tiia wrote:But I do disagree, that the numbers would automatically lead to assumptions such as mentioned here:
You're disagreeing with something subtly different from what I said.
"automatically lead to" implies that everyone would do it, but what I was trying to say was that it is inevitable that some people will interpret it that way.
I thought it would be clear, that one would not even do such a comparison between two people and assume according to the order of aquiring a language that one would be better than the other.
You wouldn't, I wouldn't, but it is very dangerous to generalise from us to the general population. Is your average desk-bound HR drone filtering CVs and application forms going to be well up on what particular language descriptions mean.
Let's make a simple example and assume both of them have one native language and one learned one:
Victoria:
* L1=Spanish, L2=English
Albert:
* L1=French, L2=English
We simply would not know who speaks better English, because it is normal that not everyone is at the same level. Only because we know they both learned English, we know nothing about their level. I may have thought that this would be obvious.
Yes, but the problem is that people can and do interpret these sort of things incorrectly -- it's not obvious to everyone!
That's why we need scales such as CEFR.
Yes, and that's in very wide use on CVs, and is the best option (despite it's fuzziness and lack of clarity).
But again, doing away with the L1, L2, L3,... thing is with the goal of eliminating something that can absolutely be misinterpreted and has been on a number of occasions across the world. I'm pretty certain I've heard native multilinguals complain that they were rejected because they couldn't have "native level" command of language X because it wasn't at the top of the list.
This is something that has been mostly eliminated now.
A major part of that is because of more exposure to international travel, but don't underestimate what effect the elimination of the L1,L2,..,Ln habit has done for this. And while I major part of that is down to the wide adoption of CEFR, that doesn't mean it's safe for us to start bringing back the L1, L2, ..., Ln. People will misunderstand it, becuase they just don't know any better.
But why do I think a term such as L3 would actually make sense?
Simply because when starting a foreign language it often makes a difference, whether someone has already aquired (or tried to aquire) another foreign language.You may be familiar with gramatical terminology, learned, that certain methods worked out or not and all those things that make it easier to learn a second or third foreign language. It doesn't really mean that you can use the language or have very high skills in it, but you may be aware of issues or concepts, that you would otherwise need to understand first.
Yes, but ...
If we're numbering languages, then Victoria first foreign language is arguably Polish, her L5, so L2 wouldn't specifically mean "first foreign language" anyway, and any academics that want to genuine study differences between first-foreign-language and subsequently learned foreign languages would still have to define their own terms to do so.
It's really something that is only of academic interest, because it's not an indicator of relative strength, it's more about the choice of teaching/learning process that will be most effective. And as I said, it's even of very little academic use.
And the big one: the L1, L2, L3, ... thing was actually kind of offensive and Eurocentric, because it built on the notion of monolithic "national" languages. This disregarded the reality of multilingualism in many parts of the world, including parts of Europe where local language users were being suppressed in an attempt to do national myth building. I'm sure as a German you've heard local language being called "just a dialect".
But mainly I just continued using the terms the op was already using, without giving it too much of a thought.
Yes, and I'm sorry about dragging this massively off-topic, but I kind of felt compelled to post, because the L1,L2,...,Ln thing was stopped for very good reason, and the fact that it's starting to gain traction again is concerning to me and something I feel I should speak out against. When I say it's gaining traction again, I mean both online and in education spheres -- the Scottish 1+2 language policy uses L1 to mean the pupils' own language, L2 to mean the first foreign language at primary school and L3 to mean the language started in later years of primary.
A kid from an Urdu-speaking family who goes to an English-speaking primary and is taught French from P1 an Chinese from P5... what's he going to be described like? He's in a school where L1 is English, L2 is French and L3 is Chinese... what number does Urdu, the language of his first words get?
Worse: even Gaelic-medium education officially places English as L1 and Gaelic as L2, which has practical reasons behind it, but isn't particularly complimentary to kids who are native Gaelic speakers and whose English is weaker because it's just less used in their lives.
It's a reinstatement of language that reinforces the notion of monolingualism as the normal thing.
