Topic: How can you read a language but not speak it?

[alloowishus]

I can understand if you have ranks in speaking a language but not be able to read or write it. But how could you learn to read and write a language but not know what the words/sounds mean?

[Hurin]

If you learn a scholarly language it can be far easier to read it than to speak it. I can read Latin, but since I learned it primarily from reading books, I really just learned how to read it rather than composition, and I never really speak it to other people. So, while I wouldn't exactly have no understanding of the spoken version of the language, I would have a very hard time carrying a conversation in it.

[GrumpyOldFart]

And even a modern scholar in Latin who considered himself "fluent" in spoke Latin would probably be nearly unintelligible to a Roman centurion. Languages drift over time, and we have absolutely nothing to tell us what the actual accent and idiom were back when people actually spoke conversational Latin.

If you want to torture yourself for a moment, try to imagine someone from the Deep South of the US trying to do Shakespeare: "Whut laht thew yonder winder brakes."

Or for a true mind-bender, consider Barnstable Bear from the old Pogo comic strip, who could write amazing poetry... but couldn't read.

[katastrophe]

I can read French but not speak it. Mainly because Louisiana has a French and Spanish background and many of us were introduced to French in elementary school. We were taught pronunciation but were never conceptualized into conversational language. I also took French in High School and College. I suspect when I pronounce a great many words it’s my Louisiana English speaking brain doing so and as my daughter often points out “that’s completely wrong”. However, I can look at some French text and know exactly what it says, not just words but understanding the context of sentences, which has come in handy on several trips to Paris.

Nonetheless, I can imagine many people who’ve been introduced to a language in its written form are simply translating it to their native language rather than being fluent and “thinking for lack of a better word” in the other language.

[nash]

I can understand if you have ranks in speaking a language but not be able to read or write it. But how could you learn to read and write a language but not know what the words/sounds mean?

Yet another example; The various Chinese dialects; there is no obvious mapping between words and their sounds (in general) -> The equivalent of hello spoken roughly as 'Ni Hao' is 你好[1].  I personally can read some Chinese (slowly) but really can't even come close to following a conversation.

FWIW Chinese throws up another complication; Mandarin and Cantonese have the same written characters (ignoring Simplified vs traditional) but have different ways of pronouncing each word (there is also a difference in the way it's spoken).  So in a Rolemaster sense Mandarin (Written) Ranks are would (essentially) be the same as Cantonese (Written), but Mandarin (Spoken) and Cantonese (Spoken) would be different skills.

[1] Let's test your font setup ;-)

[GrumpyOldFart]

I suspect when I pronounce a great many words it’s my Louisiana English speaking brain doing so and as my daughter often points out “that’s completely wrong”.

I spent many years in  SE Texas, and thus learned more about Cajun culture and language than I ever really wanted to know. While I can't promise it's true, I have it on good authority that the fastest way to confuse a Parisian is to speak Cajun French to him, and the fastest way to get a pitying look from a Cajun is to speak classroom (Parisian) French to him. I'm told the latter will earn you a "Bless your heart" faster than anything else you can do.

I may not know much about the language, but the food is to die for. But don't trust a chef, get a real Cajun to cook it for you.

[GrumpyOldFart]

But for the original question, "How can you read a language and not speak it?"

Interrupt an American who is texting, you're likely to get a good example.

But on the other hand, you may get an example of how it is possible to think you know a language, and yet not be able to speak it or write it either one.

[alloowishus]

Ok, but to say you could have 10 ranks reading a language but absolutely no idea what the words meant if you heard them probably is a little off? I would say some sort of ruling, like you automatically get reading rank -4 in speaking.

[katastrophe]

I don’t believe that’s correct. You can very proficiently read a language and know what the words look like. You may even be able to pronounce and maybe recognize a word or a bunch of words when you are sitting there looking at text. But hearing native speakers saying the words in combination of other words is a whole different animal. In common conversation people use words in combination with other words and many words sound very similar in speech but maybe no so on paper. Then there is context, which is a whole other language issue.

Could a GM allow a “did I recognize any words being used”  roll. Sure. But that differs greatly from what spoken language ranks represents in the game. It’s not the ability know and pronounce a written string of symbols but rather the ability to use the language properly by putting spoken  words together and conveying a meaning while hearing the same and knowing what’s being conveyed.

[Wolfwood]

I don’t believe that’s correct. You can very proficiently read a language and know what the words look like. You may even be able to pronounce and maybe recognize a word or a bunch of words when you are sitting there looking at text. But hearing native speakers saying the words in combination of other words is a whole different animal.

Very true. I've studied a few languages in my time and English is the only foreign language I actually picked up. I learned a bit of Swedish and a bit of German in my time and could follow a piece of text relatively well - but when our teacher put on an audio record of Germans speaking German, I could not make out a single word. Well, perhaps one here and another there, but, overall, it was indecipherable.

[Hurin]

Ok, but to say you could have 10 ranks reading a language but absolutely no idea what the words meant if you heard them probably is a little off? I would say some sort of ruling, like you automatically get reading rank -4 in speaking.

I would say for me, yes, if I were rank 6 in reading Latin, I could probably do about rank 2 in spoken. I think it would be rare to have an excellent written knowledge and no spoken at all. If you can get the speakers to speak slowly enough, you are almost certain to be able to pick out a least a little of it.

[GrumpyOldFart]

- but when our teacher put on an audio record of Germans speaking German, I could not make out a single word. Well, perhaps one here and another there, but, overall, it was indecipherable.

“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” - Mark Twain

[katastrophe]

Skill Rank 1 — Allows recognition of the language when spoken.

