The Real Truth About Native Speaker Level: Is C2 Good Enough?

I definitely got what you meant, but although is still disappointing to face the reality :'v not Matter If I do travel to New York and all of those good stuff , ouch that hurt.
Archer quote "I didn't need that heart anyway" :'v

Also wir Deutschen machen sowas nicht wirklich ;-o

Your English is so good and your accent is almost perfect BUT there are no peasants in the United States.

If I met you in London, I would know that you were born in another country but I would think that you have lived in the UK a very long time. It’s like one of my colleagues, she has lived here for nearly thirty years but she still has a very slight Portuguese accent but so what? Personally, I like that.

A native peasant means that he can understand with ease other native peasants. That’s why they are deemed native speakers.

Hmm, "peasant" just doesn't quite ring true as a description of a relatively uneducated person in the U.S.--not a word people in my particular US-native-Entlish-speaker orbit would use for someone here. To describe someone in a culture with a different history, yes. This is not a criticism: your English is superb... but your use of this word strikes me as a (probably) unintended example of your point in this video.

i could tell you were italian in the first few seconds you started speaking haha i got some italian friends and your accent are pretty distinctive i love the video btw

I'm the 666th comment

You're not fluent in English until you understand the expression "lovely jubbly". C2 or no C2.

So being a native speaker of a language is only a matter of identity?

1. Native speaker is different from foreigner who tries to sound like a native speaker
2. foreigners can speak more eloquently than a native speaker does
3. but the native speaker still can have some advantages(knowledges about facial expressions, custom and cultural references etc)
4. foreigners cannot know all the cultural references, and can't have the same experience which native speaker had(going to school etc)
5. When you learn a new language not only focus on how they speak but take a good look at on face, hand gesture, expressions with eyes and body etc
6. Given naitive speaks have their own expericen in specifi time and specific space, we cannot be in that time and space so you cannot replicate.
7.

100%

After 20 years learning English, it becomes to be enough!!!! Why do people want to learn English as a foreigner language since they will never be bilingual like the natives are? isn't it a lie to make them believe they can one day be bilingual? I think I got to understand that I will never be bilingual and I don't want to be part of this anglosaxon hegemony, the latin will never be bilingual in English, we should stop believing we could, and we should stop learning this language since their speakers try to expand it all over the world, but I thinks it's even harder than russian or even arabic to master, so please stop learning English , leave this language to their native speakers only, we don't want to learn a language so hard that takes 20 years for a non native to master, too long too hard, I am fed up, now I hate this awful language, I loathe it, I puke it, I hate it so much, I was lied to, I was manipulated I was swindled, stop stop stop learning English!!! I am starting to hate your English more and more now!!

Dude I tried to pass a C2 level test in Spanish(my native language), But they even used expressions I've never hear of

Me gustó el:. "¿Pero que te pasa macho!!!???" 😄

"peasant" is a medieval term. Sounds weird when talking about modern people who lack education.

This goes to show it's not how many words you know, it's using them in a natural context that counts.

Wow, amicci. Finally somebody agrees with me. To be a native speaker, you have to be a native speaker. It's not something you acquire later in life.

Well, um, we don't use the term "peasant" to refer to working class people in the USA. The proper term is white trash 🤣

Umm, the only people who would think you are a native speaker, are those who are not native speakers of Spanish or Americans who do no have a good ear for accents.

As a matter of fact I'm pretty much only interested in nailing down the language. I want to be able to both uderstand others and be understood, have pronunciation skills and a wide range of words to capitalise on.

I personally believe, for myself and many others, there´s a deep psychological need to abandon our own identity and take on another, like a foreign agent, to be seen as NOT foreign. I´m talking about acceptance. When you combine this psychological need to belong, perhaps like me, whose had a disastrous socialization from age 5 to 25, you desire a redo, a change to do it all over and be accepted by a target society. I don´t want ¨just¨ to be C1 level Spanish. I want to become Spanish! I want the impossible--All the admiration and interest of me being different and yet, not to be seen as different. It´s a frustration we cannot hope to accomplish because, the accomplishment would make us realize that we aren´t happy inside ourselves. We let other´s opinions paint who we become. The coolest fckr in the world is the foreigner who doesn´t want to be seen as the culture of their study. If I can realize this now, I´ll be so much happier in Spain! Again, like the LGBT community, we thought we wanted equality but, what we really needed was attention, to be accepted and for the older ones like me, to find an apology from a world who treated me like shit. Then again, unfortunately, I´m not special. Everyone has been mistreated but we are still scared and maybe language! Maybe moving to a foreign country! It´s not about the language. I know that much.

I'm 15 I live in poland and I speak like a native speaker

bist du bescheuert oder haha

Are you a good example of that Luca? Take the word peasant you're using. Sounds very literary but it is of course considered correct. In a formal situation you'd probably say someone of a lower class, or to be more direct redneck. In UK chav or Australia bogan

I'm not a native english speaker but I think, and someone please correct me, that the word peasant isn't applicable in this day and age where there is no feudal system around anymore, at least not in first world countries. I laughed so hard at the word peasant, I am not undermining Luca's english he speaks much much better than I do, but it felt like it's ironically appropriate (that doesn't sound right does it?) that in a video about non native speakers striving to sound native, a non native english speaker makes such an indiscretion. I love you Luca please don't get offended by this.

