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I often see people in the language-learning community, both on tumblr and on youtube, insisting that they’re not C1 yet because they still stumble over words, or still make a lot of mistakes, or don’t feel 100% comfortable in their TL as they would in their native language.

But like…. I do all those things in German? There is no way that I am as comfortable in German as I am in my native language. Ok in listening I’m actually pretty close, but in reading, writing and speaking - no way. And with this being said… it’s not like I just passed the C1 exam by the skin of my teeth, I passed it easily.

So I guess…. C1 is maybe not what I, and we, always expect/ed it to be? I wonder how many of you insisting that you couldn’t pass a C1 exam yet, actually would pass, if you spent some months studying hard the specific topics you need to know for a C1 exam, familiarised yourself with the exam structures, etc. 

C1 doesn’t by any way mean ‘native-like proficiency’. As a matter of fact, neither does C2. C2 just means you can function well, spontaneously and creatively in the majority of language situations you find yourself in - it says nothing about what’s going on in your head, and nothing about your ease or comfort in the language.

Unless you moved to another country very young, in most cases thinking in a target language is ALWAYS going to be more strenuous than thinking in your native one. This can be minimised by intense exposure and depends of course upon exactly what you’re talking about, but for most people, given an unfamiliar situation, they are still far better equipped to handle it in their native language. Ask an interpreter to do a basic arithmetic problem in another language and chances are they’ll translate the numbers into their native language to do the calculation. Some things, no matter how much you learn, will always require more effort in a second language - so positing this goal of C1 or C2 as being the ‘end point’ when really it’s just the beginning just serves to discourage you further down the line.

I think a better test of fluency - and by this I mean ‘fluidity’, ease of speech and ease of communication, which is NOT the same as native-like-ness - is this: play someone a video of a short, mundane scene like a pencil rolling off the table because of a gust of wind and a child bending down to pick it up. How easily and naturally can you then tell the story of what’s happening in this scene? No matter a person’s proficiency, or how many vocab items they can recognise, they will often not be able to do this as smoothly as in their native language. And that’s ok. We want language to communicate, and we’re all doing just fine at that.

Also, language exams often don’t reflect much more than passive ability. Case in point: I haven’t taken any German exams except A-levels. I can read fairly easily and often have to read German academia for my subject. I recently took a mock C2 exam out of curiousity, and passed well all the sections I could check myself: but it’s also been four years since I regularly learnt German, and my German is so much worse than it was! My passive knowledge, though, is still the same - and that difference might not be reflected in the grade.

On the contrary, people who can express themselves fluidly (I’m @ing myself here) often are much better at concealing that they don’t actually have a very large vocabulary. I know many learners of German who regularly use much more interesting vocab than me, because although my passive vocab is good as I said it’s been years since I actively spoke German, but because I can chat quite spontaneously and string together long sentences that don’t actually mean anything, and because people are often unsure where I’m from based on my accent, I can 'mask’ myself as being a 'better’ speaker than I am.

All of this means basically that C1 and C2, whilst important and laudable goals, in no way constitute an 'end point’ to your study. Your study of a language is never going to END unless you let it. Every time you read something, every time you listen to something, you get better at reading and listening. It’s just that, after your first 20,000 words, the returns are so incrementally small as to almost be unnoticeable.

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What I need help deciding is: should I try study English for real (I learned to speak/read it just by forcing my way into books/movies & forcing exposure with people in online communities) or should I go for one of the other languages in my list (since I already have a pretty good handle of what I do know of English)?

I'm a bit frustrated because while I do know my way around informal conversation and language in general, if I try to read anything more formal/complicated (like old books or research papers) it just doesn't work... So do you think it's worth it, to get better at what I already know instead of jumping to something new now? And if it is, do you have any tips of interesting books and resources to learn English? Most of what I find usually starts with the pretty basics of "English for foreigners" type of stuff and it's really boring for me.

Anyway sorry for the gigantic message and thanks in advance!!!!

Hello! Sorry for taking such a long time to answer, I hope you don’t mind! 

I really relate to the “reading books untranslated” being your main reason to want to learn languages. I think it’s very useful to have specific goals very early in your language learning journey so you can adapt the learning method, and there isn’t a “valid” or “invalid” reason to learn languages. 

In reference to your English level, I think you sound like a native! If you aren’t planning on working in an academic environment that would require you to have Bussiness English level skills, I don’t think you should worry too much about actively working on your English skills. Personally, nowadays I just consume English media and I learn things here and there, but my learning has been passive for a lot of years now (which is the level that I want to get to with French, so I can consume media without actually writing stuff down).

If you like reading, I think starting with English literature (especially the “classics”) could be beneficial for you to learn more complex sentence structures, become familiarized with formal language, and add a couple of words to your vocabulary. I do really enjoy reading classics but they ARE a bit of a workout for me, which means I need to practice the skills I just mentioned. If you need some specific recommendations let me know!  

If you do want to improve grammar-wise, try to identify fossilized errors and make it a point to correct yourself (for me these are mainly pronunciation) or actively practice words or sentence structures that you struggle with (for me it was “awkward” for a long time, and now I have to pause for a second and remember it’s spelled “genuinely”). If you feel weary phrasing things in a certain way, it’s very probable that your brain doesn’t want to use that specific word or sentence structure because you are not familiar with it, and that’s when you know where you’re lacking practice.

