Apprehensive-Fix1202 t1_j4ikmdp wrote on January 15, 2023 at 11:44 PM

Conveniently I commented on a YT Video about it today since people wanted to educate a deaf person about their language:

I find there are even few people who can speak their own mother tongue fluently. I am bilingual (english) growing up with the german school system and the internet. However, I often come across a word in both languages that has been lost in the modern world and I therefore didn't know it. I hardly know people who don't have an accent reminiscent of their mother tongue while trying to communicate in another one. Fluent means 100%. You usually only need one language to communicate with those close to you; with whom you speak on a daily basis. However, there are always exceptions as you could see in someones example. (Someone said their mom was fluent since the love of her life was deaf and that's how they communicate therefore she's fluent/"knows" it.)

Even teachers/professors who teach language every day openly admit that they do not know everything about the topic and that their not necessarily 'fluent' in any of them/ ''know'' them. As a native speaker, one simply perceives the language differently. But even as a native speaker, you don't know everything. A lot of our language got lost in history. We're losing some of the fundamentals.

Sorry for the ''rant'' - I'm stoned af and a sensitive being, but I can clearly see that I'm not alone.

To know a language starts with learning it, but I don't think humans can reach the full wisdom, no matter what they want to master. But that's the amazing thing about learning - it never stops and it never gets boring if you're fascinated by it.

thewimsey t1_j4j0bk4 wrote on January 16, 2023 at 1:32 AM

>I find there are even few people who can speak their own mother tongue fluently

Then you don't know what "fluently" means.

SparklesMcSpeedstar t1_j4kfsl2 wrote on January 16, 2023 at 9:38 AM

Depends on your definition of fluent. My mother tongue, Indonesian, is not spoken fluently by most Indonesians because most would rather speak in their own regional dialect e.g Javanese Sundanese etc. and pepper their speech with it. Sure most people understand it but few can write or speak it at a grammatically accurate level, even fewer at an academic level

IAmTriscuit t1_j4kepx2 wrote on January 16, 2023 at 9:23 AM

If most people aren't meeting the criteria for "fluency" under the definition you have given to it, what use is that terminology? Surely it would be more logical to adjust your criteria for "fluency" than to have it be a mostly useless term.

That's why in sociolinguisutics fluency has much more to do with whether or not all of your needs are able to be met and accomplished with the linguistic repertoire you possess. It actually is able to function as a useful term through that lens.

Apprehensive-Fix1202 t1_j4lc7y1 wrote on January 16, 2023 at 3:12 PM

You have a good point.

This is also not my personal definition of ''fluency'', but as I have understood it from society and native speakers of different languages. Perhaps my comment was not 100% appropriate to the thread. I just noticed over the years: I could say I'm fluent in english though a native speaker could say they do not agree with that statement. I was commenting under a video in which a deaf person was talking about how people with hearing cannot speak sign language fluently because it is not the language in which they need to communicate their needs 24/7. If that's their definition of ''fluency'' - I get it. And if that's your definition of ''fluency'' - I get it. You seem to have more knowledge of the term so thank you for clearing that up for me.