Category talk:User en-5

what talk page? 216.237.179.238 00:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

justification

The only people allowed to represent their English skills as "professional" ought to be people whose writings have been published. It is only reasonable to therefore ask for the complete bibliography of each. This classification is elitist, snobbish, and exists only to let people preen themselves. Writing must speak for itself; if your writing is professionally done, your readers will be able to tell. If your writing is shit, all the candy-red en-5 badges in the world won't save you. The Dogandpony 23:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Most "professionals" write like shit. Very few write well enough to meet your presumptive standard of quality. I say if you have the nads to claim you're professional-grade, go for it. Tags don't require credentials. If you can't live up to it, everyone will know, and you'll know your use of it is a conceit. (By the way, you split an infinitive. I hope you're not tagging yourself above a '2' in this category...) 216.237.179.238 00:25, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

No, I tagged myself simply as a native speaker of English. I believe if you re-read my post, you'll find we substantially agree. It is unnecessary to criticise my grammar, especially regarding such a ridiculous and unfounded idea as the so-called "split infinitive". Secondly, going through the profiles and contributions of the en-5 users, I feel my "presumptive standard of quality" is quite justified. I found obvious errors in several. So, yeah, I would like to see some bibliographies to see what some of these users are basing their rating on. Otherwise, we all might as well rate ourselves +4 in every language in the Babel project. Why the hell not? (Sarcasm, sarcasm. My point is that if these standards don't mean anything, they're useless.) The Dogandpony 01:13, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

The split infinitive is a very real phenomenon; it is incorrect usage to say or write "to therefore ask" rather than "It is reasonable therefore, to ask..." just as "To boldly go" is incorrect. Angryafghan (talk) 17:45, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Normally replying to a seven-year-old post won't get you a reply, but in this case you do happen to get one: See Common English usage misconceptions. Anomie⚔ 15:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

While I hope the quality of writing speaks for itself, most native speakers have difficulty writing in a clear and concise manner. Wikipedians are, by and large, well above that average, and I don't feel that en-4 as described is sufficient. I know plenty of non-Wikipedians who are charming and intelligent but simply not natural writers of English. These people qualify for en-4 by its own definition. However I don't feel you need to be published; I know more than one English teacher who never made it into print. I'm a news editor and much of my job involves re-writing stories made by journalists who vary from en-3 to en-5 - most of them foreigners. My work only gets 'published' on TV. I don't think en-5 marks me out as snobbish, it's just a statement about my ability - which I am proud of, naturally! Benet Allen 23:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

According to what you're saying, Dogandpony, we do not need to make any levels for the languages, since the writing can speak for itself. From what you are saying, why would we need en-4 then, once we take away 5? Our problem if we do take away en-5, we might have people going against en-4, or 3 or so on. Steven 23:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Your slippery slope argument is invalid. The vast majority of humanity can claim a native level of some language. That makes en-4 not elitist. Moreover, no one is objecting. --Prosfilaes 10:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

It's one thing to say you speak like a native. It's yet another to say you speak English better then the rest of us. I could put a note on my user page saying "I am smarter than most Wikipedians"; but I think it would needlessly antagonise people. That's the way I felt when I first saw this box, that it was an elitist way for some people to show their supposed superiority. If you want to communicate your ability, mention that you are a professional editor on your talk page, which is verifiable, NPOV, and hard to take offence at.

