How many languages do you speak fluently ?

[Electric_Andy]

Only English. I could speal conversational German whilst travelling in Australia, but as soon as I came back there was no-one to practice with so I've forgotten most of it

 

[Dogtrousers]

What does fluent really mean? Literally it's "flowing". But I think with languages just to be flowing is not enough. You also have to make sense, unfortunately.

Many years ago I had a really good command of French and could speak flowingly without (many) stumbles or pauses. So was I fluent? If course not. There was a lot of approximation and guesswork around my grammar, and my vocabulary was so poor that I'd have to invent long descriptive circumlocutions for words I didn't know. It was effective, but probably weird and occasionally humourous for the unfortunate listener.

These days it has all faded away and I struggle much more. The last time I had to use it other than with hotel or restaurant staff was picking up and dropping off a hire bike and talking to the people at the bike place. Saying things like "do you have a tool to remove the pedals, it is long and of 15mm." No idea what "spanner" is. The girl just ushered me to the workshop where I found a pedal spanner. Thank god the pedals didn't have Allen sockets

 

[Gwylan]

Being from the north west my accent is very flat in the vowel, and seems to have a similar general sound to the accent in certain parts of West Flanders.

My dad and I were once in a restaurant in Mons (Wallonia), talking to each other as we normally would in our local dialect. The young waiter must have heard us and thought he would do us a favour by bringing us menus in our own language.

He came over and presented us with Dutch menus, saying "Vlaams?" He was mortified to find out we were English.

If it had been a few years later I'd just have taken them to save his blushes, but at the time I didn't speak any Dutch at all.

Oh, the linguistic minefield of Belgium.
Everybody looks for non verbal clues on the likely language of the person you have met.
Or go to the language of the area you are in.
The Vlaams have much better French, so are comfortable. The Waloons are not generally so gifted.

Default is to launch into "English" and play a linguistic game of chess. I'd get invited to meetings so both sides could pretend they were using English as a courtesy to me.

 

[scragend]

Oh, the linguistic minefield of Belgium.
Everybody looks for non verbal clues on the likely language of the person you have met.
Or go to the language of the area you are in.
The Vlaams have much better French, so are comfortable. The Waloons are not generally so gifted.

Default is to launch into "English" and play a linguistic game of chess. I'd get invited to meetings so both sides could pretend they were using English as a courtesy to me.

Indeed. As an interested observer I find it fascinating.

There was a reported incident on a train recently where the inspector entered a carriage and greeted the passengers with "Goeiemorgen, bonjour". The trouble was, the train had just left the Brussels area and was now in the Flemish Region. A passenger made a formal complaint about his use of French.

Under the language rules he was supposed to use either Dutch only, or if he wanted to use French he should have used all three of Dutch, French and German.

It's brilliantly bonkers how the Belgians tie themselves in knots with their language politics.

 

[Electric_Andy]

What does fluent really mean? Literally it's "flowing". But I think with languages just to be flowing is not enough.

Technically no-one is 100% fluent in the sense we like to believe. I've had to explain what some English words mean to native English speakers. I would say "flowing" is a good way to judge it. My German teacher strived to perfect his word choice and accent but even he conceded that after 40 years of speaking it, he still had a bit to learn.

I think if you can hold a general conversation and could probably work in an office using your other language, you can probably call yourself fluent

 

[bluenotebob]

Fluency in a language ? @Dogtrousers ... that's probably worth a thread on its own (more interesting than pot noodles, anyway). I reckon it means communicating to someone else in a way that they can understand without having to stop every few seconds to think of the right word (or worse, having to look a word up in a dictionary).

I have a Portuguese friend here whose French is so awful/impenetrable that we’ve found that talking to each other in (rough) Italian is much easier and understandable. That’s also the way that I talk to English friends here (those that speak French every day) – we slip between English and French (often in the same sentence) – but as long as it’s “fluent” and understandable, who cares?

My mother tongue is English but I rarely speak it. Everyday conversations here are in French but I avoid the ‘il faut’ construct as much as possible and I ignore the subjunctive.

I had a good handle on Slovenian (having lived there for a few years). I had a very good teacher and I still remember a lot of the grammatical rules but the vocabulary has largely slipped away. I was good at German but that’s mostly gone now and I can still speak a crude version of Italian.

