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Old 08-07-2018, 02:35 PM   #31
Kromm
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Default Re: Language: Costs and Comprehension

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Yes, familiarity sounds perfect to be used to a specific manner of speaking or writing, like rappers' slang or SMS for instance. It's a bit like driving another car or using another revolver ... Tough it may require a bit more time to get rid of the penalty.
It's hard to say how long it would really take. Lots of people take forever to learn such things because they don't actually want to learn them . . . to their ears, another way of speaking sounds harsh or wimpy, uneducated or overeducated, overly terse or wordy, too modern or old-fashioned, etc. Energy they could be using to adapt ends up wasted on criticism or trying to force the other guy to change.
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Old 08-07-2018, 04:36 PM   #32
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Default Re: Language: Costs and Comprehension

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I am sure that most of you know that I am not a native speaker when they read my posts.
There's also a slight hint in that your location says "France"....

Þorkell, who is also not a native speaker, so there....! :-) I think I even can speak sarcasm in English, and perhaps even puns.
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Old 08-07-2018, 05:16 PM   #33
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There's also a slight hint in that your location says "France"....

Þorkell, who is also not a native speaker, so there....! :-) I think I even can speak sarcasm in English, and perhaps even puns.
Sarcasm and Puns are the lingua Franca of the Internet, so that means you’re really speaking French?
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Old 08-07-2018, 06:01 PM   #34
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Default Re: Language: Costs and Comprehension

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And yes, "Accented" was an unfortunate choice."
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I think it gets the point across a lot better than "Fluent" and "Other Fluent".
I rather like "Conversational" - it's what a lot of intermediate level language courses are actually titled and gets across what is the key improvement from Broken (you can hold a *conversation*) much better than "Accented" does.
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Old 08-07-2018, 06:37 PM   #35
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Default Re: Language: Costs and Comprehension

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I rather like "Conversational" - it's what a lot of intermediate level language courses are actually titled and gets across what is the key improvement from Broken (you can hold a *conversation*) much better than "Accented" does.
(a) It's not so good for the written language.

(b) It's entirely possible to be better at the formal version of a language than at the conversational one. I can read scholarly French without too much trouble, but colloquial French is a bit beyond me.
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Old 08-07-2018, 11:51 PM   #36
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There's also a slight hint in that your location says "France"....
Yes. I added it as soon as I realized that others sometimes didn't understand what I wanted to mean and that I sometimes totally misunderstood their point.

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Old 08-08-2018, 12:02 AM   #37
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It's hard to say how long it would really take. Lots of people take forever to learn such things because they don't actually want to learn them . . . to their ears, another way of speaking sounds harsh or wimpy, uneducated or overeducated, overly terse or wordy, too modern or old-fashioned, etc. Energy they could be using to adapt ends up wasted on criticism or trying to force the other guy to change.
Of course. And it is even hard to say for someone who really wants to learn the new manner of speaking. Speed of learning vary a lot, even for the same individual with the same topic. When I learn karate, I sometimes get some things very quickly while other things require a lot of time ...
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Old 08-08-2018, 01:21 AM   #38
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Only because you bring it up. Literacy on the internet is varied enough that awkward English leaves me wondering if I'm reading a half-educated American or a well-educated foreigner. You leave me wondering neither.
Thank you very much.
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I most often see that in people who are immersed in a language in one context only. LDS missionaries often have a form of this where they speak like scriptures, are overly formal, and have a skewed vocabulary.
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(b) It's entirely possible to be better at the formal version of a language than at the conversational one. I can read scholarly French without too much trouble, but colloquial French is a bit beyond me.
I fully do agree with both of you. The language register and the context is very important too. I once realized that I was more comfortable with weapon vocabulary than with daily-life one! I mainly learned English with GURPS rules ...

But that kind of little nuances is beyond roleplaying game rules, though it still can be handled with perks, as Kromm showed it above.
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Old 08-08-2018, 08:00 AM   #39
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It's entirely possible to be better at the formal version of a language than at the conversational one. I can read scholarly French without too much trouble, but colloquial French is a bit beyond me.
Which underlines yet another distinction: What do you want to do with your language?

I was born and spent the first 23 years of my life, the years most important to the development of my language skills, in a decidedly Anglophone area (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Then I moved to Montréal, Québec – a Francophone region – and spent five years at an Anglophone university, surrounded by Americans and English-speaking Canadians. And then I embarked on a 24-year-and-counting career in editing and writing English-language publications, largely in American English. So by origin, education, and vocation, I'm a profoundly Anglophone person.

Bizarrely, I was able to spend the next 23 years (1990-2013) in a Francophone community without having much more than rudimentary French. However, I always took French courses as electives in school, so I developed the ability to read largely formal, largely academic French. Which was also largely useless French, at least for daily life in Montréal. For one thing, few people in the real world talk that way. For another, it's idealized Metropolitan French, which isn't the French of Québec.

What changed in 2013 is that I started dancing – and not just dancing, but accompanying dancers without partners, and even giving basic-level dance classes. That required me to speak to people on the regular . . . and in Montréal, that meant speaking French. More recently, events in my life have found me in a serious relationship with a québécoise who has minimal English. So now I speak French far better than I used to. However, it's the colloquial French of Québec, and not just that, but the dialect found in Montréal with words from my girlfriend's dialect, which is from another region completely. This is much more useful in daily life!

To bring it home: I'd support not just the idea that each person gets one "dialect" or whatever for free, treating the rest using rules similar to familiarity for skills, but also that this can differ for the spoken and written versions. My written French is of the international academic variety. My spoken French is informal Québec French, and a mongrel version at that.

I'd also say this is separate from the idea of "accent." Whether I'm writing or speaking, it's immediately apparent that I'm an Anglophone.
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Old 08-08-2018, 11:10 AM   #40
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Default Re: Language: Costs and Comprehension

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Sarcasm and Puns are the lingua Franca of the Internet, so that means you’re really speaking French?
Je ne parle pas francais.
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