I’m sure he would inquire more. And if he came off like a jerk about it, it would probably rub people the wrong way. You already addressed the “dumb” thing, so I’ll stop laboring it.
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So, I’m not a linguist. I’d imagine very few people are. Might it be best, when you engage with strangers, to assume that they are not linguists using words in the way linguists would or wouldn’t and instead assume that they are using words with their common meaning? Might save you a lot of trouble.
The meaning of fluent to most people (regardless of its accuracy in the field of linguistics) is pretty clear. It means being able to speak like a native speaker - and that, I think, is a valid goal.
Also, while I get the point you’re making with the stories about your mother, surely she has to be considered an extreme outlying case, no? I mean, I get that people can be better or worse when dealing with familiar / unfamiliar situations, but that someone is “perfectly fluent…about current events, but cannot do her job” and vice versa seems like it would be very unusual. I mean, what happens if there’s a current event involving the sales of jewelry?
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Again, I’d like to mention that the original poster did not even bring up the word fluency, that was entirely me. So who says I made any assumptions about use? I simply said it’s a dumb word. I don’t like the word fluency as I’ve explained exhaustively, either read my other posts to everyone else on this, or just agree to disagree at this point.
To address the example I gave - My mom isn’t a special case at all, see: English for specific purposes - Wikipedia. Most companies, industries, etc rely upon language for specific purposes, it is quite common for someone to learn the very, very basics and then purely move into whatever they need the language for. (And quite frankly, this is the most useful way to learn language).
It’s pretty pedantic, but yes, she could speak about current events involving jewelry, but how much of that is there? A robbery? A museum showing?
By current events, I mean open up a newspaper and pick a section - sports, politics, etc and start a conversation about that. Anyone who has studied language for specific purposes will not be very good at this (unless their specific purpose is a SINGLE section in which case they’ll be able to only talk about that) but they will be perfectly fine talking about/reading about/writing about/listening about whatever topic they are supposed to be experts in. (And if the specific purpose doesn’t require all these skills - something like flight attendant English, then they may not even be able to go beyond speaking and listening related to what you need to know for 99% of airplane conversations and flight attendant tasks).
I recently trialed FluentU, a website/app that takes clips off of Youtube, subtitles them with Japanese (hovering over which will bring you the English translation, and a succinct explanation), and then quizzes you on the content (sentence structure, vocabulary meaning etc,.) afterwards. I’m tempted to buy myself a subscription, and was wondering if anyone else has had experiences with the same/similar types of sites/apps/study methods.
As an addendum, I’ve met a number of people - here in Japan, where I live - who claim to have reached N1-level Japanese primarily by watching (and re-watching) hours and hours of drama per day. Whilst the claim(s) sound(s) dubious, a common factor in fluent/near-fluent non-native speakers seems to be a single-minded devolution to immersion in Japanese-language content.
What are everyone’s thoughts?
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