Seen today on a CV submitted to me today, language and language abilities listed:German - Native speaker
English - Very Good
French - Very Good
Italian - Average
This "Average" made me very confused.
If I, for instance, look into my Swahili speaking abilities I think that on comparison basis with the average person in the world, my non existent Swahili skills would place me slightly below average. But if compared against the average Democratic Republic of Kongolit, I think that I would end up far, far below average. Something to ponder indeed.
Perhaps I have "average" skills in many many more languages than I thought?
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4 comments:
Sadly, many people don't seem to understand that average has a technical meaning and doesn't just mean 'medium' or 'okay' or 'passable'. For instance, people will say a game is 'average' and then score it a 7 out of 10.
For that resume, I'd have taken it to mean 'if I'm backed into a corner, I could survive using the language, but I shouldn't talk to any clients with it'.
Its fun looking at the CVs people send in.
Shameless lies and self contradictions abound.
I think other options like "completely fluent, conversational, basic" are helpful.
There's also the "Able to order beers" level which you can't really put on a CV...
HAHA that was a great post - you should just learn a word of every language and you'll be average + indeed!
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