@cmw A generally accepted test of linguistic competence is the reading of a newspaper. Are you able to read a Thai newspaper? For example, could you discuss Trump's (alleged) coup d' etat; its political implications and legal consequences, here, now, in 2024, in Thai? (If you can do that I'll give you a real gold badge!)

@tony Keep the badges, I cannot do that.

I'm not nearly fluent yet.

My vocab strength is in the several hundreds, not thousands. I can do all the exercises in Benjawan Poomsan Becker's beginner's Thai book with little problem, and the grammar in her intermediate Thai isn't hard to grasp (though tricky to memorize all the idiomatic phrases), I haven't got all its vocabulary yet.

@tony There are many dimensions to language skill. I can understand something from a French newspaper, and technical text isn't any harder, but I struggle horribly with oral French in both directions. I'm just returning home from Paris, so the data on this is freshly verified. With Italian my situation is very different, with far less difference between written and spoken communication.

If I deserve badges, the Italian one could be made of wood and the French one of cardboard (which would be adequately compatible with the rainy weather in Paris over the last week).

I find it quite interesting that my skill profiles in different languages look so different, but I'm sure my experience is not unique among folks who speak a couple of languages.

@JoonasIlmavirta This is how I am with French. Read paper after paper in French as an academic, but I never kept up with conversational French, and my speaking of it is pretty bad.

@JoonasIlmavirta Time is the thing with languages; they demand vast amounts of time. Sounds like you just need more exposure (time) to the spoken word. Then there are language labs (deep pockets required). Also, dedication: to become fluent, in anything, you've really got to want it and work at it, and go there, and struggle, and make a fool of yourself (possibly). In my youth I found French easy. On my first hitch-hiking trip it was astonishing how useful school-French actually was.

@cmw I'm glad to hear I'm not alone with that.

@tony It can't possibly be just time. The same exposure to Italian and French seems to give me comparable written skills (the two grammars are different but essentially equivalent) but utterly incomparable oral skills. Perhaps the Italian sound system is simply that much closer to my native one.

I can get by with French, ordering food in bakeries and restaurants and such, but it is somewhat painful, ostensibly to the receiving party of my pronunciation as well.

My plane touches Finnish soil (or hopefully pavement) in a few minutes, so I can put that struggle behind me for a bit.

@JoonasIlmavirta I've forgotten it all, now. Similarly, with Russian, having forgotten it all, from school, I worked through Malcolm Brown's A-Level book, in 2010. Then I allowed myself to forget it, again. Having worked through the book, a conscientious student would buy a Russian newspaper, just once-a-month, to prevent regression!

Pavement it was, as is Finnair's habit.

@tony I try to keep my languages from degrading too. It takes effort, but it's rewarding to see that it's still there.

@JoonasIlmavirta Welcome home! Parisians are not renowned for their patience with foreigners who are learning French. I recall how French police were not kindly disposed to long-haired youths with backpacks: "Papiers! Papiers!". Foolishly, in Rambouillers, my friend and I chose to eat lunch outside a cop-shop. Hauled in for a "papiers-routine", I chose some sneering sarcasm: "Cherchez-vous des criminales dangereuses?!". I don't think he caught the irony; at least, there was no reply.

@JoonasIlmavirta Did you do the sights, in Paris; a good walking city. Do they still go mad if you walk on the grass? "Defense! Defense!". Outside of Paris we met some wonderful French people. They drove us all over the place and some shared their food with us.

@tony The main sights were on the whiteboards of École Normale Supérieure and in patisseries, and of those I got a sufficient sample.

I spent maybe two hours on tourism, walking around.

@JoonasIlmavirta Physics & maths? These, easily upstaged by the delights on display in any French patisserie. Have you put weight on? It's good to get back from a trip: throw everything into the washing machine; sort the guidebooks, leaflets, receipts, souvenirs and near-worthless coins you forgot to spend on revolting airport-sandwiches. Then, just get over the jetlag. This shouldn't affect you, too much. Returning from Thailand, it took eight days.

@cmw Given how good you are at Latin, French ought to be a doddle. It's time isn't it? There are only so many hours in a day!

@tony Latin helps a lot with written French, especially vocabulary, but it's actively misleading for pronunciation. I bet that plays into the bias @cmw mentioned.

@tony Yes, my work is fairly described as physics and math(s). It was fruitful, and the eclairs were full of something other than fruit.