The funny thing is I have many of those example professors at my school. And the Italian professors and post docs all have the MOST Italian accent ever - but we all love it - their English is almost perfect grammatically and vocab-wise (aside from adverb order) but the accent is like I’m in Florence

I, an English-speaker from birth, am learning Spanish. I was thinking today as I was hiking and listening to some Spanish exercises, as an English-speaker, I have deeply rooted memories of my earliest childhood days, Christmases, outings with my friends, growing up! As a person in my 40s learning a new language, I will never have the childhood memories of traditions & family interactions that I did as a boy. I'm getting better at the language but the language wherein a person is raised is their heart language. As a masters level therapist I can see that language is a window into understanding other cultures & vice versa. I want to provide services in another person's heart language as it is more meaningful to them. So, I agree C2 is an admirable goal but an indigenous speaker is always rooted in their culture more than one speaking the language anew.

To encourage all second language learners: the goal should be to be understood, not to sound like a native.

Natives make grammatical mistakes all the time and do not know the meaning of every word in their native language... Be encouraged!❤

Hahahaha shit your French “I don’t know” was so good 😊

Luca inadvertently gives an example. He calls some Americans "peasants". American native speakers don't use that word for Americans. We also don't call a small town "a village". The other issue is hand gestures. Luca uses them in an American way, but he uses them almost constantly: much more often than an American native. But these are minor details. Luca speaks American English extremely well -- I don't hear any "foreign" accent from him. Instead I think "I wonder where in the US he grew up?"

Gotta be C3

delete your channel useless freak

The author failed the native test by calling American farmers "peasants". ;-)

Native Spanish speaker from Barcelona here. His '¿Pero qué te pasa, macho?' was spot on 😂

Your French made me laugh ! It is so truthful ! 😂

Being fluent is about others, not ourselves.

You basically have put value into pride of being a native, but said nothing about actual language skills.

All love and appreciation for you well done❤ from Iraq❤

lmfao your French impersonation was so on point, I'm dying.

Your first argument is interesting but has some flaws.
Sure you can only be "a native speaker" if you are "a native".
That said in theory nothing bars you from "talking like a native speaker".
The pedantic example would an adopted baby: he's not a native but assuming he's adopted early enough, he'd "speak like a native". And your Danish professor could end the same. Sure it's more difficult to acquire "native like skills" starting older but some people manage given enough time (and some even lose their own native language -and some will never lose their thick foreign accent but that's another story).
It's sort of like "Turing test": nothing cares what things actually are, if for all practical purposes you can't tell the difference, than they are (functionally) the same thing.

How much more you could be a native speaker dude??? Cut it out!!! Your are that “Danish Professor!” 😂 They tell me l not only speak like native but also l look like an American because the climate has changed me during my passed 50 years in America! Haaahaaahaaah 😂 PS: l did paralegaling for 23 years! Do you think my legal vocabulary far more superior to yours? Haaahaaahaaah? Just kidding!

Schöne Bäume im Hintergrund 😮

As a native in the USA allow me to take a machete to the thicket: Dr Henry Kissinger, whether or not you like his politics, is amazing. While he has a German accent, he does not make MISTAKES in English. My voice teacher, the late Cantor Moshe Taubé had an accent: He was from Poland, saved by Oskar Schindler, and spoke six languages. His German needless to say was perfect, and he taught me exclusively in that language!
Once after a Synagogue service (before I was his student) I had made him angry. He said: "I believe I am entitled to an apology!"
I am good at English, of course. In a million years I would not have been able to formulate that phrase, "I believe I am entitled to an apology" off the cuff as he did.
Natives, for all their restlessness(!) don't know everything either!
ALSO: proficiency is the goal. Remember: NOBODY to my knowledge ever asks a great concert pianist what he/she did BEFORE they learned their music!😊 As a pianist, I can honestly say nobody ever asked me that either, they seem to either enjoy my music or tell me their opinion of THE PERFORMANCE.

Im latino living in the West Virginia I speak French , English of course Spanish .
I heard people from the mountain calling themselves hillbilly, redneck etc
I hope doesn’t sound offensive but that’s how they call themselves

I've recieved many good comments from native English speakers about my English, my accent and all so hella yeah, it's totally worth it! what's been really frustrating for me lately was my academic level. I learned English as a hobby long time ago, but people these days are obsessed with reaching C2, are obsessed about the CEFR in general. I took some English tests online and my scores always vary. sometimes I get C1 many times B2 and I even got B1 once even tho it doesn't really reflect my actual level. I've decided to stop caring about it and embrace all the progress I've made over the years. I'm learning Spanish now and I hope that I don't get into this loop again of "am I good enough? let's check my CEFR level". thanks for the video!

Guys don't forget you have your own nationality, language, and culture!

Can't see the point of his ... Point.
There's no great value in BEING a native speaker, or not
From a linguistic achievement standpoint, what matters is speaking just LIKE a native speaker. Very few really succeed, but some do. That's the accomplishment.

So what is my listening level, if I understood all this episode without subtitles?