Are you fluent?
Shortly after graduating from college, I applied as a linguist with a government agency. I was flown to DC for language testing and interviews, but ended up not being accepted. During the application event, a group of applicants were discussing our language backgrounds and one person asked another, ‘are you fluent in Russian?’ and his answer was ‘that depends what you mean by ‘fluent’’. Which I took as a ‘no’. (File under ‘if you have to ask…’)
Sometimes people tell me that I am fluent in Russian - which is flattering, thank you, but I’m not. (Sometimes those people don’t even speak Russian, so I could be fluent in gibberish for all they know.) Other times I’ve heard people declare themselves fluent, when I disagree.
It seems the word fluent is somewhat subjective - to some people. To me, it’s pretty straightforward. In Russian, the word is свободно, which means ‘freely’. The English word comes from the Latin word for ‘flowing’. So wouldn’t it be obvious whether you speak (and understand) freely or in a flowing manner?
Thinking about this makes me wonder what will happen when I become fluent. (That’s my goal!) Will something happen to make me realize that I’m fluent? Will it correspond with a certain score on a proficiency test? Or will I just wake up one day and decide I’ve progressed enough and I will start calling myself fluent? Maybe I will succumb to the pressure and start calling myself fluent before I feel I’ve earned it and grow into it.
To those of you who consider yourself fluent in a language, do you happen to remember when you started referring to yourself this way? Let me know in the comments!






