I really recommend learning your next language in a language you are passively practicing, it makes things more fun and will help you retain it better. You can always change the plan even if you have already started, I think personally I forget that if I make the lesson plans, I can change the way I am studying if I don’t like it as nothing is set in stone. 

The structure of the Japanese address or 住所 (じゅうしょ) is different from addresses in most parts of the world. Only the main streets in the cities have names, and individual buildings may not have numbers. The order of the address is written opposite to most English-speaking addresses - the Japanese postal code comes first while the street number comes last.

Large cities like Tokyo and Osaka are divided into 区 (く) or wards.

区 are divided into 町 (ちょう) which are towns or neighborhoods.

町 are divided into 丁目 (ちょうめ) or districts.

丁目 are divided into 街区 (がいく) which are city blocks.

街区 then have separate 番号 (ばんごう) or building numbers.

The address for the Tokyo Metropolitan Oizumi Central Park is:

〒178-0061  東京都  練馬区  大泉学園町  ９丁目４−3

The post code is 178-0061.

The city is Tokyo (東京都), read Tokyo-to, meaning the Metropolis of Tokyo.

The ward is Nerima-ku (練馬区).

The neighborhood is Ōizumigakuen-chō (大泉学園町).

The district is 9-chōme, the city block number is 4, and the numbered address is 3 (９丁目４−3).

However, addresses don’t always include all of these parts, especially in smaller towns, or even within Tokyo itself. For example, the address for the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo is:

〒106-6150  東京都  港区  六本木  ６丁目１０−1,  六本木ヒルズ森タワー,  53階

Here you will find the post code, the city (Tokyo-to), and the ward (Minato-ku) just as before, but there is no -町, just Roppongi (六本木) and then the address numbers (６丁目１０−1) and the building name ( 六本木ヒルズ森タワー or Roppongi Hills Mori Tower) and floor (53-kai). Oftentimes, the 丁目 is dropped and the address numbers would simply read 6-10-1.

I got 56%, and I consider myself fairly good at linguistic indentification. Make of that what you will.

Most of Tumblr users are western, and big western languages are the most practical choice for most pf these users to learn.

The problem with smaller or more remote languages (i.e. farther from europe) is that the people who use it are not easily reachable. You want to talk to a native speaker? Either prepare for a long, long trip, or go through many pains to find someone whom you can contact via internet. You want teaching materials? Oh boy, good luck finding them.

Furthermore, for many people, studying how a language WORKS is a secondary goal to learning how to USE it. They want to speak and read and listen and write in it, and the linguistics part is just an interest that happens to align. Or, alternatively, they could be in the langblr community because it is supportive of language learners.

To take an example near where I live, let’s assume you want to learn the Patois Évolénard. It’s an extremely lively language, so you’ll have no trouble finding speakers. As long as you’re in the Val d'Hérens, of course, and that’s the catch. The Val d'Hérens is only two or three hours by train from where I live, but that’s already too much to make learning amd practicing it practical. There are hardly any books written in it either. The only way i can practice it is by being there, and if i can only be there occasionnally, and i can hardly be immersed in the culture if i come infrequently, etc. The problems stack up, for a place that’s notoriously difficult for the integration of strangers, and cultures are kinda like that by default.

Now that was taking a language that has tons of geographical advantages for me to learn it over about any other language i could want to learn. Now imagine i want to learn igbo. Yeah, doesn’t cut it.

Big european languages have the advantage that you can find a lot of people to talk to after a five-minute stroll on instagram, and you’ve got plenty of support and resources to learn the language in question. That’s because there is a lot of people who want to learn the language, because there’s a lot of movement between the countries in europe. That makes big european languages very much easier to learn than more remote languages. It’s a practical choice.

Finally, a lot of langblrs are, like you, native speakers of an european language who can afford, through their knowledge of their own language, to help people learn it. You are more of an exception to the rule in this case, but most people would not teach one of their second or third languages with the same confidence as their native tongue.

Speaking a big language is by no means a problem, it’s a practical choice. European languages happen to be better documented for learners and there is a ready access to natives. The roads to learning those languages are well-trodden. Plus, they are part of the heritage of many users of this site.

I don’t consider the euro-centrism of languages on langblr to be a problem. They are not less worthy languages to learn than any others. While i agree that learning a more remote language make you discover a completely different culture, learning other european languages does too, in a more subtle way.

I have seen little adressed on this site the fact that european countries have differing cultures. Everything tends to be dismissed as a vast and vague ‘european culture’ for the purposes of anti-colonial discourse, but the argument squishes together a lot of things.

I have half my family in portugal, and the other half in switzerland. Everything is different between the two countries: the people, the mores, the architecture… There was this excellent book called ‘Ich Träume Deutsch Und Wache Türkisch Auf’ about a turkish expat who live in germany, and then moved back again to turkey. I recommend that you read it, it’s awesome. The two cultures are completely different, with clashing beliefs about family, patriotism, and success. I’m frequently surprised when i talk to french people, seeing how differently they think from me, who lives in the neighboring country.

Sometimes, you donlt even have to learn a new language to discover new cultures. Learning german lets you discover at least germany, switzerland, and austria, three countries with vastly different cultures. English lets you discover at least new zealand, ireland, and a lot of stuff in india.

(Alfred Fora could be a normal name and surname, but in this case it’s the name of the owner of a shop that installs air conditioning and heating among other things.