The 3 levels of language fluency
How fluent is "fluent"?
At the moment of writing, I have lived in 4 foreign countries in my life, but haven’t attempted to learn all the corresponding languages. On top of those, I have learnt, up to a certain level, the languages that were taught in school. All in all, I can speak 4 foreign languages. But can I actually speak them? And at what level?
Starting from the basics: why do we even bother learning languages? I would say that at the beginning, it is not really our choice. Our first attempt to learn another language, usually takes place in school, where languages are part of the curriculum.
Does that mean it is not worth it or that we should not be teaching foreign languages in schools? If I would have to pick a side, I would actually vote to spend even more hours teaching students foreign languages1. Still, for most students, it is a chore, just another thing they must study for and take tests.
Next encounter is probably in a movie or tv series, especially if you are growing up in a country that does not dub movies. Greece is luckily one of those countries, so it was not long before I would listen to my first words in English. That doesn’t mean that I was able to follow the movie just by listening, but at least my sense of hearing was slowly, but steadily, adjusting to the different sounds. Not only that, but I was now receiving that input voluntarily, in comparison to school where, learning a language was one more thing I had to do.
One could argue that listening to a language will happen first through songs, rather than movies. Maybe that is the case, but if you don’t know the language, it is difficult to pay attention to lyrics, so you often just treat them as noise. With movies on the other hand, you can associate the noise to the subtitles, and you end up actually picking up a word or two.
Ok, but why all this introduction?
See, living abroad, I ‘ve had many conversations2 both with fellow expats3 and locals, about the struggles of learning the local language. To help explain how fluent someone was in a given language, I came up with a 3-level system to rank one’s fluency. So I thought I ‘d write a post about this made-up scale of mine.
Before continuing to the rest of the post, I will shortly digress, just to squeeze in a brief parenthesis, an author’s -slightly frustrated- note if you prefer: if you come from any country, where the human jaw and tongue have evolved properly, then I guarantee that you will struggle to learn Danish. I am very sad to report that, after all this time and effort, I am still speaking Danish like a seven-year-old. So that’s that.
The survival proficiency
In my experience, there are 3 levels of foreign language proficiency. I call the first one, the survival proficiency. This is the lowest level and inevitably, the first one that anyone will reach. As the name suggests, at this level one can communicate well enough to survive: they can ask for directions, they can pay at the supermarket, introduce themselves, maybe even call their doctor and book an appointment. At this level, most people do not really pay attention to their accent and most likely will also mix a few English words in their effort to make a sentence. Probably a lot of hand gestures are also involved :P.
Bonus info for my Greek, Spanish and Italian friends: Everyone and I mean EVERYONE, who is a native English speaker can tell where you come from, based on your accent. So if you think you sound like a local… well, who am I to tell you otherwise?
The downside of being a holder of the survival proficiency is that you often feel trapped, frustrated that you cannot articulate your thoughts properly. When we feel that our ability to speak the language is limiting us from expressing our opinions, we might prefer staying silent, instead of risking embarrassment. No risk means no practice. And no practice, means no improvement.
The good news is that, to paraphrase Plato, necessity is the mother of evolution4, meaning that we tend to advance fast from this stage because we need to. The reason is that, if our (social) survival depends on speaking another language, we will pick it up much sooner than if we were attending the best classes, or watching a ton of movies.
In case you are curious, out of the 4 foreign languages I mentioned at the beginning, 1 is at this level and 1 below it. Four languages don’t sound that many suddenly, right?
The comedy certificate
I don’t have a name for the second level, but it is the level we can make jokes in a language. Now that I think about it, it is lame not to have a name only for this level, so let’s call it the comedy certificate. So why is joking difficult, and why do I consider it a learning milestone? To be able to joke, one needs first of all to have good vocabulary. Many jokes are wordplays. Others, require knowledge of the culture and local phrases5. For both of these types of jokes, you need to spend a good amount of time learning and practicing the language.
The second part that makes a good joke, is speed. Someone said something at work, you thought about it on your way home and while cooking you came up with a funny reply. Well, it is not that funny if you thought of it three hours later. So, not only you need to have the vocabulary to structure the joke properly, but you also need to do that fast.
