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I'm not chary or Weby, but I can answer how I feel about fluency. I speak English, Brasilian Portuguese and French. I studied French for 5 years at school and off and on for 3 years at uni, with the odd refresher course and trip to France since then. I have a very high level of French proficiency in reading, writing, listening and speaking. I can be dropped in the middle of France where nobody speaks English and get on perfectly well, make jokes, ask questions, hold conversations. All the same, I do not consider myself fluent. For one thing, I have trouble understanding people who speak very quickly, on telly and sometimes one the phone, or with strong regional accents sometimes. I also feel that my vocabulary is too limited to be considered fluent. I usually get compliments from French people on how well I speak and how good my accent is, but they still know straight away that I'm not a native speaker. I just don't feel fluent.

With Portuguese, I grew up speaking with my family, and spending June through August in my hometown in Brasil for most of my childhood. I never went to school there, and I formally studied Portuguese for all of 2 semesters at uni just to feel that I'd learned some formal grammar. My Portuguese is almost entirely casual and conversational, and compared to my English, my Portuguese vocabulary is very limited, probably comparable to a young teenager. However, I consider myself fluent in Portuguese, because I understand it with total ease in all situations (ok, I have some difficulty with very strong Portugal accents, but so do most Brasilians!), can learn and retain vocabulary and come out of being rusty almost instantly, and even have an easily identifiable (to other Brasilians) regional accent. It's technically my native language, as it was the first one I spoke, and I feel the same fluency in it as I do in English, just limited in my practice of it.

When you say you were fluent, chary and WebyJ, what do you mean by that?  I mean, how would you define the term?

I didn't determine myself fluent, it was my professor at the time that said it. He basically said that at the time he, as a native speaker of the languageand if he didn't know better (because he taught me), would have thought that French was my first language.

When you say you were fluent, chary and WebyJ, what do you mean by that?  I mean, how would you define the term?

When I say fluent, I meant that when I was 6-8 years old, I could speak French without thinking about it. My vocabulary in French wasn't as large as it was in English but, given that I was only a child, my English vocabulary wasn't immense.

It helped that my father is French-speaking, so I grew up with him speaking French in the house a little bit. To this day, he still speaks French from time to time, but I just answer in English without giving it a second thought. I think I learnt that from a very young age! This is probably why my French comprehension is really good, but I have trouble putting sentences together.

When I was 5, we moved to a French-speaking country, and I had little choice but to learn the language properly. I went to a Catholic school, and every morning we all had to recite the Lord's Prayer in French. I remember just trying to copy the sounds that the other children were making so that I wouldn't stand out. The words meant nothing to me, but then many of them wouldn't have meant much to me in English as I'd never heard the prayer in any language.

Although we were taught real French in school, most of what I learnt was the Creole French that I picked up from our servants. I spent a lot of time with them and they liked making me say things and then laughing at the way I said them. But, over time, I figured out (with their help) what words meant and it all began to make sense. That was a far better education than I got in school!

I define fluency as SuperL does.

I was brought up in a bilingual home (Spanish) and then lived around no one who spoke English in France.

I had to go to school, get public transport to get around, and do everything in French.  You could get a Herald Tribune once a week in English and other than that it was all German, of which I had none, or French.

I'd studied it a couple of years in junior high and freshmen year of high school, and it was probably a big advantage speaking Spanish because the sentence structure, use of tenses and much vocabulary were similar.

By the end of a year it no longer required any extra thought at all to do everything in French:  answer a phone, pick up something and read it, watch TV, go out with friends, jump a train to Switzerland for the day, etc. 

I'd dream in it, and people whom I knew did not speak French would speak French in the dreams, think in it. 

About the only thing that I still couldn't do readily was count quickly in it.  And that apparently is a sticking point for many. 

For example, my host mother grew up speaking German, French and the dialect.  When she was 4, the Nazis took over the region and everything was done in German.

But after the war, the schools went back to French, and yet, when she went to count anything quickly, she would do it in German. 

She said it used to cause no end of problems in maths.

My father also never spoke English until he started first grade at the age of 6, and if left to do things naturally he will still count in Spanish.

Wow! So many of you have had such interesting adventures growing up! I always dreamed of living somewhere different- especially if I didn't know the language!- when I was growing up. In fact, I still do! Very very interesting stories y'all have.

Camoscato, what a fun thing to do for New Year's !!

We sorta lucked into it; my friend's company has a cabin at the resort, and it's his year to get to use it over the holidays, so yay! 

My father also never spoke English until he started first grade at the age of 6, and if left to do things naturally he will still count in Spanish.

This sounds like my father. He's lived in English-speaking countries for nearly 60 years now and speaks English to everyone every day. He says he even dreams in English. But he still counts and does math in his head in French. It's not something he tries to do or even thinks about - it just happens.

Oh, I'm so jealous of all of you who grew up in bilingual households and lived in other countries when you were small.  It took me years of hard graft to learn French.

Oh, I'm so jealous of all of you who grew up in bilingual households and lived in other countries when you were small. 

Me too!!

I didn't think this was in need of a whole new thread but I had a spelling question(because I'm filling out more applications now). I tend to change my spelling when filling out anything work related... Then this came up and I am not sure which way to go. What would you do?

I used to work for a company in the USA called _______Eye Care Center. Should I keep the spelling on the CV and applications I fill in as Center because that is how the company spells it or change it to centre to make it UK friendly? It's one of those that I just can't decide on. I would hope it wouldn't make the difference between me getting a job or not but reading this topic has me wondering now.  Thanks!

I didn't think this was in need of a whole new thread but I had a spelling question(because I'm filling out more applications now). I tend to change my spelling when filling out anything work related... Then this came up and I am not sure which way to go. What would you do?

I used to work for a company in the USA called _______Eye Care Center. Should I keep the spelling on the CV and applications I fill in as Center because that is how the company spells it or change it to centre to make it UK friendly? It's one of those that I just can't decide on. I would hope it wouldn't make the difference between me getting a job or not but reading this topic has me wondering now.  Thanks!

If it's a US company, it's Center, if it's a UK company, it's Centre.  I don't think that changing the spelling of an American company's name would be expected on an American CV.

Keep it "Center" if it is actually the name of the company.

I will do. It's how I had it before on other CVs and Apps just thought I would double check and see if it would be a no-no or not. Thanks for the replies!

Proper names keep their spelling. Thus whatever side of the Atlantic you are on, Pearl Harbor, World Trade Center, British Labour Party, Ocean Colour Scene (rock band). That is not to say you won't see mistakes made, but that's the rule.

I didn't know that rule. Thank you Tremula!