One test of fluency would be to have the person watch a modern film in the language of interest and ask them to transcribe the dialogue into text and also describe in own words (in language of interest) what is going on in the movie.

You can then put that person on a scale from 0 to 100 by comparing the score by a random sample of "known" native speakers.

This test is nice because it probes many aspects of language: listening, speaking, and writing (but not reading), which can vary greatly between people.

If you're interested in probing reading, then I suggest asking the person to explain meanings of songs or poems.

I don't know about other languages, but the French government actually does have tests of French fluency (DELF/DALF exam), which test you in a range of ways (oral comprehension - usually a radio emission, written comprehension - usually a news article, writing on a choice of subjects and speaking - presenting a view on a subject and then debating), at a variety of levels. I took one of these tests (I'm fluent, yay!), and it certainly was testing. But it seemed fair and appropriate, also seemed to correlate with my experiences speaking to French people in France.

Movies are, in my humble opinion, not the best "standard" yard stick to measure fluency. First thing is that films most often use quite limited vocabulary, and it's wildly different vocabulary than, say, found in newspapers, technical writing or in business language. Moreover films present a wide variety of communication styles. It's much easier to understand James Bond than South Park, because humour is actually quite high and demanding register of speech.

It really depends on the film though. There are family dramas I can understand 100% but I watch a movie with lawyers or science or high level government or military meetings and I'm lost.

Interesting. When watching movies in English as a native Spanish speaker it's the other way around, at least for me. It's much easier to understand a movie with plenty of scientists, intellectuals or government officials than one with average people, as those tend to use slang, colloquial expressions and Americanisms that they don't teach you in courses. In fact teenage flicks are probably the hardest genre to understand...

There's that too. And that's more evidence I'm not fluent. In English if someone uses new slang on me I understand it almost immediately from context. In my 2nd language I'm lost

I also have a problem with the word "fluent". Ok you say you're fluent, here's a simple self-check: Explain to someone in the language you claim to be fluent in how you'd go about making a fire without any matches. (hint: you need to use words like tinder, kindling, flint, etc.). If you can't do this, or grapple with the fact that you don't have a repertoire of these words in your vocabulary, you might want to reconsider your definition of "fluent".

> Explain to someone in the language you claim to be fluent in how you'd go about making a fire without any matches. (hint: you need to use words like tinder, kindling, flint, etc.)

I wouldn't be able to do this in my own native language (aside from "stone" and "stick", I'm clueless about the tools involved), let alone in a foreign one. I think this is way too specific to be a good test for fluency.

The problem is not (quite) with the concept of "fluency", it's that we we confuse it with being good at a language.

Given your situation, I would just launch into a German explanation complete with the bit where I say I don't know the real German words. Then I will muck about with hand gestures and phrases like "smaller bits of would" etc until they get it.

I would do all of this while screwing up my declensions and conjugations. And I would do most of the screwing up fluently. Less fluently if I notice the error.

There are different fluencies, all context dependent. A woodsman who knows all about kindling and flint would be bemused in an office environment where KPIs and stakeholder deliverables are core terms. In a programming environment they'd be utterly lost regarding the detail, even if they grasp basics like who's in charge. Or a chemistry lab, a surgical theatre, etc.

This is why there are courses in "business" versions of languages, for example.

So someone can be functionally fluent in the contexts they typically encounter, while being non-fluent outside them. I doubt any native speaker can be fully fluent in all possible contexts.

Problem is that I'm not sure I'd be able to convey that message to someone even in my native language (it's a Romance one). I'd probably use two archaisms for "smaller pieces of wood" (probably the "tinder" and "flint" words you mention) and then I'd use "small rock" and "rub the thing between your hands until you get tired of it and then use a lighter".

There's lots of words in my native language of which I know the meaning of, technically, but practically speaking they might as well be Greek to me.

There are all of these types of flowers, trees, countryside-related mechanical terms (my peasant brother knows the names of all the pieces of which his wooden-made carriage is made of, I have no such knowledge) which might as well be from a foreign language to me. They sound right but I don't know exactly what they represent.

I'd say that you can call yourself fluent in a language once you can express feelings like anger, love, nostalgia etc. and can understand and make jokes in said language.

To be fair, there's a lot of native English speakers who can't explain how to make a fire with any matches, and wouldn't know what tinder and kindling are.

That is a reasonably specific domain of knowledge.

The thing with fluency isn't that you know all of the language or can explain everything. A person can be considered fluent and not be able to explain that sentence - mostly because that is pretty far outside a situation most folks find themselves in. Heck, in English I'd not use words like tinder and kindling. You might not know obscure words for some things, and you get to words you don't know.

Fluency means that most of the time you understand the conversations around you, about a wide range of topics. You can understand not only the local dialect, but others as well, and communicate effectively. You understand slang. When you don't understand, it is usually just a subject that is new to you or the usage is wrong.

Think about what age people understand children to be fluent in a language. Most folks by 14 or 15 (in English) have enough vocabulary to get by without learning more the rest of their life, but won't know specialty terms such as the one in your firestarting example.