I used to be able to speak Cat – but she died about 10 years ago. I do recall that saying the word “Fissssshhhh” could provoke an extraordinary response.

 

[cookiemonster]

Two.

French and Finnish.

Still learning Chinese.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Two.

French and Finnish.

Still learning Chinese.

Hullu kielta *

Did you learn Finnish or is it from childhood?

My proudest linguistic achievement was successfully having an argument with a taxi driver about the fare all in Finnish. I lost the argument and paid up but it was worth it.

* Translation for forum rules compliance: that means "crazy language". At least I hope it does.

 

[cookiemonster]

Hullu kielta *

Did you learn Finnish or is it from childhood?

My proudest linguistic achievement was successfully having an argument with a taxi driver about the fare all in Finnish. I lost the argument and paid up but it was worth it.

* Translation for forum rules compliance: that means "crazy language". At least I hope it does.

I learnt as i lived in Finland for 3 years and I’ve Finnish friends who I knew for several years before then.

 

[All uphill]

Interesting thinking about fluency.

At some point culture becomes important in having a fluent exchange of ideas. I have a good grasp of Dutch vocabulary and grammar and can keep up with discussions and conversations but I still think and behave like the English person I am. That results in occasional social car-crashes when I don't observe the social niceties and conventions.

Does that mean I'm fluent? I don't know.

 

[Dogtrousers]

My sister has a story if being in China and conversing with a work colleague in the language of chemistry.

Neither could speak the other's language, but the matter in hand could be expressed in chemical equations.

I had a similar experience in Germany in the 90s with unusual situation of a guy who didn't speak English. We stood at a flipchart drawing diagrams and communicating in acronyms and protocol names.

 

[Reynard]

Oh, the linguistic minefield of Belgium.
Everybody looks for non verbal clues on the likely language of the person you have met.
Or go to the language of the area you are in.
The Vlaams have much better French, so are comfortable. The Waloons are not generally so gifted.

Default is to launch into "English" and play a linguistic game of chess. I'd get invited to meetings so both sides could pretend they were using English as a courtesy to me.

Well, the female parental unit hails from Ghent, but moved to just outside Oostende as a young girl. She speaks both dialects - the Ghent dialect being flatter and more drawn-out than the harsher one from Oostende. She chunters away to herself in the former, but I'm far more au fait with the latter. Of course, then you've got the "proper" version of Flemish too, which largely you use when you know someone is a native speaker, but that you don't know exactly where in Vlaandren they're from.

However, as most middle-class Belgians did back in the day, the language she spoke at home was French and her family took a French-language newspaper (Le Soir), although they spoke Belgian version thereof (which did work against me somewhat at school when doing French, as some of the words and pronunciations are quite, quite different).

And that's why my first language is French too, rather than Flemish. For the latter, the similarity to German definitely lets me get by if I need to, but then most people tend to speak pretty good English as well.

 

[Drago]

Two.

French and Finnish.

Still learning Chinese.

I went out with a Finnish lass, an au pair.

She went back to Finland and there was never any serious prospect of me following her so it sadly ended.

Now she's free of me she's a cabinet minister.

 

[nagden]

Mother tongue English. We have lived in France for just over twenty years. I would say that we were more than competent but not fully fluent. We moved when we were approaching fifty and as they say the older you are the harder memory retention is. Still it’s been a great experience and we would never move back.

 

[Andy in Germany]

English native and German. I'm actually quite bad at languages and learnt most of my German here. I'm generally considered fluent, but my lack of talent shows in my grammar and word order. Strangely, given that I pick up local accents in the UK within a day, I have a very strong 'foreign' accent when speaking German which I can't shake, so I get asked where I'm from two to three times a day.

I also use a lot of the local dialect without realising, so maybe Swabian is my third language. Ironically today was the first time I deliberately used Swabian in a conversation.

If I forget a word it often blanks in both languages, but increasingly I realise I can explain my job better when speaking German than English.

Coming back to the UK is a strange experience; as of a couple of years ago I spent most of my life in Germany, so I tend to get culture shock. I miss some things but have no regrets about moving here.