Lastly, as stand-up comedians sometimes say, big part of a joke is the delivery. You need to deliver the joke with confidence and to do that, most likely you need to think in the same language, instead of coming up with the joke in your mother tongue and then translating it in your head6. Being able to think directly in the language, is a huge step towards becoming fluent and I would say it is almost a requirement, if you want to crack a joke or two. Hence, if you are able to make jokes, you probably have a rich vocabulary and you can think fast in the given language. Congrats, you just passed level two of my made-up, undistinguished, language certification.
At this point it is also important to note that, the learning distance between the three levels is not equal, i.e. the effort needed to go from zero to the first level, is not the same as the effort needed to go from the first to the second level and so on. I would say that the distance between the first and the second level is the longest.
The flirting proficiency
In the first level, worldwide known as the survival proficiency, you are able to communicate well enough to survive. In the second level, you can make jokes, which demonstrates that you are able to think and reply fast, while at the same time be witty. In the third and final level -according at least to my very prestigious ranking- you are able to flirt. Hence, I call this level, the flirting proficiency.
At this point I wanted to add a cute photo of a couple, laughing or holding hands, maybe in black and white. Instead, below is what you get if you filter for flirting in Substack’s photo gallery. So take a moment and feast your eyes7.
But why is flirting more difficult than anything else? If I have good vocabulary and I can think fast in another language, what is it that makes it extra difficult to flirt?
First of all, flirting happens one-to-one. That means that you are involved in 100% of the conversation and you need to understand all of it. You may be able to crack a joke in a group of friends, but there, you also have the option to stay silent. In a one-to-one situation, where you are flirting -or at least trying to- with a person, you cannot constantly keep silent. It is just you and them, eventually you need to speak! And if you are to be a decent conversational partner, even if you are not doing the majority of the talking, you need to ask relevant questions. And for that to happen, you need to be able to follow the conversation closely.
On top of that, flirting happens between the lines. That means that you are trying to convey your attraction8 to the other person, without necessarily saying it out loud. And if you want to be subtle about it, you need to be properly fluent in that language9. If wordplays are tricky to handle to make jokes, they become even trickier during flirting. And as if those two factors were not enough, guess what? You are not the only one who is trying to be subtle. So, not only you need to choose your words carefully, but you also need to capture all the nuances of the conversation. No one is going to come right out and say they like you, but they might send you subtle messages that you need first to notice and then to unpack. All in all, compared to the comedy certificate, you now need to overcome three additional hurdles: constant focus, sending and receiving subtle messages.
This post ended up being longer than intended, but now you have the full story of my made-up fluency ranking10.
Sincerely,
- The Naive Ignorant
In my opinion, being able to communicate in a different language, is a skill that can be beneficial both personally and professionally. Personally, because you can connect with so many more people and professionally, because being able to speak multiple languages is an asset in all industries. Not to mention that, I am convinced that there is an aspect of our IQ that is benefiting from learning languages.
The topic is more common that would expect.
I prefer the word immigrant, but expat seems to have prevailed, so I used it instead.
The original quote attributed to Plato translates to, “necessity is the mother of invention”.
The Dutch say “now comes the monkey out the sleeve”, but good luck making a joke with that in English! The phrase is used to show that the truth or the real identity of someone is suddenly revealed.
Maybe you have never noticed, but when you think, you are using words, i.e. you make sentences in your head. Practically, even if you are not doing it out loud, you are talking to yourself, you wacko.
No offense to the model, I am just surprised that this photo was tagged as “flirting”.
I ‘m assuming you are attracted to them because if not, why on earth are you flirting with them??
Exactly like I am in Danish. #not
Don’t have anything more to say, I just wanted to have a nice, round number of footnotes.
I agree, once you can joke in a foreign language, you're a local!!
Nice article! Worth reading! Also very helpful! Thanks for writing this article! No one has ever explained what each level means in terms of understanding what the difference is between each level spoken as you speak about it in terms of the difference of levels that someone can understand what the level means in language of being able to learn faster in terms of necessity in terms of language knowledge! And that makes it so logical!