Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 August 23

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August 23

Can write and read but can't speak the language

Illiterate means somebody who cannot read or write but speak the language. What do you call a person who cannot speak the language for example Bengali language, but can write or read the language? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.35.118 (talk) 19:00, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Note: when I started to study English, my profs referred to 'oral skills' for speaking and 'aural skills' for understanding spoken language. Implying that there should/could be two different terms for the lack of each. Thanks to media my aural skills are pretty good by now, but due to lack of practice my oral skills are very subpar (slow, heavy accent). Rh73 (talk) 21:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that's the question, though. I think the OP meant to say "a person who can neither speak Bengali nor understand spoken Bengali, but can read and/or write it". That's neither oral nor aural, but purely in reference to the written language. --Trovatore (talk) 23:24, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

This phenomenon is certainly found with languages like classical Greek and biblical Hebrew. I have never heard a one-word name for it. Proficient in written Attic Greek (e.g.) is what I'd expect. μηδείς (talk) 00:00, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It's certainly common to be able to read languages that you can neither speak, understand, nor write. Lots of PhD programs require (though this may be becoming less common) demonstrating reading proficiency in one or two foreign languages (usually, this just means translating a passage in the student's field), and a great many students are able to pass without acquiring any other real competency in the language.

To be able to write competently is much harder, and I doubt it happens very often without at least some idea what the spoken language is like. Maybe this happens for the profoundly deaf? Or what about in non-phonetically based writing systems, say Kanji? --Trovatore (talk) 00:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

• On Usenet (remember Usenet?) I encountered at least one person whose written English was near-native, but who claimed to have little to no idea how to pronounce it. —Tamfang (talk) 06:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

"Lots of PhD programs require", note that this is for the US. In Europe this doesn't happen. 82.8.32.177 (talk) 08:06, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Unspeakably literate? Clarityfiend (talk) 01:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Ouch!

I suspect the reason "Lots of PhD programs require" in the US is that in the US you are far more likely to run into people who otherwise would have substantially no familiarity with any other language. In continental Europe, very few people graduate from the equivalent of high school, no less first degree at university, without at least some command of a native language plus one other. I'd be interested to hear from other English-speaking countries: UK, Canada (though many learn French), Australia, New Zealand, others. How does that work there? StevenJ81 (talk) 16:21, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it was ever so much about making sure that PhD's had a minimum of liberal education. The theory, at least in the sciences, was (I think) that from time to time you might have to read a paper in another language, usually French or German (though Russian was not out of the question). The declining popularity of this requirement is probably a lagging indicator of the dominance of English as the language of science. --Trovatore (talk) 21:08, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

In the field of Chemistry, 2-3 generations ago, knowledge of German (at least a reasonable knowledge of written German) used to be a requirement for all PhDs. Even as only a Bachelor's student in the U.S. in the early 1990s, my school had only recently removed the German requirement for Chemistry undergrads, and still highly encouraged it. Why? Because until the mid 20th century or so, German had developed as the Lingua Franca of the Chemistry academia, largely because the modern Chemical Industry (and academia) developed in Germany in the 19th century. Much of the earliest research into practical chemistry occurred first in Germany, largely around the coal tar industry: the history of corportations like BASF is instructive here. Many international journals were published in German, and chemists needed to be able to read them. By the mid 20th century, English had become the new lingua franca in the industry, though old habits die hard, and it probably wasn't until the 1980s or so that most Chemistry programs dropped the German requirement. --Jayron32 09:58, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Although everybody here in the UK will have had a second language to some level, most won't actually speak it very well at all. Here, language courses are most definitely not done during PhD. In fact, we just go and do research. None of this course malarkey that seems to be common in US PhDs. Guess that's one of the reasons they take twice as long. Fgf10 (talk) 16:54, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know anyone who took a language course in order to pass a PhD language exam. I suppose if you really wanted to take the course because you were interested in the language, you might say you were doing it to pass the exam, to keep your advisor from giving you grief about it. But I doubt anyone would actually be fooled. --Trovatore (talk) 18:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

(Off topic, but I can't see how one could do meaningful research in e.g. math(s) without any coursework beyond the undergraduate level. As for the USA/UK difference in scientist training, consider the rankings and h-index here- [1]. Though it is ranking country of institution and not country of PhD, I suspect those are fairly well correlated ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 17:48, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

For my PhD program everyone had to pass Latin, French, and German exams - Latin because that is what almost all medieval documents are written in (although people who studied places/periods where Latin wasn't used still had to take the exam), and French and German because, aside from English, that is what most modern scholarship is written in. We certainly had classes for those languages. The French and German exams were pretty easy for me. I started French in grade 1, and I took it all through university, which is actually abnormal for Canadians, since most of us stop taking it in high school when it is no longer obligatory. Also most of the people in my program were American for some reason, so they had never learned French in school. I had taken German in university, which turned out to be a good decision. Almost everyone had to take at least one Latin class though. I think you could take Latin three or four times, but if you didn't pass the exam after that, you'd get kicked out of the program. Some PhD students get to teach the Latin classes too (as I did). You were also expected to learn any other language that might be necessary for your research, either through one of the language classes in our program (for me, Old French), or through another department (for me, Arabic).Adam Bishop (talk) 11:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Since I started the side-topic, I'll say: I didn't assume that a requirement in the US, or lack elsewhere, was a liberal-education requirement. I assumed exactly that the idea was that someone educated in Europe likely had some familiarity with a second language—a fact that is not as true in the US. Nothing more, nothing less. What languages might be good for PhD students in different fields to have a familiarity with is a totally different question, as well described above. StevenJ81 (talk) 11:59, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

• I might point out that Tarzan is a good fictional example of this, having taught himself to read English. (And then, some idiot taught him to speak French, and to associate those words with English written ones...) Eman235/talk 19:59, 24 August 2015 (UTC)