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*** fake natives are now promoted by the service ***
I just noticed that the qualificative "native" now appears next to my pseudo.
Nice you would think ? Not at all, because it also appears next to the pseudo of contributors who've been pretending they are natives for years, although they're not.
"nativeness" is here based on self-declaration.
I think this is completely out of order, as it's going to completely confuse learners.
Nativeness cannot be decreed. It must be proved.
Tatoeba has the tradition to attract young pretentious polyglots who over-estimate their level and pretend to be native as a challenge, and love to piss off actual natives who detect them.
Only administrators who live on a cloud with pink poneys didn't take notice.
There's another problem with this: you don't need to be a native speaker to contribute correct sentences. And being a native speaker doesn't mean all your sentences are correct.
For example, if someone copied a sentence from a trustworthy source under a compatible license, it will still be still be displayed as non-native and therefore prople might think it's not very good.
On the other hand, native speakers can easily contribute problematic sentences if they're writing carelessly, or translating sentences on the topic they’re not familiar with, or misunderstood the purpose of the project and translate word-by-word, or are trying to enforce their views about the language (e.g. adding self-invented words or personal orthography)...
That's the point. We should estimate contribution, not contributors. Of course, while we don't have a reliable evaluation system, trustworthiness of authors is the main way to be more or less sure that a certain sentence is OK. But in the long-term outlook separation between "native" and "non-native" owned sentences isn't a good idea.
i agree with you.
So this "native" Indication is just misleading and counter-productive.
+1
Why don't we just add sentence sourcing/citations to deal with this @Impersonator?
This could be helpful, not just for this reason. (If someone re-uses Tatoeba database on an external resource, it will help to attribute the quotations correctly.)
There is also another problem. Those people, who haven't come on the site since the possibility to indicate one's native language appeared, and they haven't set it, not appear like natives, even if they wrote in their profiles they were.
+1
This feature was suggested on GitHub
https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/726
and implemented without any discussion.
In my opinion, the Wall is a better place to suggest a new feature because more people see it. Then we can discuss whether or not we really want that feature.
+1
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of this feature either.
The profile options only allow for 'Native level' as the final option for language proficiency. There is a world of difference between 'Native' and 'Native level'. I am not a native speaker of English, but I do speak it at a native level, yet my English sentences now say 'Native'.
As sacredceltic points out, it would be too easy to 'game' this by making every language in your profile a native level language, turning all your sentences somehow more 'legitimate' overnight.
The cons for this feature appear to far outweigh the pros.
For some people it's different to determine their "native language", for example if they moved from their homeland in the early age. But it's always possible to say, if your contribution sounds good and natural or not. I think, most learners interested about your professionality in the language, not about if it's your actual mother tongue or not.
Do you mean, all you write in English can't be distinguished from anything that a native write in English by another native?
I actually agree with keeping 'native level' as an option, as opposed to just 'native'. All I'm saying is that 'native level' should not be taken to mean 'native', as it is being in the case of this new 'feature'.
And of course, as you said, knowing a language at the native level is no guarantee that your sentence will not have errors, just as not knowing a language at the native level is no guarantee that your sentence must be wrong.
Just native? In that case it should be "native monolingual speaker".
For bilingual people the concept of a "native language" might be very vague, and some of them actually tend to use cultural or political reasons, chosing their native languages. So, if we don't want those battles here we'd better be ruled by the criteria of actual language skills and give corpus maintainers the right to decrise the level of those fake "natives", if their contribution is not good enough for this level.
I don't know what do you mean as "native level". If you're a native, it doesn't mean you never make any mistakes either. Do you mean "near native level"?
I agree with you on that,
I proposed on github and the wall, without any response on both :( , to separate the level and nativeness , i.e to still have the level and a checkbox native/not native (or something more contrasted if people feel the urge)
as you said, one can be a professional United Nation translator from French to English (and so with a high academic level in English but not native) while an other can be a an american car-wash employe
one will sometimes make "perfect" sentence that nobody says and the other will make mistake that everybody does.
I agree also that nativeness , as currently it's not verified, should not be promoted that much for the time being.
Yes! Separate level and nativeness!
And limit the checkboxes to two native languages.
So we could have, if people are honest... some realistic combinations:
Native language and native level,
native level but non native language,
native langage but low level.
You're forgetting that there are people native and proficient in 3 native languages. I know a few of them, although they're not active here, as far as I know.
There's no such thing as "native language but low level". If you're native you're at "native level" except perhaps in cases of mental retardation, but even the mentally retarded have something most second-language learners don't.
I should clarify a bit, regarding English, at age fifteen, for a native speaker, a vocabulary of 18 or so thousand is the average, at age eighteen, 23 or so thousand. A low result for a seventeen year old is 15 thousand.
what is a good non-native speakers vocabulary? Probably about 8 to 15 thousand.
Pretty much every native speaker knows as many if not more words than most non-natives.
I shouldn't need to clarify on grammar. Native speakers master basic grammar rules at a young age, and most learn complex grammar structures to help express their thoughts better and better as they grow older.
There are native speakers who are worse than other native speakers, yes, and there are non-natives who are better than certain natives, I'm sure of it, but there is no such thing as a native adult who is only at an advanced level, no, nor is there such thing as native advanced who is only at an intermediate level or a beginner level. All native speakers are at the native level, except perhaps very very rare cases.
Citation : http://testyourvocab.com/blog/2...greater-detail
[ferra : "There's no such thing as "native language but low level..."]
I don't agree. I you live in a foreign country and don't practice your native language, you'll forget it. There are also other causes of loosing one's level. I often saw and heard such people.
[Vortarulo : "... 3 native languages...]
I don't forget. I just wanted to avoid a too strong polemic. "3" seems incredible, but you can testify that they exist.
There is. If a person leave their homeland as a child, and not master their mother tongue anymore, but only use it for talking to their parents, his or her vocabulary remains rather limited and he or she tends to use unnatural phrases, due to a strong impact of the second language. But he or she is still a native speaker. That's the case of "native speaker with low level".