speaker would, including to make jokes and understand subtext and references to the culture and history of a given place?
Oh yeah, fluency is definitely an evasive concept. Maybe it'd be necessary to distinguish between language as such (as in, grammar, vocab, and so on) and language as a part of culture? I mean, surely you, as someone from Spain won't get 100% of the references made by a, say, Argentinian? I myself repeatedly get puzzled by yet another slangy word that pops up on the Russian side of the internet, like, if I see it often enough, I'll give up and look for an explainer 🤓 Does it make me less fluent? Or when someone doesn't recognize a quote from a presumably widely known book or film, just because they happened not to come across them? I mean, surely, it would place some sort of a tag on you (because cultural capital) but does affect your level of fluency?
Ugh, my mind is tripping over all possible rabbit holes with such topics.
Exactly and that example about Argentina is actually quite relevant as I lived with a girl from Argentina and it took a while for both of us to get all the references 😅 I guess you already have half of your next post done!
privet by the way, ya ponemuyu po russki tchut tchut. Maya jena rosskaya
hah! privet! what were the odds! :D
What a fascinating topic languages are! And everything here resonates with me, in particular recognising fellow Spanish but also Italian people without them even speaking and getting it right all the time who is who. And on the accent point I often wished Spanish were a more complex language phonetically as it would have made it easier to sound more native-like in English, which has a bigger vowel range (12 vs 5 in Spanish). But then again I’ve met people with perfect Spanish accents and yet something was off in the communication because they were second generation perhaps and had never lived in Spain so many of the figurative language -or cultural references- was simply lost on them. But this is the topic for another language-related question: when can one truly say they’re fluent in a language? When they speak it perfectly or when they can use it in the same contexts a native speaker would, including to make jokes and understand subtext and references to the culture and history of a given place?
Oh yeah, fluency is definitely an evasive concept. Maybe it'd be necessary to distinguish between language as such (as in, grammar, vocab, and so on) and language as a part of culture? I mean, surely you, as someone from Spain won't get 100% of the references made by a, say, Argentinian? I myself repeatedly get puzzled by yet another slangy word that pops up on the Russian side of the internet, like, if I see it often enough, I'll give up and look for an explainer 🤓 Does it make me less fluent? Or when someone doesn't recognize a quote from a presumably widely known book or film, just because they happened not to come across them? I mean, surely, it would place some sort of a tag on you (because cultural capital) but does affect your level of fluency?
Ugh, my mind is tripping over all possible rabbit holes with such topics.
Exactly and that example about Argentina is actually quite relevant as I lived with a girl from Argentina and it took a while for both of us to get all the references 😅 I guess you already have half of your next post done!