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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2848 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How well do communication skills transfer across languages? I have always been impressed with Ilforte’s writing, and a few days ago, saw Anatoly Vorobey (whose Russian blog I follow - I suspect Hebrew is his strongest language, but I cannot read it) post in very precise and clear English here.

(I would not be surprised if there are many other such posters here, but I can’t read their native languages. I’m not a very effective communicator in either language, though writing verse is way easier in Russian).

Trilingual here. Its proportional to how often you use said language. Its pretty linear factoring in your baseline articulation ability.

Same experience here.

I find it much easier to talk in my native language. I've been doing some interviews in English recently, and I've definitely lost a lot of fluency compared to my peak in 2002 or my international experience in 2012. Now I sound like Trump, constantly backtracking, whereas my native lookahead lets me talk in verse if it's not a complicated topic.

With writing, backtracking is not a problem, and I find it much easier to write on a more complicated topic than to talk about it. I still find that a lot of my writing needs additional editing when I reread it later, but that doesn't really change whether I write in my native language or in English.

I'm really looking forward to George E. Hale's answer to this question, he's the only one here who has written something that is worth a damn and can speak a second language well enough. I don't know if Yassine is bilingual.

I'm certainly more eloquent in English, but find myself having to rephrase myself or clarify in Spanish about as often as I do in English. Datapoint of 1, but I find it much easier to switch gears from English to Spanish than from Spanish to English, although I don't know why that is.

I encounter this as well and have thought about it. I think it's b/c when switching from English to Spanish I'm switching to a simpler/easier language. Spanish language structure just makes more sense.

Anatoly Vorobey (whose Russian blog I follow - I suspect Hebrew is his strongest language,

I doubt it. His native language is Russian, even though he lives in Israel, and while his Hebrew must be pretty decent now (I knew him a while ago, but only read his texts for more than a decade since) I have never seen a text from him in Hebrew, so I don't think it's his strongest. Probably his Russian and his English are better.

For myself, I find that while English is not my native language, it feels easier to write in English on many subjects, such as politics or technical matters, because so much of the terms and the books I've read on those subjects are in English anyway. Not that I consider myself some sort of a brilliant writer, in either language, but it just feels more natural for me.

English is not my native language

It is mine, and you could've easily fooled me into thinking you were a native speaker.

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