Are you fluent?

Question

If someone asks you if you know language X, what criteria do you use to judge your own fluency?

Also, what vocabulary should a fluent non-native speaker have? Should you be able to tell someone how to cook a certain dish ? How about knowing the parts of a car including some of the parts of the engine (example: dipstick, exhaust pipe,dashboard...)? Are you fluent if you have trouble in the above situations?

Answer 1

I agree with the first thing that the first answerer said, actually. I'm not fuent in Spanish, but if someone asks me, "Do you speak Spanish?" I usually say "yes," though I might qualify it with "I'm not fluent, but I'm fairly proficient."

For me, it's definitely that ability to think in Spanish that lets me feel comfortable to say that I speak the language. Supposedly there is some kind of official standard of proficiency for you to be able to say that you are a speaker of a language, and maybe someone else can give you that standard. And I'm not sure that I'd qualify with that standard. But I do know that when I read something in Spanish, I don't translate it in my head anymore. And when I speak in Spanish, it just comes out. It doesn't always come out correctly, but I don't have to translate, at least.

I believe that I will be fluent one day at the pace I'm going, but I don't think that I can truly be fluent in language unless I live somewhere where I absolutely need to use it, day in, day out. At this point, I'm not sure exactly how long I'd have to live there to qualify as fluent, but I'm making my first trip to a Spanish speaking country for a week in January, so we'll see what that week does for me! :)

Added later: It kind of depends on what your purposes are in your second language. If you're an auto mechanic and you can't say those things in your second language, then you're probably not fluent. But even in my native language there are jargon types of words that I still don't know. However, I think that even if you don't know the actual name for something, you can still consider yourself fluent if you can describe that thing well enough to get someone to tell you what the name of that thing is.

Answer 2

If you actually have the ability to THINK in that language,as opposed to first thinking in your native tongue,and then translating,then you are fluent.
Also,if you are in a foreign land,and they do not laugh every time you open your mouth,you are fluent:)
I'd like to add that,in my opinion,yes...you can still be fluent and need to look up words like,as you gave examples,parts of the car,etc.Everyday speech is what is most important.My native language is English,and there are parts of a vehicle that I cannot necessarily identify...in any language!(LOL)

Answer 3

Fluent to me means that you should be able to use the language at the same speed as your first (subconciously) and of course that you can talk about any non-technical subject without a problem.

Answer 4

if you can comfortably live where they speak language X without any English than yes you are fluent

Answer 5

in my opinion .. its when you are able to ask questions in that language, about the language.. and understand.

Answer 6

When people fart, they don't normally go around telling everyone about it. oh wait, I thought you said flatulent.