It doesn't help that the damn thing is bright red instead of the normal language color. The color difference screams that it's more important than just ordinary ability at a language.--Prosfilaes 10:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that the color needs to be a LOT more subdued. What about the light green color of the other English userboxes? Who can/will actually change the template? Me no have the smarts. Halcatalyst 05:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Then please define what en-3 means? Isn't "advanced" being elitist as well?--Steven 15:00 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Context is king. Saying that your skill level in a language is almost up to the level of most of its speakers is not elitist. --Prosfilaes 17:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to put my two cents into this discussion. This userbox is dumb and pretentious. That said, people can use it if they want... just know that many people will think "this person is a pretentious snob" when they see this on a user page. It is my understanding — correct me if I'm wrong — that these language userboxes were created to advise other users about how they can best communicate with you, and to warn them that if they're sending English messages to a user with a en-1 box, they'd better use really, really basic words. If someone sees this en-5 box instead of an en-N box on a user page, does that make any difference in how they will communicate with that user? Not really. You could add more pomp and circumstance to the note, I suppose ("A special, independent aggressive instinct means an alteration of the psycho-analytic theory of the instincts"), but that's probably not going to happen. But hey, if you want to slap this thing on your page... more power to you. -Vontafeijos 05:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Even though I added this userbox to my page, being, to dispense with all modesty, substantially more skilled with regards to the English language than most, I agree that it is pretentious in the extreme. However, being a "native" to a language does not make one skilled; in fact, most people who have spoken English since birth (or since vocalization; you know what I mean. :P) use it incorrectly. Obviously, a "near-native" level is inadequate for those who are more than proficient at the language. I therefore suggest that "near-native" be changed to "fluent" or "near-fluent" and "professional" either eliminated or changed to "fluent," depending on the redesignation of "near-native." ...having written all of this, I think I'm going to go and change my userbox to something more tongue-in-cheek. GenericGabriel 05:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

'being a "native" to a language'. Properly, that should read 'being "native" to a language', or 'being a "native" speaker of a language'.--Judah

IMO the rationale behind the "native" level is that there are some features that (almost) all native speakers, and almost no learner, knows. For example, if someone is not en-N, I don't expect them to know what pepperoni is. (Many bilingual dictionaries don't have an entry for the word pepperoni, and peperoni means "bell peppers" in Italian and other European languages, so people might think pepperoni means the same. Also, phrases like "cross my heart and hope to die" (which I didn't find in any English-Italian dictionary) are unlikely to be known by foreign people, even by some of those who teach English or write in English for a living, but can be expected to be understood by lots of native speakers, no matter how illitterate they are.) So I think that the xx-N does not necessarily correspond to a number in the xx-# scale. (I have stated in Wikipedia:Babel/Levels that xx-4 means that the proficiency in formal written language is on the level of that of an average native speaker, and if a native speaker isn't xx-4 as for formal written language they should use both xx-N and xx-#. That instruction wasn't changed since then.)--Army1987 15:51, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

English is interpreted many different ways, and so are opinions. I believe there is no "wrong way" to speak English, and whereas a person may think he/she speaks English professionally, there is usually bound to be another person in the world who thinks it is a bad way to speak English, even if that person is the best English speaker in the world (not likely, since there are so many dialects and accents).--❊Đǣţĥ ɱøťőŕ ☎ 20:50, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

As a native speaker of English who occasionally writes for a living, I was considering whether to flatter myself with the professional userbox. I was surprised to see that en-5 is a rank lower than en-N. Clearly, Wikipedia benefits from many talented writers who have learnt English as a foreign language to a professional standard (en-5 without en-N). However, I don't think it's fair to rank their knowledge below that of an average native English speaker (en-N without en-5). I wonder whether the native designation is useful at all, except for specialised articles on areas of English such as idiom and slang. Certes (talk) 16:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This category is in need of attention?

I can't find any description of the problem outlined in the "needs attention" box.

If the box was put there because of the ugliness in the "See Also" area, that has been fixed. It was caused by an incompatibility between the {{User language subcategory}} and "level=5". I fixed it by doing a subst of the template (at "level=4", which is compatible), then replacing 4 with 5 where required. Jamie 12:38, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I added it for that reason. I'm removing it. --Army1987 20:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

^_^This user, using only userboxes to communicate, would like to tell everyone that he's changed the candy red color of the userbox sample on the category page to match the colors on its respective template page. He'd also like to remind everyone that the Wiki is supposed to be a happy place. Cernen 10:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Boy, is this category vanity…

