Pairs & Dance Teams with Citizenship Issues | Page 7 | Golden Skate

Pairs & Dance Teams with Citizenship Issues

QuadThrow

Medalist
Joined
Oct 1, 2014
Bruno passed the oral German exam but missed the writing test. He will try it again text weeks. If he does not fail again there should be no problemwith the citizenship.
 

sarama

Medalist
Joined
Apr 23, 2014
Bruno passed the oral German exam but missed the writing test. He will try it again text weeks. If he does not fail again there should be no problemwith the citizenship.

Poor Bruno, German isn't an easy language to learn
 

4everchan

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 7, 2015
Country
Martinique
Long words, crazy word order, difficult verb-forms, many many S's and harsh pronunciation.

still... weird he passed oral and not written... most people can get away with written but not spoken no???

how are the requirements???? i took two years german in college... could barely speak it.. now it's long gone but i can still sort of read the main meaning when i have to. but i would never be able to speak it anymore.. .that's why this is surprising to me. Unless they purposely make the oral test super easy and not the written test.

What kind of deadline he is facing? How much more time does he have?

I mean, with all they have been through with the French Fed, which wasn't their fault, I think it would be very upsetting for them if they couldn't participate because he didn't study enough. Aljona may not recover from that...
 

sarama

Medalist
Joined
Apr 23, 2014
still... weird he passed oral and not written... most people can get away with written but not spoken no???

how are the requirements???? i took two years german in college... could barely speak it.. now it's long gone but i can still sort of read the main meaning when i have to. but i would never be able to speak it anymore.. .that's why this is surprising to me. Unless they purposely make the oral test super easy and not the written test.

I don't know for sure, but since he lives in Germany, he probably has more practice with the spoken language.
 

4everchan

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 7, 2015
Country
Martinique
I don't know for sure, but since he lives in Germany, he probably has more practice with the spoken language.

maybe he just took it for granted indeed, since he gets to speak it regularly.... and didn't prepare enough... I cannot imagine someone being denied the olympics for lack of studying a language right? weird...
 

QuadThrow

Medalist
Joined
Oct 1, 2014
still... weird he passed oral and not written... most people can get away with written but not spoken no???

how are the requirements???? i took two years german in college... could barely speak it.. now it's long gone but i can still sort of read the main meaning when i have to. but i would never be able to speak it anymore.. .that's why this is surprising to me. Unless they purposely make the oral test super easy and not the written test.

What kind of deadline he is facing? How much more time does he have?

I mean, with all they have been through with the French Fed, which wasn't their fault, I think it would be very upsetting for them if they couldn't participate because he didn't study enough. Aljona may not recover from that...

A German test for the citizenship consists of an oral exam and a written exam. The written exam is split in a reading part, a listing part and a writing test. Usually the candidats have to write a letter and find mistakes.

The test is different from district to district in Germany. Oberstdorf is located in Bavaria. This is Germany's most conservative part. I expect the test to be the hardest. I believe everyone would pass the test in Berlin or Hamburg ;).
 

VIETgrlTerifa

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
still... weird he passed oral and not written... most people can get away with written but not spoken no???

I think it depends. I can see a recent immigrant in any country to learn how to speak conversationally and get by, but having to write the language being more difficult.
 

QuadThrow

Medalist
Joined
Oct 1, 2014
So Bruno just moves and writes it in Berlin or Hamburg??

It was a bit of an ironic statement. I do not know anything about the differences between the tests in Berlin and Bavaria.
Bavaira is ruled by the Christian conservatives who usually do not like immigrants. But Berlin's gouvernment consists of a coalition built by the social democrates, the socialst and the greens.
 

4everchan

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 7, 2015
Country
Martinique
In the eyes of Germany, though, granting him citizenship would be about much more than the Olympics.

yes :) my point is not about the citizenship itself. my point is mostly about the fact that all the hours of training, the process to get released from the french fed...etc..if you add to that, all the hours spent in planes or at the rink waiting to compete, there is plenty of time for him to study.
 

Ice Dance

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Please. It can easily take seven years for an adult participating in serious study to reach the mastery of a second language.

One would hope no country would require anything near that level of mastery in order to obtain citizenship. But let's not dismiss the challenge.
 