I only eat free food at airports due to my lounge access. I haven't bought a sandwich before a flight in ages, but I do remember doing that in the past. And I still do that on the rare occasion when my preferred alliance isn't an option.

I travel so much that I have to keep an eye on what I eat on the road, too. I hope that I gained more in assets other than weight this week.

The routines of business travel are a bit different from the tourist experience. Filing a claim for reimbursement and per diem only applies to one.

@JoonasIlmavirta My pronunciation is apparently bad. Which is strange, though, because I've gotten compliments on my Russian and Thai and once fooled a bar of Scots into thinking I was a fellow Scot (we were all pretty drunk, though).

@tony The French idiom is very different from Latin's. I can't see a Roman parsing qu'est-ce que c'est with ease.

@cmw I'm not very surprised. The French are a picky audience when it comes to pronunciation, at least in my experience.

Latin and English too made it very easy to pick up advanced vocabulary, but that wouldn't translate well to understanding why the French say poser un lapin when talking about standing up a date.

@cmw "What is it that it is?" is odd in English too, but perhaps passable. In Latin or many other languages that kind of phrasing wouldn't fly.

@JoonasIlmavirta I too know that my e's and i's suffer. I agree with you that Latin has led me astray with those. And the gutteral r's? Arrrrr.

@cmw The vowels are the issue with me too. My ear conflates so many French vowels, and perhaps my mouth is even worse.

To me the R is not a bottleneck, but maybe only because I have bigger issues.

Now that I think about it, I mess up with some Thai vowels, too. But Thai also are inconsistent with their vowels: lots of shortened vowels and elision.

In French I could say: Moi, je suis professeur. Is there anything like that in Latin? To me it sounds unlikely that anyone but Poirot would say in English: Me, I am a professor.

I wonder if we already have a question on this...

@JoonasIlmavirta With moi being unemphatic? Nah.

@cmw Sure, it needs to have emphasis to work in French.

I've seen the French introduce a sentence with an emphatic pronoun like that far more than others.

In Latin a standalone accusative pronoun like that would feel odd.

But then again, just about all Plautine idioms feel odd to me.

@JoonasIlmavirta I mean, he was writing 150 years before Cicero was writing, so it's not really surprising that his Latin would be different. Plus he's writing not only for the common man, but also in iambic verse and following perhaps comedic conventions.

Plenty of dialogue in books, movies, and especially video games are completely different from how people actually speak.

@cmw Very true. Perhaps a better division than written versus oral would be planned versus unplanned language.

@cmw Fair enough. Reading Finnish from 50 years ago is amusing but easy, and making it 150 makes the effect stronger. The basics are of course the same, but the idioms and conventions of acceptable usage are vastly different.

@JoonasIlmavirta Like the Kalevala?

@cmw I was thinking more of old prose or newspapers. Kalevala is in a poetic form, and that alone changes things a lot.

But maybe the metric aspect is comparable to Plautus.

@JoonasIlmavirta I don't think we have anything comparable to newspapers in 3rd or 2nd century Rome, but you can read e.g. letters from Cornelia mater Gracchorum to get a feel for late 2nd century regular speech.

Actually, Cato, just a couple decades Plautus' junior, might be better to read for that. His De Agri Cultura does not have high literary pretenses.

I understand why Plautus is a goldmine for archaic Latin, but too much weight was placed on his language compared with his contemporaries.

I bet there's a lot of good stuff to read in Adams' An Anthology of Informal Latin.

@cmw It's the mental agility: you have it for Latin; for Thai; French is easier than these two.

@JoonasIlmavirta Free food?! Lounge?! Do you travel first-class? Wow. I've never seen the value-for-money in this. Huge prices: £1,000s! For short flights the discomfort of economy might as well be endured; long haul, an airline like Emirates and economy is most pleasant--good food; free drinks; TV; music--it's even possible to sleep--how about that?

@tony No, I don't get to buy first class or even business class tickets. It's all about the frequent flyer program instead. If I pour enough money into the same company (or a cluster thereof) through regular tickets, they give me benefits like lounge access and priority security and the occasional free upgrade to business class.

It's not unusual for me to get flexible tickets to premium economy for transatlantic flights, and they build up a status with the airline.

I fly so much that doing it in the cheapest form is not a mere passing inconvenience. Getting better sleep on board is a very practical benefit, too.

If you want to get the same lounge access that I have but only through buying a ticket and no status, then you need to get first, not business. But that's rare. Most folks in the lounges are frequent flyers.