Is it when people can no longer peg you as an immigrant, foreigner, or some other type of outsider when speaking in their language? When the last remnants of the accent that marks you as “other” is finally gone? Even though most people will always retain some degree of their native accent, no matter how long they speak a language, and even though some will always be “othered” by their accent (even though it’s one native to their language). My mother, for example, has lived in the US for about 24 years and is certainly, most would say, fluent, and yet, people still ask her where her accent from.
Or is it when you stop making grammatical and pronunciation mistakes when reading, writing, or speaking a language? Even though I have never met a native English speaker in my life who hasn’t, from time to time, made these same mistakes. Is there some sort of algorithm, quota, quiz, test, metric or measurement by which we can truly determine what is the greatest quantity of these grammatical or phonological or semantic mistakes one can make and still be considered fluent? Many a native English speaker has bombed their SATs in writing or reading, some can barely read above a middle school level, and though less common (but shockingly more than you would think), many native English speakers in America can barely even be qualified as literate. Are they not fluent in English, even though they may speak it every day in every arena of their lives?
Is it when you no longer have issues communicating with others, even though so many English speakers I have met have frequent difficulty communicating their thoughts, ideas, problems, dilemmas, emotions. Many I have met and worked with are challenged by the task of presenting a coherent argument or telling a cohesive story or writing out a logical sequence of events. The inability to find quite the right word that perfectly describes an idea or concept or experience is not a uniquely “non-native” experience. It is a struggle that I would assume with some certainty, has been felt by, at one time or another, every human on earth.
Is it about the smoothness of diction, the perceived ease of speech, how fluidly you can link one word to another? Even though so many of us (yeah, you know you do it too) pepper our everyday language, more often than not, with inhales, awkward pauses, “um”s, “so”s, “like”s, “anyway”s, and other “filler words” that really don’t need to be there. We might be better off without these habits, or at least, without them, we might also be perceived as more well-spoken, eloquent, even intelligent by others. But most of us, at least in casual conversation, do it anyway, either out of sheer habit that we can’t break, or even because it feels more natural to do it than not at all.
I say these things not to poke fun at or criticize my own people, nor to begin a rant about the failings of the American educational system (though I easily could do so, but that’s another blog for another time) but simply to point out that perhaps, sometimes, we set higher standards and expectations for those we perceive as outsiders than those we perceive as our own, natives, insiders.
So what is fluency? When do I know that I’m fluent? This is a question I’ve long been trying to answer (I even wrote one of my capstone research papers for university on the concept of bilingualism/multilingualism) and one that is of personal relevance to me.
As a child, I grew up speaking — though in phases and sometimes more than others — two languages, English and my mom’s native language, Swiss-German. In fact, some of my first words were in Swiss-German, but around 9 or so I stopped speaking it on a regular basis and although I can still understand (and speak) far more than someone new to the language, I don’t know if I feel exactly “fluent” in the language, and the decision of whether or not to call myself bilingual has long been a challenging one for me.
Even though that research paper was technically about bilingualism/multilingualism, and how/whether or not people self-identify as fluent in multiple languages (and why or why not), the real issue I was trying to address, I think now, is how we define fluency in another language.
As I’ve already pointed out, I think it’s a complicated question, with likely a complicated answer. But, for the moment, I’d like to make my own, perhaps linguistically or scientifically incorrect, but certainly interesting, argument.
I think true fluency is when you can, spontaneously, make a joke in another language, and most importantly, your audience laughs. I can already hear the counter-arguments of others asking how it could be logical to require this of someone to be considered fluent. After all, there are plenty of people who are well-versed and well-spoken in a language, maybe even their native one, but lack the necessary social skills, creativity, and a sense of humor to make their peers laugh at a joke they themselves crafted.
And it’s true. There’s a reason not all of us are comics, after all. So maybe it’s a problematic approach, just the same way in which all of the other ways we attempt to define, measure, and determine fluency are inherently flawed in some way or another. But for myself, and at least for some number of other people in the world, I would still argue this is a useful metric.
To be clear, I don’t want to suggest that I’ve never, almost half-accidentally, been able to make someone chuckle with an appropriate and well-timed facial expression or quick, semi-witty comment — on occasion. But to tell a funny story, or a more complex or layered joke, beyond just a short phrase or two that just happened to land right, that’s another thing, and one I have not yet mastered.
Because not only does successful joke-telling demonstrate an understanding of language and broader ideas of how communication takes place in that language, it also demonstrates an understanding of the social norms, politics, and culture of the people you’re engaging with. Which, I would argue, is ultimately just as important as all the dotting of the i’s and crossing the t’s we usually spend far more energy thinking about and criticizing in others.
