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 Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 5:51 pm
The Jenna's Mental dictionary would define "fluency" as the ability to make a smooth transition between languages without much hopeless grasping, to speak, write, or read with ease and minimal errors. Unconsciously developing thoughts in a second (or third...or twelfth) language is a factor, as well.
For example, I am fluent in English and consider myself nearly fluent in Spanish because my thoughts sometimes switch from English to Spanish. I can hold a decent conversation (an achievement for me in any language, being such an introvert) and sometimes find myself thinking in Spanish when I wake up in the mornings.
It all boils down to a feeling. Do you think that you are linguistically capable of living in a foreign country with roommates of that culture? Are your mental processes relatively clear? Last but not least, do you feel absolutely confident in your linguistic abilities?
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 9:36 am
Like someone already said, I think that when people mention being able to "survive" or "get help" if dropped into a foreign city equals fluency is completely absurd.
I'm sure any intelligent person could mime/scream until someone realizes that you need help.
Any, on to answering the actual question. I think true fluency (ie. reading, writing, speaking and listening) is when you can listen to the radio in the language and understand it (giving some room for technical words), when you don't have to think about grammar rules before you form sentences, and when you can understand almost everything in a dictionary from that language.
I don't think you necessarily need to be able to do everything as well as your native language. I mean, if you've never had an education in Spain, then you're not likely to be able to say
"two angles in an isoceles triangle are equal, and the sum of the three interior angles will always be 180 degrees"
in Spanish.
As long as you can sound like a normal person, maybe even with a slight accent.
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Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:45 pm
Fluency is one of those terms that has a pretty clear dictionary definition, but a lot of relative meanings. By a basic clinical definition, it's supposed to be a measure of how smoothly one can join together syllables and words when speaking, but that's so vague. It's a combination of being able to read, speak, listen and write in a language, but it's more of a comfort level. Yes, I can speak several languages, but would only consider myself fluent in English, because it's the only one I feel fully comfortable with all four aspects of. If I can speak a language, but can't read it, or vice versa, that's more than likely not going to give me a lot of confidence or the ability to feel comfortable speaking that language, so I'm not going to call myself fluent.
There are as many definitions of fluency as there are people. Each will have their own definition.
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Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:02 pm
Spanish Nerd Fluency = automatic. Everything occurs automatically. You don't have to think much about grammatical topics; how to conjugate a verb, prepostitions, etc. I think of it more as having the skills to get the news/info and being able to strike up a converstaion with a random person. I consider myself fluent in written Spanish because my fingers type/write as fast as I think. When I try to speak however, it's more complex. I need to keep thinking. sweatdrop I agree with her, and i have the same issue. When i speak, im so concerned how i sound or if im saying something right. VS writing or online, i just type and it's all good x3 I consider myself fluent in Spanish as well as English, i'm not perfect but i can get by speaking only Spanish when i need to.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:20 pm
Fluency is being able to carry on a conversation and say everything you would say in your first language. I recognize a distinction between fluency and bilingualism, the latter being the ability to think in two languages.
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Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:10 pm
My definition of fluency, is that you are able to speak a language without having to think about it, think about the sentence structures and verb conjugations, and get stuck on words consistently (Obviously you're going to screw up once in a while).
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