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by BjoernKW
3122 days ago
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> I think that worrying about acheiving "near-native fluency" is a waste of time for most language learners. Learning a language can be about much more than mere pragmatic considerations like "Will I be able to get my point across to my peers.". Language also is about culture and aesthetics. So, while native proficiency might be a waste of time if you simply want to use a language as a communication tool it becomes a worthwhile endeavour if you see a foreign language as something that in a broader sense helps you to grow as a person. Most non-native speakers probably will never reach that level of proficiency but to quote a French philosopher: "La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un coeur d'homme." ("The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart.") |
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If a language is your only tool for communicating with other human beings, then it's worth almost any investment. Especially if you're ambitious and educated and eager to fit in.
And of course, part of the reason that educated native speakers are so impressive is exactly that: they might have 17 years of schooling, 100 million words of reading, 25,000 hours of socializing, and so on.
In comparison, a C1 student might have 1,500 hours total. It's more than enough to function quite adequately, but it's not even in the same league as an educated native.
If you learn a language to help you "grow as a person", then there will often come a point where the price is just too high to go further. I've spoken French for 6 years at home and read millions of words for fun. And it's hard for me to justify the price of further improvement. (So I'm having fun with Spanish instead, where 300 hours should be enough to carry on basic conversations.)