And, if you also find the joke funny, if you revel in the brilliance of your creation, which hopefully you do, this also suggests an understanding of not only the ability to translate words and ideas but also a translation of personality.
Many people report that they feel a change in the language they are speaking often also alters their personality. Which makes sense, because you simply cannot always express yourself the same way in one language as in another, whether due to a difference in available vocabulary (some words or phrases are just simply, “lost in translation”), cultural norms that accompany the language, as well as the fact that language really does have the power to influence your outlook on life. So maybe this is a tall order, to translate personality because it goes so far beyond just the translation of words and phrases (which, in and of itself, is a difficult task). But, I would argue, there are certainly some people in the world who do have the capacity to converse and connect with others as what they feel to be their best, most authentic selves.
And it is precisely that which I feel I am most missing in my own experience with speaking a second language. It’s not so much the fact that I often still need to Google the translation of various words (which I have perhaps forgotten or just never known) or the fact that I still sprinkle into my speech English words and phrases that I feel I cannot properly explain otherwise — more often than not, it is not these things that, I’ve realized, are ultimately what stop me from feeling, or labeling myself to others, as fluent. It is that ability to connect with others in a way that feels natural or organic that I feel sorely missing in.
Because, after all, it’s one thing to be able to order a coffee at a cafe, or ask someone to pass the salt at dinner, or even to read an instruction manual in another language, and to really connect with them as a human being — to communicate emotion, identity, and often, humor to another person accurately and as intended. These former are convenient, practical, valuable skills — but ultimately, they alone won’t help you to make new friends or turn you into the life of the party.
I am not, to be clear, an extra-ordinarily charismatic person, even in my best language, English. Making new friends or telling jokes are neither things I would list as some of my greatest strengths. But they are nonetheless skills that, as I think many others who have had similar experiences would agree, you never realize how badly you need and how woefully lacking in them you are until you have to switch over to a language you are less competent in. A social butterfly I am not (more like an introverted caterpillar, haha), in any part of the world, but I am even more painfully aware of this fact when I am at a disadvantage to others around me, language-wise.
And it was this week, a little over a month into my time here, that I realized this is perhaps what I am most homesick for (if an absence of a certain language in your life alone can also manifest the feeling of a type of displacement or isolation). The way I would joke around or use playful language, often generated by a shared cultural knowledge or understanding, with my friends at home, or even to add on to this, my ability to have the more serious conversations of love and life and other meaningful topics (conversations which are so special and sacred to me), the interactions that really bind humans to one another, I simply cannot not have with others here in my second language. I cannot fully express myself to others in this way, and I miss it dearly.
It does not help, perhaps, that I am also a writer, an English major, and words are, if you’ll excuse my boldness, kind of my shit. Listen, I’m not claiming to be freaking Shakespeare, or even one of the great wordsmiths of my own time. But it is nevertheless true that language, at least the English language, is what I specialize in; it is my passion, much of my life’s most meaningful work so far, and that, in the process, it has become a large part of my identity. To not only not be able to express myself eloquently in matters of politics or philosophy, but also of emotion and humor, feels a little like suddenly asking a jockey to run a race without his horse. To come from a world where I usually see myself as somewhat well-spoken to suddenly feeling like the dumbest sounding person at the table, that is an inevitable shock to the system, but one I’ll have to learn how to live with. At least for a little while, I’ll have to learn how to ride, or run, or at least walk, without my horse. Because such are the things we must endure if ultimately, we want to even dream of becoming “fluent.”
So, I ask again (for rhetorical purposes), what really is being “fluent”? Outside of incredibly flawed testing practices, how do I know when I’ve got to that beautifully imagined but often a quite elusive benchmark of “fluency”? When I am allowed to say or even feel or think that I’m fluent?
As you might be able to tell, my ideas on what the answer could entail have shifted and evolved even just in the process of writing this piece, and I probably haven’t made a solid argument for one specific approach (shh, don’t tell my college professors, I noticed it too). It could be the ability to tell a good joke, or it could actually be the communication of personality and emotional connection that often comes with such things. The real answer, perhaps, is that fluency must be, and can only truly be, self-defined and self-determined by the speaker/learner themselves, as I have defined it for myself. Maybe true fluency means only that you can use a language, self-assuredly, in the ways and means in which you desire to use it. Maybe it is only when, all other metrics and perspectives be damned, you personally as an individual, feel confident in saying you are truly fluent, that is when you have arrived. For me, I’m not there yet, but I someday hope to be.
Eine Amerikanerin in der Schweiz 