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A comment on The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages. Parent comment

Re:The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages by wallflower on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:30PM (#17878723)
I think fluency is a bastardized term, kind of like what Facebook did to "friends". I don't like the term either. I like "proficient" better.

When someone asks me "Are you fluent in Spanish?", I take that almost always as an indication that they have no idea what it takes to learn a language and try my best to educate them about what it really takes (The 1500 words frequency-based vocabulary, for example).

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Re:The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages by emodendroket on Thursday August 30, 2018 @02:11PM (#17879148)
Proficiency is properly a lower standard than fluency though
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Re:The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages by wallflower on Thursday August 30, 2018 @04:40PM (#17880536)
I'll be more than happy with "proficiency" with Spanish in conversation in a pretty loud bar with a bunch of people who I may have never met before :)
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