5 categories to differentiate between different levels of skills mastering the English language – on one axis; no sub-categorizing? Are we sure we do not need a bureaucracy to siphon off trespassers who never should be given a classification above en-4? This category should be Rfd'ed on health grounds as it is bound to abet pathologically bloated egos. --meco 11:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Besides the whiff of snobbery inherent in "en-5", the problem with the "native" level is that it should not be at the top of the scale, but rather off to the side of it. "Native speakers" should be those who were raised with English as a maternal language, regardless of their level of mastery. Some native speakers speak/write atrociously. Nobody will deny that public speakers (television anchormen and the like) speak at a different level than the colloquial one. I granted myself level 5 because a) I've been published and b) American colleagues (most of which I'd rank in the 4-to-5 span) have told me, a French Canadian, that I knew their language better than themselves. (Its like being a native of a city, but knowing the city's history and places of interest less well than the average tourist coming in) Urhixidur 02:24, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

"Professionals" may speak on a level higher than that of the average speaker, but they are still far from experts. I notice that you said "speak at a different level than" rather than "speak at a level different from", "knew their language better than themselves" rather than "know their language better than they do", and "Its like" rather than "It's like". And in mentioning this, I don't mean to contradict your colleagues' claim that you speak better than many native speakers. These are all the sort of errors that native speakers, even "professionals", make (although I suppose that some may consider the first an example of pedantry on my part). I just heard an anchor describe a woman as an "opponent to the war in Iraq" rather than an "opponent of the war in Iraq". I even saw a grammar book talk about ways to deal with the ambiguity in the sentence "Bob gave his father his knife" without even mentioning the fact that the sentence is missing a preposition, and including it would eliminate the ambiguity ("Bob gave his knife to his father"). Perhaps I am simply being conceited, but I think that if level 5 is going to refer to this level of mastery, then I should be classified as level 6. Flarity 05:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Flarity, it doesn't make sense to classify you as en-6 (which actually exists, for reasons I haven't figured out yet). You're simply a prescriptivist. :-) That means you take your personal preferences and act as if widespread alternatives were outright wrong. For example, English prepositions are a mess. "Different to", "different from", and "different than" all occur in comparable numbers in the English spoken and written by native speakers; it doesn't make sense to call one or two of them wrong. It's not like in German where everyone says and writes verschieden von and anders als (to the point that I can't even think of having ever encountered any other combinations, except for anders wie in certain dialects). Also, if you write "speak", you can't condemn the misspelling "its" for "it's" because this clearly is a misspelling here, not a confusion between the meanings of its and it's.

I think the existence of en-5 is a good idea. I've classified myself as en-5 because I'm not a native speaker, but capable of writing scientific articles in English. (The first will be published next month or maybe a bit later.) I have never lived in an English-speaking country for more than 2 weeks, and there are a couple of gaps in my everyday vocabulary – this is why I don't call myself en-4. David Marjanović 13:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Being a professional indicates that you use the language as a profession. This technically stating that you either teach the language as a teacher or professor, use the language while writing as a journalist, writer, author, etc. or that you have studied the language over an extensive period of time. It does not state that that you are an expert. An expert being someone that knows the English language very well. I agree with Flarity that expert should be level 5 and professional should be level 6, but I do not agree that he alone should be allowed to use level 6. Personally I am only 15 years old and I do not consider myself in any way professional at English so I do not wish to argue with any of you whether you are or are not professional at English, but I see that many people that state that they can contribute at a professional level are far from professional. CFCF 22:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

generic honesty

I saw the Babel light green on a User page, checked it out and followed through -- I'm a professinal (a sic one). I had no idea (naive me!) that en-5 was some sort of badge until I saw the outlandish number of "professionals" on the Category:User_en-5 page.

I liked the blue-periwinkle on that page much better than the glaring red thing I ended up with -- note acceptable dangling particle, he says with a grin. I think it really is an appeal to vanity -- "stand aside, stand aside; large brain coming through" -- swelled head more like!

