this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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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
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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.

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[โ€“] CaspianXI@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

"Bilingual" is really hard to define.

I live in Taiwan (English is my native language), and have studied Chinese to be passably fluent. I can trick people into thinking I can follow advanced conversations, interjecting comments here or there (even though I'm mostly lost -- just picking out the tidbits I do understand and commenting on them).

But am I bilingual? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. What matters the most is whether your level is "good enough" to do what you want! In my case, I just want to be able to go to the store, buy things, and hang out with friends. I can read the newspaper, but I'll never be able to read/write business contracts -- but that's not a goal of mine.

There are so many different shades of bilingual. Don't worry about it... and just be as good as you need to reach your goals!