4everchan

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 7, 2015
Country
Martinique
Please. It can easily take seven years for an adult participating in serious study to reach the mastery of a second language.

One would hope no country would require anything near that level of mastery in order to obtain citizenship. But let's not dismiss the challenge.

no country expects you to be fluent.... they expect you to "manage" to get to a minimum standard...

I learned English in 3 months... of course, it's much easier than German and I was surrounded with it. I am still not flawless (especially when I type on this forum) but one must think that a team knows what they are dealing with : if there is a language requirement test, then it needs to be planned and worked on, just as well as SBS jumps and lifts. The point is that without passing the test, it is just as bad as failing on triple jumps : no games/ no medal
 

CaroLiza_fan

MINIOL ALATMI REKRIS. EZETTIE LATUASV IVAKMHA.
Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 25, 2012
Country
Northern-Ireland
I learned English in 3 months... of course, it's much easier than German and I was surrounded with it. I am still not flawless (especially when I type on this forum) but one must think that a team knows what they are dealing with : if there is a language requirement test, then it needs to be planned and worked on, just as well as SBS jumps and lifts. The point is that without passing the test, it is just as bad as failing on triple jumps : no games/ no medal

I find it interesting that you say that English is easier to learn. I'm a native speaker, so I don't know what it is like to learn English. But I would have thought that English would be harder to learn.

German is a structured language that follows strict rules. So is your first language, French.

English is a mongrel language that borrows from every language conceivable. And as such, the rules are all over the place! It must be a nightmare for a foreigner to learn.

That said, I studied German for 3 years at high school. And although I have long had a love for all things German, and did well in my first year learning the language, I struggled for the subsequent 2 years. I admit, a lot of that was down to a change of teacher (the one I had for the first year was a very experienced teacher, whereas the replacement was straight out of training). But that does not take away from the fact that there are so many rules that it is hard to keep track of them all.

So, I can relate to Bruno's situation.

no country expects you to be fluent.... they expect you to "manage" to get to a minimum standard...

Just remember that this is Germany that we are talking about.

Sorry if I am falling into the national stereotype trap, but they do seem to be big on sticking strictly to rules and doing things to perfection.

So, it would not surprise me if they did expect more than just being able to manage...

CaroLiza_fan
 

4everchan

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 7, 2015
Country
Martinique
^^ I took Latin and German before really learning English. With French, these two languages have strict grammar and as you said, are very structured. English is somewhat easier because the grammar exists but is implied. So, reaching a high level of fluency was easier for me, because I could understand its grammar without having to learn it. I am not sure I make sense but it's late ;) What I found difficult to learn in English was the more colloquial idioms or tag sentences.... things like... Oh? It's raining, isn't it? I am not sure how much these are used nowadays but they were everywhere when I was learning... I took private lessons with some dude and all we were doing was working on these. It helped me a lot in being able to understand conversations and participate in them.
 

blancanieves

On the Ice
Joined
Mar 3, 2012
The Spanish federation can negotiate with the Olympic committee according to the Olympic charter. It could be the Olympic committee will be prepared to let them compete if the Spanish fed present a good case, as it is only a month short of the 3 years.

I wonder how having a Spanish team without citizenship issues (Robledo/Fenero) will factor into any exemption to the rule requests.
 

Lyssa

On the Ice
Joined
May 1, 2015
Country
France
The National Olympic committee appealed to the IOC(international committee) for an exception for Laurence to be able to represent Denmark at the 2018 Olympic games without Danish Citizenship, unfortunately exceptions are only made when special occasions occur and not just due to not being able to obtain the citizenship of the country you represent.
We are very happy for all the support we have gotten through Team Denmark, The Danish skating Federation and the National Olympic committee for helping us getting closer to our dream.
Its very hard to qualify for the olympic games as the 7th best nation in the world and not be able to go. We wish that Laurence would be able to become a Danish National so that we could represent Denmark at the Olympic games like we have been representing Denmark now for 5 years and made history for Denmark in Icedance.
Thanks to everybody who signed our petition and wants us to succeed! we will keep working hard and improve nomatter what the lies ahead.
Kind Regards
Laurence & Nikolaj
https://www.facebook.com/LaurenceNikolaj/posts/1281113875333315
 
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