I think polyglots are criminally underappreciated.
Real polyglots are under appreciated. However, I think it’s mostly an effect of so many pseudo polyglots who take a course on Duolingo and thus claim to speak several languages. Unless you’re putting in serious effort with real language learning materials, you more or less just memorize stock phrases that you can fool non speakers with. I’m not impressed with most of them.
You gotta start somewhere. A2 is a perfectly communicable level, achievable for most (dedicated) people in most languages in a handful of weeks-to-months, but anyone thinking it's 'fluency' is kidding themselves. It consists, or seem to consist, of stock phrases because you know only about 1000 common words, so there isn't much you can do with it. Frankly, looking down on grounds like not enough effort for my taste is pretty shit. Then again, most natives kid themselves about their own mastery of language, usually unaware they are not-so-merely more natural-sounding B2s, but nowhere near what linguists call 'proficient'. Contrary to annoyingly many anglophones, C2 doesn't mean "any about-average native,", but "can go to a post-graduate program and be stumped no more often than a native with a comparable background." Just for kicks: when I was preparing for CPE/C2 three years ago, examiners teaching the course warned me of possible point cuts for things like 'mixed british and american spelling' or 'confused deposition with affidavit', which I'm curious how many natives could explain without looking up.
Oh man I had to look it up, but my test results for CEFR language levels as part of applying for studying abroad a decade ago were “C1/C2” (so some parts C2, some C1). Probably C1 in writing and C2 in verbal skills. That English exam was one of the hardest English tests I’ve done and I’d been learning English for 2/3rds of my life by then. (At age seven, my Pokémon Gold language was set to English and I got through that by asking my mom what the words meant.) Were you also slammed with multiple languages in high school or is that not a small-European-country-with-important-neig ours-thing? One year I had simultaneous lessons in Dutch, German, English, French, Latin & Greek - none of my own volition. Dropped three of them as fast as I could. I wouldn’t call myself a polyglot even back then, as a language studied but never immersed is not a language you really know. At the very least the breadth gave me a deep understanding of language structure and Latin is like the patient zero for a lot of structures and a lotta fancy-schmanzy words.
C1/C2 is pretty much a must-have for studying abroad, I think even ERASMUS that's aimed at undergrads requires it. I took CPE and IELTS (general and academic), passed decently well but it was HARD. That said, working abroad is a different bag. I think you can work as a full (registered?) nurse with B1 and some specialized course that builds up thematic vocab. My ex is doing some kind of dentistry fellowship in Berlin and her German makes me sound like Goethe despite progressively forgetting the language over the last decade. My school offered English and German/Russian/Italian/French to choose from, English and at least one of the others were compulsory. I took German, because I was born there and wanted at least one easy grade. My mother caught onto it, changed it to French. Then she begged the principal to have that reverted after first year when it turned out I'm dyslexic outa wazoo. I vented my frustrations with "how stupid does it feel to make me study a language where every word has 14 letters but you only pronounce ones that aren't there?" I also tried the other two, but Russian is... really weird. Poles either catch it quickly - like, from 0 to accentless B2 within 2-4 semesters, I've seen that happen - or stay confused. I can understand basic, non-idiomatic speech without much effort, so never got motivated to buckle down, but it's purely passive. Mieja zawód Devac, u mieja nie bolsze. If you give me an hour, I might remember enough Cyrillic to write that? EDIT/Addendum [I think it's all too visible I wrote these recent posts super sleep-deprived, feel it'd be iffy to correct in full]: Forgot to finish the thought on Italian. Its grammar is astoundingly similar to Polish. Which is unfortunate, as in both there are so many weird pitfalls and unexpected irregularities they sap any will to use it. Dropped it quickly, afterwards came to class here and there because my high school made free hours in schedules and you can only read our library's meager sci-fi section so many times. I actually wanted to learn Latin and Greek very early on, but... my first lesson with a tutor involved an explanation of declension so convoluted I didn't get it despite German having the exact same cases as Greek [Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc], and Latin having 5 out of Polish's 7. Now? Hodie linguae Latinae studeo cum magna alacritate, et in Graeca antiqua commentaria et epistulae personae scribere possum. Ut in anno proximo et latinae aevo medio et graecae communi studeam.
