Contracting in Netherlands

[Joe Black]

You should distinguish between the ability to learn a language to order a burger in a local restaurant or to chat up other people and the ability of learning in a language in a way that you can be productive in an office environment. For the second, in any language, you need years and years of training (unless you work in the entertainment business and your peculiar expressions might actually become amusing). All of us foreigners with a strong command of english did study it since we were children otherwise it would have not been possible.

Francko, I'll disagree with you for two reasons, if only to be the devil's advocate.

Firstly if, as a 'foreigner', you're claiming better proficiency in English because you learnt it at school, then I would suggest that the above post, and others in this thread, are not a very strong argument for that being the case. It seems a presumption similarly made by many Dutch/Flemish speakers here.

Secondly, as for the suggestion that only years and years of training (or the benefit of that 'study' at school) makes it possible to achieve fluency in a language I will put forward two people I know personally. One my manager who learnt Dutch only in the last year or two and now uses it in all meetings/discussions with Dutch speakers, and secondly a Polish girl I met on a course who passed the Dutch (native speaker level) exams which allowed her to study at university within one year of arriving.

[AlfredJPruffock]

If you really want to assess a claim for fluency in a foreign language - pose the question - What is the word for a Skirting Board in German etc - that is the Pruffock-Laboratory(c) test for claimed linguistic abliilty.

Try it - you might be surprised by the results - and nae googling !

[threaded]

If you really want to assess a claim for fluency in a foreign language - pose the question - What is the word for a Skirting Board in German etc - that is the Pruffock-Laboratory(c) test for claimed linguistic abliilty.

Try it - you might be surprised by the results - and nae googling !

Good question, in Danish there are four different words depending on context.

Oops, just thought of another as I was scribbling this. So that's five.

There again, I renovate very old houses as one of my Plan Bs, so I would.

[Pinto]

If you really want to assess a claim for fluency in a foreign language - pose the question - What is the word for a Skirting Board in German etc - that is the Pruffock-Laboratory(c) test for claimed linguistic abliilty.

Try it - you might be surprised by the results - and nae googling !

If you manage to describe it in the foreign language, because you don't know the actual word, then I should imagine that also passes the Pruffock-Lab(c) test?

[Pinto]

There again, I renovate very old houses as one of my Plan Bs, so I would.

Blimey, you're everywhere! how do you find the time?

[Malacandra]

Writing a few sentences in dutch on this board or Threaded writing in danish just gives the impression of a child dressing up as an adult. Do it in a forum of dutch/danish speakers and hear the loughs coming out of the screen.

Funny you should say that. I haven't heard the word "lough" used in thirty-five years, but it's a largish body of water in Ireland, similar to the Scottish "loch".

[tim123]

Good question, in Danish there are four different words depending on context.

.

What possible context could there be for this item other than nailed to the wall of a house?

I can see that (similar to German) you might need to decline the word differently depending upon the case of the sentence, but that doesn't create a different word.

tim

[AlfredJPruffock]

Good question, in Danish there are four different words depending on context.

Oops, just thought of another as I was scribbling this. So that's five.

There again, I renovate very old houses as one of my Plan Bs, so I would.

Excellent Threaded - I know I could count on you on this one.

Alas ! - if you only you had piano tuning skills in your reportiore I would be glad of your expertise with Pruffock's Piano Consortium(c) - however I wonder how skilled you are are perhaps with French Polishing ? A very difficult taks may I add ?

[Francko]

Secondly, as for the suggestion that only years and years of training (or the benefit of that 'study' at school) makes it possible to achieve fluency in a language I will put forward two people I know personally. One my manager who learnt Dutch only in the last year or two and now uses it in all meetings/discussions with Dutch speakers, and secondly a Polish girl I met on a course who passed the Dutch (native speaker level) exams which allowed her to study at university within one year of arriving.

Exceptions don't make the rule.

Sure there are people who smoke and live until 100. It doesn't mean that smoking makes you live 100 years.

[Francko]

Good question, in Danish there are four different words depending on context.

Oops, just thought of another as I was scribbling this. So that's five.

There again, I renovate very old houses as one of my Plan Bs, so I would.

The problem with the european languages is that they are too similar each other so there is a false belief that we are writing well in a foreign language. In reality what appears good to us will not appear the same to native speaker despite being sintactically or semantically correct. You should study japanese to get a better picture of this, then you realise that writing is another skill indeed. Or to make another example the italian that they speak and write in the canton "ticino" in Switzerland might be accademically correct but the language is a species in constant evolution with occasional fallbacks in the past. You won't catch it in its full extent unless you have grown up with it. My posts are an example. I don't make more spelling mistakes than the majority of you (with the exception of Milan who makes way more spelling mistakes than I do) but yet the ones I make are of higher severity because I cannot ponder a proper weight for each word, they are all not native to me so mispelling "laugh" for me is as easy/hard as mispelling Aberystwyth.