How many books should you read to become fluent in a second language?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

How does irony work in Chinese? It doesn't in Japanese. If you say something ironical they will believe that you are sincere and actually mean what you say. When I studied Japanese, back in the day, I noticed that Brits where usually more frustrated than Yanks, simply because they had an inherent need to be ironical and use understatements. The latter simply doesn't go over well. I remember a friend who in a full typhoon said "We're getting a few drops today" and the Japanese person he talked to started correcting him.

That is more of a cultural thing than born out of linguistic necessity, Chinese have no problem understanding when I am trying to be ironic. Though it seems they themselves don't 'do irony' quite as often as Westerners.

[Kumabjorn]

Actually there is a linguistic element to it as well. Ideographs don't have the connotations that words written in an alphabet does. 目 is an eye and not a spy or private eye nor an eye of the storm. Over millenia of usage their meanings seem to be so thoroughly ingrained that an extended usage simply isn't accepted.

[BearMountainBooks]

I'll have to let you know, but I'm not sure that I'll ever be fluent. I never got beyond children's books in Japanese, but I was able to speak well enough to get by while I was there--so long as the conversations were areas where I had studied. Get too far into a topic that I'd never studied and I'd get pretty lost.

As for Spanish, I can read a lot more than I can speak. But I don't consider myself fluent in either.

[Laridae]

Originally Posted by ficbot

So my next question would be where can I find lists of boos in French which I might enjoy? I'd love to see a list of popular books grouped by reading level.

Me too!
I'd like to practice my French on some easier books.
In English I like to read biographies and bestsellers mostly (Grisham, Dragon Tattoos)
My level is very rusty beginner-intermediate. (Took several years of french in high school but never really used it)

So should I start with Youth books?
And what do they mean by Simplified Books, anyways?

My public library has a bunch I can borrow but where do I start?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kacir

According to my English teacher, English has 13 tenses. My classmates were scared shitles when they heard ;-)

If you look at this nice round-up, it is more like 17 ;-)
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/gra...enses_satz.htm

Nearly half of those 17 tenses are progressive forms of the simple tenses, so they only sort-of count. Also they are all living tenses that are used in speech.

However, the French literary tenses are almost never used in speech. As such, French literature has a lofty, archaic tone far-removed from real spoken French. Which kinda makes learning them a waste of time. Sheesh. The French stopped speaking the Passe Simple because the conjugations were so complex they couldn't remember them

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Rizla

As such, French literature has a lofty, archaic tone far-removed from real spoken French. Which kinda makes learning them a waste of time. Sheesh. The French stopped speaking the Passe Simple because the conjugations were so complex they couldn't remember them

I see.
Thank you for explanation

[MrWarper]

Originally Posted by ficbot

a teacher ... told ... to read a certain number of books in English in order to be fluent ... Has anyone ever heard of a number for something like this?

I have, and here's a piece of advice: don't believe in absolute numbers regarding language learning. I'm learning several languages right now and everything is a bit (or very) different everywhere.

.... I am assuming that with enough experience, I'll get better at this and might eventually become truly bilingual. On average, how long does that typically take?...

Becoming truly bilingual is probably both harder and easier than you think, for different reasons, but it will require lots of experience no matter what.

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

In my experience the only way to truly learn an other language is the cold-water approach. Jump in. I needed 2 to 3 years for german. (C2 level, i. e. native speaker equal)

From my experience, I can tell there's no such thing as only one way to learn almost anything, and this is certainly the case for languages. Because I am also C2 certified in a foreign language I can also tell you that 'native speaker equal' bit is doubtful. I'm better at most (not all!) aspects of it than your average native but nowhere near my own level doing the same things in my native tongue, so it doesn't really mean a lot as a 'goal' to me, but I'll use it as reference. However, an operational knowledge of grammar (knowing the name for something isn't really knowing) goes a long way.