I took Spanish for three years in high school. Latin for a half year, mostly to boost my SAT scores (Nate Silver's new fave metric[?]). Language doesn't stick with you much if there's no cultural immersion or social imperative. Or if I'm dumb. How unfortunate that all is. I'm still half-fluent, Lo hablo mas que a poco, que huevos por un guero, no? Lo se. But what use is it, how can I prove I'm better than google on the internet without cultural knowledge? I have almost none. (edit2: well... actually that might not quite register in European dialects of Spanish.. so... I dunno. It is a Mexican-style Spanish that I know, or more acutely, Tex-Mex) So while I was doing my best "perdon" in the Toulouse subways with all my luggage, in rush hour (thanks academic advisor)... you know what? We will finish this one in person some day. I might be in Paris in April but I doubt it. Sorry demure, things are... yeah. I will be back over in the Schengen someday. I know your Eurorail, and I have already schnitzel'd at the Ratskeller (and I'm a little glad that's over with). Uh but I think these next few years? I'm busy, but I age at half the normal rate on account of the fed-common-pot (FCP) adrenochrome we share; as fed contract perks. See you in 4 or two years Edit: I know they say it's hard when you're older (with no adrenochrome, I think?), but I know I can eventually reach some actual polyglot status. It's probably two decades out or so, but if the world would chill? Who knows.
-May I have some of that tofu? You can take my fries. -"Joey doesn't share food!" -The fuck's a Dżołej? (pronounced it back in an exaggerated Polish accent to emphasize my confusion) Oh, the looks of all those people suddenly realizing Friends wasn't as timeless as they thought back in the day. You make a great point regarding culture, but knowing the language is still a great tool to recognize your horizon of familiarity. It's also a way to expose yourself to it, should you want to. As to proving you're better than google, believe me, it has a long way to go vis-a-vis word choice. Usually not to the level of confusing "forgive me father for I have sinned" with "spank me daddy I've been naughty," but note my use of 'usually' there.how can I prove I'm better than google on the internet without cultural knowledge?
There might be some truth to the possibility that american culture is dora the explorer'd a li'l bit, for me. More than ever. And the emerging elements are increasingly less fascinating. I found myself defending weeaboos the other day because I was like "well..? I mean I kinda get it, at this point. Kinda, though". "Tic-a-tac-a" is an offensive move I know in futbol (it's the "give and go" in american basketball offense), but yeah I got an antenna to watch the worldcup via digital radio broadcast TV on Telemundo because when the american announcers react to a goal, it's literally "and there it is, peter, into the back of the net, for the argentinians, once again, Messi" vs. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL", like yeah I went and got an antenna for that second option! Hell yeah. No regerts. I'm in the minority here, actually. City and county wide. Oh no (/s). Just like with veen, it is more fun to banter with you or other europeans than many of the people I'm supposed to be culturally identically to in God's yt America or whatever we're doing now.You make a great point regarding culture, but knowing the language is still a great tool to recognize your horizon of familiarity. It's also a way to expose yourself to it, should you want to.
veen; your ability to express yourself in English is better than at least about 94% of my countrymen, by my best estimates. And you're gonna love their/my dutch. "as;dlkhf;xacvklhasdf" etc.
you eat those for BREAKFAST?! You might be British if…you think beans on toast is a perfectly acceptable breakfast food but you mock the Dutch for their hagelslag.
Dude there is nothing so delightfully self-pwning as a British gourmand. Every few years I get to break the heart of some British elitist friend making fun of us for "Hawaiian pizza" by pointing out it was invented by a Greek in Canada.
The way I see it? The only countries this side of the pond who can honestly proclaim to have decent cuisine are the Italians and the French. There’s a B-tier of tryhards and then aaaaalllll the way down are the “we don’t have cuisines but we made some weird snacks and sweets?” and that’s us, Belgians, the Nordics. This D-tier is what the British aspire to. Y’all over there have gone “we don’t do cuisine but we are the Children of God and the Lord has given us Sugars and Oils and the Hands and Wits to Create so by God are we gonna use them well (plusamassivefoodindustry)” and it has resulted in Good Shit that is also more often than not Unhealthy / Unpure for our small Europotato minds. But it beats the shit out of the British.