Skill Rank 2 — Allows user to communicate and understand very basic concepts in the form of single words or very short phrases (e.g., eat, danger, room, money, cost, enemy, bathroom, pain, etc.).

Skill Rank 3 — User can distinguish between major dialects. Allows user to communicate moderately basic concepts in the form of phrases. User can get the tone/context of the language when spoken at a normal rate, but no more. He can, however, understand basic phrases spoken at a slow pace.

Skill Rank 4 — User may converse on very simple subjects, using whole sentences instead of broken phrases. User can understand everyday conversa- tion when spoken slowly.

Just from reading these descriptions, I think just being able to read the language would not necessarily get you beyond rank two. But rank three would be very difficult. Rank 4, extremely unlikely. As I said in my earlier post, you might recognize a word here or there but that would definitely not be much in the way of saying "bathroom" and having a native speaker point in a direction.

I would suspect that a GM would discourage a player from buying excessive written ranks without buying any spoken if it is a language that the spoken version he has access to. But if a person is basically learning the language though some version of a Rosetta Stone, a basic translation device or coda, then they may have never heard the language. For instance, I suspect that there are dead languages which we have discovered that no one still speaks (ancient Mesopotamian) but we have some coda we use for translation which allows the scholar to know what the writings say. We may ascribe some spoken version to it but it likely is far off.

[Barner Cobblewood]

Ok, but to say you could have 10 ranks reading a language but absolutely no idea what the words meant if you heard them probably is a little off? I would say some sort of ruling, like you automatically get reading rank -4 in speaking.

I would say for me, yes, if I were rank 6 in reading Latin, I could probably do about rank 2 in spoken. I think it would be rare to have an excellent written knowledge and no spoken at all. If you can get the speakers to speak slowly enough, you are almost certain to be able to pick out a least a little of it.

You're forgetting what nash said e.g. It is not necessary that written languages use glyphs to guide pronunciation. There's no necessary connection between them. Even a single language can have different glyph systems which are unreadable without learning the skill, and a language-family can share the same phonetic style glyphs across languages, but pronounce the glyphs differently, so they are not guides to pronunciation. There is also language that belongs to particular social classes so it is not necessarily portable, or even acceptable. And then there are so many words which are local, names of things, species of birds, etc. and also contractions and shortcuts in both spoken and written. There is more to language than modern vernaculars which have been standardised by the state.

[Hurin]

- but when our teacher put on an audio record of Germans speaking German, I could not make out a single word. Well, perhaps one here and another there, but, overall, it was indecipherable.

“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” - Mark Twain

Haha. My Latin teacher said you can tell how good a Latinist someone is by how long they are willing to wait for a verb.

[Hurin]

You're forgetting what nash said e.g. It is not necessary that written languages use glyphs to guide pronunciation. There's no necessary connection between them. Even a single language can have different glyph systems which are unreadable without learning the skill, and a language-family can share the same phonetic style glyphs across languages, but pronounce the glyphs differently, so they are not guides to pronunciation. There is also language that belongs to particular social classes so it is not necessarily portable, or even acceptable. And then there are so many words which are local, names of things, species of birds, etc. and also contractions and shortcuts in both spoken and written. There is more to language than modern vernaculars which have been standardised by the state.

I didn't mean to dismiss any of that, I'm just saying that most languages are not like that. By that I mean, acquiring ranks in written is usually going to give you some help with the spoken. This I think is especially true of languages in the ancient and medieval period, when it was customary to actually read out loud.

[Spectre771]

Easy.... Chinese.

There are so many dialects in the Chinese language, that Chinese movies are dubbed in Chinese so people can at least read it.  My family speaks Toi-san, which is very similar to Cantonese.  We can kind of get away with sounding Cantonese with some noticeable differences.  No one in my family speaks Mandarin.  Can't even fake it, can't even sound like it.  My grandfather who does OK with English doesn't understand Mandarin at all.  I can read some  Chinese characters, I pronounce them in Toi-san and Cantonese (sometimes I mix the two in the same sentence and I shouldn't).  I have no idea how to pronounce them in Mandarin. 

I can read and write French far better than I can speak it.  I can notice different French dialects.  There are a couple in particular I can't understand at all, but there are dialects that I can follow a little bit.

For example:
馬

I can tell you that is "horse" in Chinese.  Now pronounce that for me

It's pronounced "mah" in Cantonese and Toi-san.

[Spectre771]

Sorry.. too late to modify the above post.

Add to the complexity of the spoken Chinese language are the four types of intonation.  Saying "mah" in four different tones conveys four different meaning.

Think record and record, or polish and Polish.

[Wolfwood]

馬
I can tell you that is "horse" in Chinese.  Now pronounce that for me

You can also make a case for English. As a Finn, we pronounce our language pretty closely to how it is spelled - according to International Phonetic Alphabet - with a few exceptions. English, however, rarely, if ever, follows the IPA simply because of the Great Vowel Shift (and the lesser one) that changed how English vowels are pronounced ('e' is pronounced as 'i' etc.). Thus, if you haven't heard an English word pronounced and you do not know how the word is spelled in IPA, it is difficult to say how it should be pronounced.

Hence, in Finnish study dictionaries, English words were always spelled in their written form as well as in their IPA form.

[nash]

For example:
馬

I can tell you that is "horse" in Chinese.  Now pronounce that for me

It's pronounced "mah" in Cantonese and Toi-san.

Bad example; it's 'ma3' in Mandarin ;-)

1 in Mandarin is 'Yi', it's 'Yat' in Cantonese.
2 in Mandarin is 'Er', Cantonese is 'Yih'
(ie, Mandarin 1 == Cantonese 2).

And Cantonese (Spoken) has a different word for 20 if I recall correctly.  Even if the written form is the same as Mandarin