When do you consider yourself to speak a language | General discussion | Forum

Technically, the question was, "When can you speak a language?" The answer is: As soon as you open your mouth and try.

Any definitions for "fluency" are too much of an absolute measure. Once you try to nail it down to a specific set of conditions, then you're asking for trouble. One needs a more relative measure of "success," one that fits every individual's circumstances. Otherwise you run up against competition between people who want to prove who knows more and can speak more. Not useful.

Rather, I say, "When you can use a language to do what you need to do, you've won." If you're just travelling around and you want to order food and find a hotel, then you're fine with less. If you're defending a PhD thesis, then you'll need a bit more. But if everyone focuses on their individual goals, then there will be a whole lot more winners around.

J.

Alasdair said:

That's fascinating! I'm aware there's no 'right' words for every language…but could you elaborate on what the 'necessary tools' implicates?

The necessary tools are what you need to keep a conversation going in your target language without reverting back to English (or whatever your baseline language is). Starting with a toolbox of phrases such as, "What is this?" "How do you say ______?" "Could you repeat that please?" "Can you say that slower?" "Did I say that right?" will help you expand your learning little by little while using the language itself.

jpike1028 said
For me, I label being able to speak a language as being able to comfortably get around using the language in day to day activities and conversations.  I think fluency is something much higher than being able to speak a language.  To be fluent, I think one has to be able to talk comfortably about any topic and be able to do something like give an impromptu speech or teach a lesson about something in the language. 

Fluency is just what the word sounds like. Is the speech fluid and flowing relatively smoothly. It's hardly an all or nothing proposition. Even native speakers will have areas of the language in which they're less than fluent because they don't know the relevant vocabulary.

And pockets of fluency definitely exit prior to over all fluency. I know that with my German that I can get into a flow if I know the vocabulary where I'm fluent, even though in most circumstances I wouldn't be.

To put it another way, fluency is what you get when you've spoken enough that you don't have to think about all the grammatical points, you just use the ones that are applicable. Such as remembering to separate the prefixes and word order. Not necessarily getting the correct inflection of the verb in all cases.

I wish more people understood that fluency really isn't an all or nothing situation. You can develop localized fluency for a given set of tasks much more quickly than you can develop it on a more global scale.

Ultimately, fluency is a necessary condition to be an efficient user of a language, but it isn't in and of itself a particularly useful goal if you don't also have a more generalized communicative competence.

Alasdair said
Sometimes when I hear or see things I try and work out how I'd explain them to a speaker of my target language were they next to me and monolingual. It's a fun exercise when you have no resources at hand to practice.

That's a favorite strategy of mine. Eventually I'd like to find an app which would randomly give me a situation and a couple words so that I would have a more varied set of sentences to try and make. Because as it is, I'm limited to what I can foresee needing or wanting to say. The ultimate level would be given somewhat random needs and having to figure out how to say them.

It's a hard task, but IMHO it's really the best way of gaining fluency other than by speaking. What's more it's a great thing to do when you're waiting for a bus or when there aren't other speakers available.

I think speaking another language is when you can pretty much speak like the natives but make some simple errors occasionally with an accent and fluency as not being able to tell you are a foreigner (you've seen those spy movies where they get the secret agents that speak "fluent" German/English so they can pass as a citizen).

I have met a couple of Italians here in Italy that speak perfect posh English and it is so funny to hear them swap from Italian to flawless english, kind of spooky. They went to translator school which must be the ultimate in language learning and from how they speak it works brilliantly.

rainman said
I think speaking another language is when you can pretty much speak like the natives but make some simple errors occasionally with an accent and fluency as not being able to tell you are a foreigner (you've seen those spy movies where they get the secret agents that speak "fluent" German/English so they can pass as a citizen).

That is true I guess, but I think it's more about understand all the words because that is what makes you fluent. Your point is also true, though