Dunno about that. There's a lot of almost-regional foods people don't know about because they weren't a feature at British Bakeoff or something, like Eierschecke. Generally, the recipe pool is so vast, you could pick the most cursed town in Bavaria and probably still find a subset you'd enjoy eating regularly. Hungarians have some amazing foods, if you adjust spices for your pallet. Ćwikła is a pan-slavic condiment that's just beet pulp mixed with horse radish that goes with anything. Liptauer is a cheese spread that can go from basic to divinely complex, depending on experience and ingredients. Same goes for pierogi. I have a door stopper of a book of old Polish recipes where, so far, substituting venison for tofu only required common sense adjustments and hasn't backfired yet. EDIT: I know you meant 'cuisines' not 'recipes', but... where do you draw the line, really? Is pizza still Italian or just of the broadest Italian origin if most well-known variants are regional adaptations of US-spinoffs? Balkans, Greece and Turkey are mixed almost as much as Slavs and Ashenazi, Prussians, Baltics, Germans... the reason most of them don't have a well-defined 'cuisine' is that they've been raided, taken over or displaced so many times it's almost meaningless to deliniate beyond etymology.The way I see it? The only countries this side of the pond who can honestly proclaim to have decent cuisine are the Italians and the French. There’s a B-tier of tryhards and then aaaaalllll the way down are the “we don’t have cuisines but we made some weird snacks and sweets?” and that’s us, Belgians, the Nordics. This D-tier is what the British aspire to.
I’ve had some great regional foods across Europe (just discovered the wonder of Tiroler Gröstl this week), but what I was gettting at with ‘cuisine’ is a generally accepted body of recipes that are a cornerstone of the national culture. You think of Germany and you think of sauerkraut and currywurst. Things you’d be able to eat every day of the week. The Dutch word for cuisine is just “kitchen”, as in the meals you make in the kitchen. I love me some hutspot or snert but is Dutch aren’t able to fill a meal plan properly, I’d argue. And to also answer kleinbl00, decent is the wrong word, because yeah most cuisines are fine for most people. What I meant is “good enough to be up there with the best cuisines around the globe”. Which is what you do hear from Brits from time to time.
"fill a meal plan properly" is a good way to look at it. Can you eat the national cuisine every day of the week. This is definitely a test where Americans fall down, not because there's no food but because so much American food is borrowed and then bastardized. I could have English muffins, yogurt parfaits, omelets and oatmeal for breakfast, sandwiches, burritos, quesadillas and sushi for lunch, then spaghetti, roast chicken, burgers and pizza for dinner and ostensibly only two of those meals are "American" but everything else is an American version so mutated from where it started that its owners wouldn't recognize it. You can't properly call it "American cuisine" because so much of it has been borrowed. And even then, you would definitely be better off eating in France or Italy.
I think that's unkind. "Decent" isn't a difficult bar to clear and I think many countries succeed; fundamentally, "decent cuisine" needn't be much more than "something most cultures would cheerfully eat if they were hungry." As "comfort food" the world over has similar characteristics (heavy on the fat and carbs, light on the vitamins) I think the more cosmopolitan the culture the more likely their food is going to be unhealthy. The stuff that isn't intended for ex-pats and tourists is where things get gnarly; the stuff intended as a hazing ritual for ex-pats and tourists is where things get really gnarly. I would hypothesize that the French and Italians don't have much in the way of "really gnarly cuisine" because you aren't ever going to be accepted as a native no matter how much rotten shark you eat. I would further hypothesize that the British and Americans have more fat and carbs in their food because they spend more time in the land of lowest common denominators. The stereotype of 'Mexican food' is heavy carbs, heavy cheese, heavy meat, heavy grease but that's really "Mexican-american food." It, too, is a lowest common denominator of a number of cultures artificially melded into one for purposes of foreign consumption. The British ideation of Indian food is similar. Meanwhile the French and Italians have a lot of really good, really stable cuisine that you can eat all the time (assuming you can put forth the effort to cook it) without clogging your arteries while the British and Americans... don't. Not really. I think the Americans don't because everyone in America either came from somewhere else or had their culture ruthlessly stamped out by invaders. I think the British don't because their culture has been import-based for 400 years and every bit of spice or flavor that got imported needed to be balanced out with a Spotted Dick or a Yorkshire Pudding or a Brown Windsor. And I think the British spend a lot of time convincing themselves of the superiority of their dreck because absolutely no one agrees.
I misspelled a word in a graphic as "magnetospause" instead of "magnetopause" and I doubled down, told everyone at work I have an electric wife. Now I'm a loser though
my best shot before looking it up: a deposition is a collection of your sworn testimony in like a pre trial context and an affidavit is a declaration of .. something that you confirm? after i looked it up i see no reason why we have two words for this
Fundamentally? Depositions are created through an adversarial process while affidavits are created through cooperation. If you get robbed, you go to the police station and swear out an affidavit as to what happened. If you are accused of robbing an insurance fund, the lawyers gather around and record your responses to hostile questioning. Both create legally-significant records of an event. You want to swear out an affidavit, you do not want to be deposed. If you are contemplating this question without a lawyer to explain it to you, your problems are direr than your English proficiency.