this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
38 points (97.5% liked)

Asklemmy

43371 readers
1958 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Cloak@lemmy.ml
mekhos@lemmy.ml
tmpod@lemmy.pt
14specks@lemmy.ml
38
How fluent do you think one have to be to be considered "bilingual"? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by balance_sheet@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Do you think that the person must be

  1. born in a bilingual country / completely indifferent to native, educated speakers of the language
  2. able to write, speak and hear with little to no grammatical errors in almost any situations / able to take college level classes without language barrier.
  3. able to conduct any casual conversations with little to no grammatical errors

or worse?

English is not my first language but I'm quite confident myself. And I'm always torn between saying that I'm bilingual or just fluent.

A lot of the times, I think in English and sometimes even dream in English but I also have never spent a single day in an English speaking country in my life. It's weird to know that I'm not a bilingual per se but to think like one. Just wanted to know if anyone had similar experience.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] meiti@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Fun observation: as a native, just like many natives, you have made a grammer mistake. "have known" and not "have know". Might be a typo though.

My fun theory is that grammer is just a form of heuristic made up by humans to simplify understanding languages.

I'm not a native.

[โ€“] Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

you have made a grammer mistake

I love a good case of Muphry's Law.

*grammar

[โ€“] Interesting_Test_814@jlai.lu 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Muphryโ€™s Law.

Was this one intentional ?

*Murphy's Law

[โ€“] meiti@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Haha good catch!

[โ€“] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I think there are even a few grammatical errors that native english speaking people are more likely to be doing that us folks who learned it as a second language.
When I see things like "should of", "would of", "for all intensive purposes" it's usually coming from a native speaker.
I think someone who learned speaking the language before first and writing it second is more likely to make these.
I assimilated "should", "have" and "of" before I really used contractions, so I never make that mistake.
It's even somewhat jarring to read.
should of... of what?

[โ€“] LrdThndr@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, dammit. Yeah, that was a typo :).