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Monday, November 8, 2010

English Evolution Test -- I FAILED! (even the easiest of the levels)

I consider myself a pretty decent speaker of my native language, English.  I even consider myself a pretty decent speaker of one other language, as well.  According to a recent Facebook post citing an article discussing at what point one might reasonably say that he "speaks" a language, I felt modestly proficient at both. 

--uh, well, until I took this test:


I didn't notice until after the test started that this test is apparently intended for native speakers of Brittish English. 

Well, that, or I'm not as sharp as I thought I was. 
  
As likely the latter as anything, I'm sure.

6 comments:

  1. I got 4 out of 6 right on the "Egghead," although I'm sure there was a little bit of luck involved.

    I read that article, too. I once read an article by someone who speaks like 30 languages and belongs to a sort of language-lovers club. He said that it's always better to claim to speak, "a little," of a language and surprise the speaker by what you know rather than claiming to speak it and then having negative surprises. I kind of agree with that outlook. I know Spanish fairly well and am just learning German, but I don't know that I would be comfortable claiming, "to speak," them yet.

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  2. I got 4 out of 6 on egghead as well, and plain ol' failed the other two--1 out of 6 and 2 out of 6. I don't know if it speaks much for a test if the "hardest" one renders the best scores. As far as languages are concerned, I certainly followed your friend's advice about what I claimed to speak. I didn't walk around boasting about how good I was, and certainly my ability to speak the language has decerased over the years. However, if ability to write is included in a "speaker's" ability, then I'm pretty comfortable.

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  3. I got 4 on easy and 3 on the middle one. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it.

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  4. I think the questions even change each time. Hmm....

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  5. I am not taking these again. My scores will just go down. I enjoyed the ones that you could figure out if you had some knowledge of other languages/roots, but some of them were just impossible.

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  6. Okay, I was apparently busy enough when I took the test to not notice that I actually didn't take the "middlin" one. I got 5/6 on that one. Phew.

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