I've not personally reached fluency in my second language, I just can see the goal. My spouse is fluent in English, though, and has a wider English vocabulary than I do. Lots of work on his behalf and years more practice and an interest in archaic terms. He still gets stumped, forgets a word here or there, has an accent, and all that, however, and likely reached complete fluency some time back.

Is tinder a real word? I thought it was just a made up word for an app? I can't be expected to explain such words in another language when I can't explain them in my native language. But I think if you said spark instead that would be more reasonable such you need to rub two pieces of wood together and create a spark and then a fire starts.

Yes tinder is a real word. It's material used to kindle a fire.

Silicon valley has ruined all these words.

Then again, most people don't have to start fires.

Well the way I learned it, you kindle fires by igniting the kindling. The kindling then ignites tinder (an intermediate stage), which then ignites the real fuel.

But I also often hear the two-step usage where tinder is includes kindling.

To me it's just the opposite. It's why the concept of a tinderbox makes sense (it contains grass or paper or something else easily ignited by a spark or small fire).

Kindling is actually a verb, as in, the act of 'kindling' a fire, even though it's also used to describe the material used to kindle a fire. Tinder is just the material.

There are two definitions, the verb and the noun.

Now there are. -ing words typically started as verbs. Eating, sleeping, etc...

This is why English is a clusterfuck, and makes no sense compared to most languages. Imagine if we called food 'eatings', that'd be weird, eh?

We can complain about English in all sorts of ways, but the fact that gerunds are distinct from infinitives is not exactly a problem.

http://www.englishpage.com/gerunds/part_1.htm

Perhaps you are complaining that gerunds (which are already nouns) can grow extra meanings over time. But all languages do this kind of stuff.

German has exactly the "problem" you are talking about, only worse. Depending on capitalisation, "Essen/essen" can be the noun "food" or the the verb "to eat", But when used as verb, it is usally used in the sense of the English gerund "eating".

The icon for Tinder is literally a flame :)

> hint: you need to use words like tinder, kindling, flint, etc.)

My language doesn't have a word for "kindling". If you want to translate it, you would use something like "material used to start the fire". So, by you reasoning, for someone from my country to be fluent in English, they also have to know that concept of "kindling" exists and has a name?

Thinking about it, I can't say I disagree. You have to know about the way people reason about stuff, not just words to name them.

While I know the word kindling in English (which is a second language for me), I don't even know it in my native language... So, I don't think that's a good test.

I'd say that someone is fluent when he starts thinking in the language and is able to have everyday conversations with other people at normal speed without the native interlocutors feeling that they need to simplify their speech.

That's... a terrible test.

I am native speaker/reader/writer fluent in my 2nd language, and I don't know the word for kindling. I am reasonably certain there is one, but would have to look it up, and so would any other native speaker that wasn't a linguist.

In fact, if I did happen to know the word and used it, no native speaker would understand me without an explanation.

The way I (and practically any other native speaker) would describe that portion of the task would be to say something like "use a small amount of paper, twigs, sawdust, dry leaves, or any other easily ignited material as a starter".

I used to get very frustrated at all the English words that didn't have direct equivalents, such that I found the 2nd language rather limiting in it's expressiveness.

In fact, I am pretty sure that the way most native speakers would approach the 'explain how to make fire' task would to say "here, let me show you how to do it."

Example: there exist equivalents to the words shiny, glittery, sparkly and most other common variations on the concept (some translate to the same word), but if you want to express 'pearlescent', the best you could do is 'lustrous like a pearl'.

Worse yet, often if I did find an obscure equivalent word and used it no one else would recognize it, and even if they figure it out from context they would still think I was weird or trying to score points with my vocabulary.

Further, in the 20 years since I actually lived there, using English loan words has become rampant, so much so that by not using them my speech comes across as rather affected, stuffy, and snobbish (eg. the word for upgrade (noun or verb) is for all intents and purposes 'upgrade', even though a perfectly understandable equivalent does actually exist).

I mostly agree with you. I might not know every English word but I won't consider myself fluent until I can understand and use my second language at the same level as my first.

In other words I should be able to easily explain anything I can explain in my 1st language whether it's how to drive, how to change a tire, what the parts of a bicycle are (wheels, spokes, chain, gears, handlebars, tire, kick stand, peddles, brakes, )etc. Any native 8 yr old can name all those things.

Similarly describing a car. The stick shift, clutch, odometer, glove compartment, engine, seat belts, arm rest, windshield, wheel well, windshield wipers, reat view mirror, antenna, etc.

Any native speaker will know all those words. I'm still at the "explain with smaller words" phase like "antenna" would be "metal stick that receives radio waves".

I'm not fluent.

Well, yeah that's why I have trouble with it. At least in Mandarin Chinese, which I have experience with, I've seen people describing themselves as 'fluent' when in reality they are either (a) lying or (b) meaning that they can speak conversationally.

My real world rule of thumb is that if I wrote "Fluent in Mandarin" on my CV, but then in the interview I couldn't read or write decent responses to emails or something like that, then most people wouldn't consider that as fluent (despite the dictionary definition).

You don't need to use direct translations of those words to express their purpose in the process. After all, if you're explaining what tinder, kindling, and flint are you wouldn't use those words in their definitions.