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Fluency in another language is typically understood to mean all aspects of the language ... reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You're not fully (bi|tri
by arbitrage 11y ago
Fluency in another language is typically understood to mean all aspects of the language ... reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You're not fully (bi|tri|quad)lingual without being able to do some part of those skills in another language.
That being said, you don't need to be the worlds best writer or speaker. You just need to have those skills.
- barkingcat 11y agoCertain languages are more difficult to master in the 4 quadrants that you refer to (read / write / speak / listen) - sometimes languages are much much more difficult to write than to read - it's important to keep those distinctions in mind when speaking about fluency in other languages because not all languages are like English / Roman / have an alphabet, and it's not fair to say someone is not "fluent" if they can't recall instantaneously how to write the thousands of characters that even a native-speaking child would be able to recall. I'd say someone is fluent if they can perform and understand communications via the various aspects of language, but I don't think you need to be able to express each one. (For example, being able to type Chinese on the computer via ping yin and fast computerized lookup is an expression of fluency, even though the person might not know how the stroke directions of the character would work if they had to write on paper unassisted)