How do you know when you're fluent in a language? I was having this conversation with a friend of mine today and we concluded that it would be cool if there was some kind of 'bilingual test', such as,

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Sasha

How do you know when you're fluent in a language? I was having this conversation with a friend of mine today and we concluded that it would be cool if there was some kind of 'bilingual test', such as, calling a person from that nationality on the phone & pretending to be raising money for charity, or, being able to rap in that language... or my favourite, was posing as a 'telephone psychic', because it uses a lot of the things people usually learn in languages, such as ages of family members, etc... any thoughts?

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الإجابات · 21

I think it's when you stop doing that 'mental translation thing' before every sentence. So even if you are not always accurate (and even native speakers occasionally make mistakes in their own language) you are fluent. Even better is when you know a langauge so well, that there are some things that you can only express elegantly in that language, better than your native tongue. Ah, if only....... :-)

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When you understand jokes based on language, you surely meet (or hit?) a milestone, as the joke usually is based on the mixing of two completely different contexts, so the context itself is not there helping you, as usually happens, and will mislead you if you are not clever enough.

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Do you dream in the other language?

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When you can speak fluently! ;)

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The answer is literature. For me, that will be when I can read Haruki Murakami in Japanese, Dante in Italian, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Spanish, and for you who's learning German, Herman Hesse in its original language. Which makes me kind of sad... Because although I claim I'm fluent in Chinese, there's no way in hell I could ever finish reading Dream of the Red Chamber in Mandarin....

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