Anyway... all languages are split between the spoken/written realms and the active/passive aspects of it, and all of them need practice to be a truly balanced learner rather than an illiterate immigrant or an unable-to-speak scholar, both perfectly capable but only in their respective areas. Good transfer skills come in handy --if you're like me, as an adult learner you don't need to read that much to learn how to write or speak well, etc.-- but they'll only get you so far, and the less so the bigger the gap between the spoken and written variants of the language -- I'm experiencing that myself with German right now (which is generally written in a much more formal, convoluted and 'stiff' style to express the same things). I'll have to watch a ton of videos etc. before I can speak at the same level as I read, because it's all so different. Ideograph-based writing systems can further that gap, as others have said, but I can't read Japanese well enough to confirm it myself.

All that said, YMMV but I needed much less 'serious' (books) reading to achieve the C2 level than I have read in my mother language (an order of magnitude I would say, maybe 100 vs 1000 but I didn't really count them), which from my point of view accounts for the difference between the C2/skilled native levels (not an order of magnitude but quite noticeable nonetheless). Hope this brick helps : )

[Freeshadow]

You are right warper, as for language usage I too am better than the natives are.
With "jump in" I meant, the best way to learn is to live where you have to use the language for at least 2 years. The only way to get the subtleties.
Funny enough: I finally managed to be accepted as capable of being examined as a translator.
(which, without taking the rather expensive courses, wasn't easy to achieve)
Because I finished my education in German I'll be examined with my mother tongue (Polish) as "foreign". Feel free to cross fingers, tentacles or whatever for me

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kacir

I see.
Thank you for explanation

If you are learning English tenses, don't be overwhelmed by the progressive forms.

E.g.

I have done something vs I have been doing something.

Watch out for Be + gerund. That's the progressive embedded in a simple tense and can take many forms, and often the meaning is not that much different. One is progressive, the other isn't.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Rizla

If you are learning English tenses, don't be overwhelmed by the progressive forms.

I wasn't, because it is the same as in my native language. Except we do not 17 fancy names for it (that I know of ;-) ). If you just translate all those "tenses" word-by-word to my language, they pretty much give the right meaning "out of the box".

The tragedy is, many English teachers (and textbooks) here teach you grammar by introducing rules, fancy, scary sounding names. When you take a test, it might look like: "create Present Perfect Progressive form of 'you play football'" instead of asking - "tell us about you spending 2 hours play football recently"


On the other hand, in my Slavonic language we have Grammatical cases - nouns take one of seven forms depending on the case. So the word book is different when you say "with a book", "about a book" "the book" "to a book" "I am looking at the book" ...
Oh ... and multiply that by two for singular and plural
... and we have grammatical genders, so "a chair" has female gender, but a girl has neutral gender ...
It must be extremely scary to any foreigner trying to learn Slavonic language, such as Russian, Czech or Polish ...

[Sydney's Mom]

When I was at my peak with Spanish, I was a better reader/writer than a speaker. My professor told us we could consider ourselves as fluent when we dreamed in Spanish.

I had one dream in Spanish, and then I went to grad school (not in foreign language). Now, I can figure out what people on the train or TV are saying, but not much else.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by kacir

It must be extremely scary to any foreigner trying to learn Slavonic language, such as Russian, Czech or Polish ...

Hey don't frighten the girls
Polish is easy - I must know it.
I speak it since I was a little kid

[Rizla]

I get the impression European grammar is the most complicated with all its conjugations, cases and genders. If so, I wonder why. Can anyone confirm that?

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I get the impression European grammar is the most complicated with all its conjugations, cases and genders. If so, I wonder why. Can anyone confirm that?

Hmm I'll try to explain, but sit down 1st, in case the shock's too much for you:
See, Europe consists of many different countries wherein different languages are spoken.
Thus it seems so complicated to you. It's not one language, but a whole pack of them

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I get the impression European grammar is the most complicated with all its conjugations, cases and genders. If so, I wonder why. Can anyone confirm that?

Japanese has a very complicated grammar as it pertains to verbs, there is a whole hierarchy among them, something we don't see in Western languages. On the other hand nouns and adjectives are easy to handle from a grammatical viewpoint.