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To: kabumpo
How's your Bahasa? Hokkianese your game? Do you understand written Chinese?

Those are seriously important languages in the modern world and everyone of them is more widely used than French.

Speaking of French, do you read well in documents written in Gallo? There used to be a number of spoken versions of Gallo and all the kings of England spoke it ~

As I said most people learn one language well ~ but there are a large number who can learn to read just about any written language in relatively short order. With today's computer assistance my own reach has extended out to many dozens of languages ~ but that doesn't make me fluent in them.

BTW, fluency is usually determined by a TEST with STANDARDS OF PERFORMANCE ~ but being able to order a beer or declaim for hours in a second language regarding a technical field does not equate to fluency.

23 posted on 04/05/2013 1:50:17 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah

I wasn’t thinking about ordering beer - anyone can do that in any language in one minute - and I don’t work in a technical field, so your point is irrelevant. You are making the typical American mistake of confusing quantity with quality and treating language as some sort of training manual or implement.
Language is about being able to speak, communicate and express yourself to another, and being able to understand them. Fluency is when you can speak spontaneously and as you are speaking, forget what language you are using.


30 posted on 04/05/2013 4:07:38 AM PDT by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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