Friday, November 25, 2022

French level: 25 out of 25

Randomly saw a dude offering to test the level of your French. He divided the proficiency levels into beginning, intermediate, and advanced. Spoke French—slowly and distinctly—the entire time. Presumably is French: his "About" page on YouTube says he's learned Chinese, Spanish, English, and Portuguese. His informal test concentrates mostly on grammar, so it's by no means a true test of one's fluency (you'd have to include accent,* range of vocabulary, ease with idioms, ability to talk about varied subject matter other than just everyday life, etc.). That said, I rolled through the video and tackled his 25 questions, garnering myself an easy 25 out of 25. Nothing in the test really rises above the level of say, high-school French 2. I don't know how many of my readers speak or read French, but if you happen to be one of them, knock yourself out and take Fred's test by clicking on the video below.

__________

*You can argue about whether accent should be a consideration when determining fluency. If the ideal is native fluency, then yes, accent counts. As a practical matter, though, I don't consider accent to be a factor unless the accent is so thick that it prevents comprehension. The prof who taught us Korean, back when I was in college, spoke fluent English and French, but she had a strong Korean accent in each language. Still, she was obviously fluent: she occasionally wrote me emails in English, and they were always impeccably written, grammatically perfect, etc.

Here in Korea, simply having a foreign face can be enough to prevent comprehension: many Koreans' brains will shut down when they see you're a foreigner, and people will simply refuse to understand you no matter how clear your Korean is. This is a constant gripe of mine.



No comments:

Post a Comment

READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING!

All comments are subject to approval before they are published, so they will not appear immediately. Comments should be civil, relevant, and substantive. Anonymous comments are not allowed and will be unceremoniously deleted. For more on my comments policy, please see this entry on my other blog.

AND A NEW RULE (per this post): comments critical of Trump's lying must include criticism of Biden's lying on a one-for-one basis! Failure to be balanced means your comment will not be published.