I would really like to see something that is both subtler AND more helpful -- the blue-periwinkle just mentioned would be nice, and maybe a page of established STYLE mavens -- by consensus of course. --Championdante 00:45, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

The mistake that some people do by defining their ability as professional may be in their perception of professionalism in the first place, since there are professionals in English that are lousy overall when compared to their highly accomplished peers — such as teachers of English who have had (and still have) very little exposure to the language vs. English scholars, BBC newscasters and anchors, etc. For the former, this may serve as a sign of their being professionals in the field while equally being a device for ego-tripping, just because the level denotes a higher number.

I propose that if someone wants to add to their generic Babel level of en-x while simultaneously wishing to avoid ego-tripping, they could add an infobox in the fashion of "This user studies English in a university" to "This user has a degree in English" to "This user teaches English at a grade school level" to "This user teaches English at a high school level" to "This user is a professor of the English language" or somesuch. There are also grave inter-country differences where teachers of English may not be proficient enough in terms of spoken language: [1] and [2] (A CNN news video not accessible in Ff2/Fp9, works fine in IE6).

I set my level as en-3 just because it's in a nice blue colour, whilst yellow and pink are exuding some level of negativity.

-Mardus 23:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I set mine as en-6. It's top secret! -Rapturerocks 17:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rapturerocks (talk • contribs)

Getting randomly tagged with this...

I had no idea this category existed until some user (a user with a lot of edits it would appear) tagged me with it... yet I'm a native speaker. Of course, I suppose nativity of the language and ability of it are separate considerations... but wierd, it looks like it's not normal to go about tagging people with this.

Perhaps it should be? Perhaps adding people to the category should be subject to NPOV rules? After all, the category page exists independently of the user namepage.

Nativity, of course, would be kind of hard to make NPOV.Darkmusashi (talk) 00:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Misleading category (from an international perspective)

I am not a native English speaker, but I use it intensely at work, college and free time. With this I mean I see English from an international point of view. I created my user page in Wikipedia in 2005 and, if I didn't overlook them (which might be possible), there were just en-3 and en-N levels with nothing in between back then. I'm certainly not en-N, and I rated myself en-3. I saw recently that en-4 and en-5 existed and I thought that it would be more realistic with this new scale to re-rate myself. I went for en-4 to discover it is tagged with 'near native'. I thought: 'it sounds good for me as I am not native'. Just out of curiosity I reviewed what en-5 is to compare with en-4 and en-N, because I couldn't imagine what there could be in between 'near-native' and 'native': in an international working context, native English means the highest level of proficiency. Of course there are native speaker with varying levels of writing skills, but the native level at work is usually reserved for the highest skilled in the foreign language. When I looked at the en-5 category, I was really surprised by its tag. In the same context, professional English level means being capable of using English as a communication vehicle at work. This does not mean being able to speak and write correctly English, which is much more difficult. I've seen plenty of non-native speakers chairing meetings and providing training in English effectively, who nevertheless made mistakes in almost each sentence. So my point is, for me, a near-native level of English (en-4) has a connotation of a higher level of English than professional English (en-5), which contradicts the logic of the number ranking. I would like to ask to other non-native English speakers what is their opinion on this, as my interpretation of tags might or might not be representative of non-native audience's mindset. Connotations are context-dependent, and therefore it is surely different for native speakers. 'Professional English' might be attached to an editor or an English literature professor, right? However, if it were the case that is confusing for the international audience, which is rather broad in the En-Wikipedia, I would suggest to re-name the tag (or clarify somehow the meaning!). --Jasón (talk) 06:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I've checked the history of the category, and I've seen many changes within the ranking, being native the highest rank sometimes, being professional the highest rank some others. It seems to me that this is a controversial topic:

• For an international audience, 'native' sounds as the highest skill category, and it doesn't necessarily has to be attached to really being native. Professional category doesn't fare well.
• Some natives might consider that not everybody has dexterity to act as professional editors, and might want to make distinctions. It seems a little elitist to me, but I see the point. --Jasón (talk) 07:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)