"Fluent" is a strange term: it basically means "flowing", like verbal diarrhoea, perhaps. Does verbal diarrhoea need to be understandable? Does the one who spou

"Fluent" is a strange term: it basically means "flowing", like verbal diarrhoea, perhaps. Does verbal diarrhoea need to be understandable? Does the one who spouts it need to understand anything anyone else says? I'm not just being pedantic: it really is important to define exactly what you're interested in. I've met lots of people who speak English in a strange, foreign way, and quite slowly, but who are easier to understand than 99% of native speakers. And there are also lots of ways you can parameterise how well someone understands a language: you might find someone who has a good understanding of sociology jargon spoken by a US academic but couldn't understand someone from Northern England who wants to know what time it is.