How fluent is 'fluent'?
If someone says they are fluent in a language, e.g. on their CV, what level of competence do you expect?
I used to assume it meant practically native levels of speech and writing, except with an accent/a bit stilted, so I would never say I had fluent German - I've learnt it formally for 9 years (A-level, then 4 years personal tuition 10 years later), can read novels, newspapers and scientific articles, but I know I make grammar mistakes and there are areas where I just don't know the vocabulary.
But I've started encountering people who have much lower standards for 'fluency', including some who take the dictionary literally and assume if they can produce a stream of words in a language, they are fluent, even if there's almost no grammar and the results make little sense to a native speaker.
What standard would you expect?
Edit: Thanks for all the responses! There's only one other post on this topic tagged as 'language fluency', and that was 18 months ago. Interesting points about different standards of fluency for native and non-native speakers.
For myself, I'm confident in dealing with any situation I landed in in Germany (leases, immigration), can debate medical and biological topics like foot-and-mouth disease policy, or part of my PhD viva which lapsed into German, and can attempt a typical crossword.
I can't debate at the delicate level required for EU negotiations, even though I'd understand what the nuances were. I also don't know regional names for various pastries and cakes, and don't know how to speak to small children or understand drunk people in pubs - being deaf means I'm not good on the latter two in English either!
So I think I'm OK putting 'fluent' on my CV, but I don't know about going to my local German-speakers' playgroup for toddlers...
I used to assume it meant practically native levels of speech and writing, except with an accent/a bit stilted, so I would never say I had fluent German - I've learnt it formally for 9 years (A-level, then 4 years personal tuition 10 years later), can read novels, newspapers and scientific articles, but I know I make grammar mistakes and there are areas where I just don't know the vocabulary.
But I've started encountering people who have much lower standards for 'fluency', including some who take the dictionary literally and assume if they can produce a stream of words in a language, they are fluent, even if there's almost no grammar and the results make little sense to a native speaker.
What standard would you expect?
Edit: Thanks for all the responses! There's only one other post on this topic tagged as 'language fluency', and that was 18 months ago. Interesting points about different standards of fluency for native and non-native speakers.
For myself, I'm confident in dealing with any situation I landed in in Germany (leases, immigration), can debate medical and biological topics like foot-and-mouth disease policy, or part of my PhD viva which lapsed into German, and can attempt a typical crossword.
I can't debate at the delicate level required for EU negotiations, even though I'd understand what the nuances were. I also don't know regional names for various pastries and cakes, and don't know how to speak to small children or understand drunk people in pubs - being deaf means I'm not good on the latter two in English either!
So I think I'm OK putting 'fluent' on my CV, but I don't know about going to my local German-speakers' playgroup for toddlers...