Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonlitSunshine
Do you speak any other languages? When you speak more than one language fluently, it starts getting a bit weird upstairs. They way I think of it, there are a couple of phases of "fluency":
Beginner: You're past the basics of the language, but you still have to look up words every now and then. It's not true fluency by any stretch of the imagination, but you can follow conversations, given time to translate.
Effectively Fluent: You know the language like the back of your hand, you can follow the conversations, but your head still does the automatic translation back into your native language. However, it no longer slows you down because the transition is so automatic. You start having dreams in the other language around this point :P This is interestingly enough, the point at which I think one makes the best translator - you understand everything perfectly, but because you're still doing the automatic translation you can easily translate for someone else too.
True Fluency: This is where it gets hard to explain. In my experience (with Irish), there's no longer any transition, you simply... understand, in the same way that you understand English perfectly without someone having to explain it. It's like the difference between understanding a sentence because you know all the words that form it, and understanding the sentence...because you understand the sentence. It starts getting harder to translate for others at this point, because the inherent and subtle differences between languages start to mean more and more to you, It's no longer such a simple thing to switch between them.
Curiously enough, you hit a bit of a bullseye by saying that his mind might still be working in Serbian. I went to school through Irish, but all my memories of my time in the school are in English. I would imagine that if Irish were the language I was speaking more, it would be the other way round.
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I speak French. I learned it in school and through outside lessons with tutors. I would say that I'm "effectively fluent" in French, based on your description. Although, I haven't been practicing French as often as I think I should be, as there really are no opportunities to speak French in Toronto. If I was living in Montreal, it would be different, and maybe so different that English would be the language I would have to practice. The only access to French here is through TV and radio, and now the Internet through YouTube. My comprehension is really good because of that.
I actually just asked my boyfriend about this. Like you, he said that even though he learned English in school, his memories of those classes are in Serbian. But the majority of his schooling was in Serbian, so that makes sense. He told me that although his waking mind is mostly in Serbian, he often has dreams in English. Going by what you said in your post, he places himself somewhere between "effectively fluent" and "true fluency" in English. I think that makes sense based on what he told me.
He's able to teach me all kinds of words and phrases in Serbian, the most important of those being all the curse words and such
I think that Irish is a really nice language. I have an aunt who is originally from Ireland - born and raised in Limerick, and then did a couple of years of schooling in Cork - and she says she is fairly fluent in Irish. I've only heard her speak it a few times, but I think it's just lovely
