One thing that happened to me when I spend too many hours surrounded by my second language is that when I heard people talking in my native language I don't understand a single word because my brain hasn't make the transition yet ^^
Yes, it may happen. There is some delay during switching the languages. It's both different for different people because time of reaction is very individual, but also depends on how often one does practice switching languages. People who switch often over time do it faster and easier.
I consider myself 100% fluent in english and spanish and I'm quite okay at italian (apart from portuguese, which is my native language) and I think you missed an important milestone in this video - when you cannot remember how to say a word in your NATIVE language. This often happens to me with words I used much more often in my second languages - for example the word 'melanzana' (eggplant) in italian always pops up in the head before 'beringela', which is the portuguese word, because I ate A LOT more eggplant in Italy than I do in Portugal.
Yes, that happens to me too! It's SUCH a strange feeling the first few times. You start wondering if something might be wrong with you 🤣 What's even more awkward is when that happens during a conversation with someone monolingual, because they often don't understand that it is actually quite normal lol
I concur, it can be pretty frustrating. It doesn't happen much for common words indeed, but can pretty easily happen for some words that, for one reason or another, is more common in your 2nd language. I am sometimes stuck when I want to say something but there is pretty much no equivalent in French, either because the word has a slightly different meaning (awkward might be a good example actually, though I guess gênant can make the cut) or for colloquialisms (I don't know a simple way to say "shit hit the fan" for example).
It is sometimes related to the fact that language make concepts exist : sometimes when you know a word in a language and not in another, it's because it doesn't exist in the other. It's not always the reason why we forget them/don't know them, but a good portion of it is because of this. It can also influence our perception of the world. Russian apparently has a lot of words that designate different blues ; if that's the case, it means that Russian people do have more blues, and are better at differentiating blues.
I only have an intermediate level in German (I can hold a casual conversation, but I often make mistakes and ask bilingual friends for help) and that still happens to me when I have been using a word a lot in German and then have to dredge it up in English. I think it can start happening as soon as you stop translating all the time. This can also cause grammar mistakes if you try and shift back to your native language after spending a while speaking in the second one.
I also forget words in portuguese, even i am been a brazilian. I frequently mistake writting words in my own language because i study a lot of romanes languages.
I think I would add to that list the fact that when you become fluent you stop worrying about mistakes. Let me give an example of what I mean by that. When I was still in school, we went on a school trip in the UK and we were in families and I didn't really learn much vocab during that trip, but I think that's when I really became fluent. Because during that trip I overcame my "block" that was preventing me from really speaking English well. I have the same thing in German. My level is quite good and I can understand a lot and speak quite well, but I still don't speak even when I could because I've got this block that just stops me from trying to speak it. The day I manage to overcome it, I'll be fluent in German like I am in English (well I'm bilingual, but you know).
That last one, I completely relate. I found myself watching shows without subtitles and didn't even notice. I would forget if something I read was in spanish or english. And to this day, I curse and get angry in english for some reason.
I can relate to that too. These days whatever information I come across I can never tell afterwards in which language I read or heard it, it's sometimes frustrating when you're trying to share it !
Yesss! The part about forgetting which language you read/heard something in gets really annoying though, because I can never find the information again hahaha.
Native spanish speaker here. I loooove watching your videos to practice my English. you speak fast and very clear. I don't consider myself bilingual, but fluent. The last point is something very usual to me, it happens when I read an article and then try to remember where I read it... I just can't remember in which language the page was. Greets from South America!!
I feel like dreams are your brains way of working language deeper into its neural networks. I'm not fluent in German or in Spanish, but I'm intermediate in both and when i study heavily i tend to have dreams in the language i studied more that day/week.
I wish I had paid better attention in French lessons (I realised I liked languages after I dropped the class), but it clearly wasn't a complete waste of time because I can understand most of that.
I noticed when speaking with my husband (who is French) we often go back and forth between speaking in English and speaking in French. I realized I was becoming fluent when I would think back on something that was said and not be able to determine whether it had been said in French or English; in other words I just understood. I guess that's the same as your last point? Anyway, thanks - Great video!
Just today someone told me 'thank you' in a text, and I almost replied to them with a courteous DE RIEN before I realized they don't speak French LOL And I'm only a beginner in the language. That isn't the first time that has happened. Wow...I never even thought about the dream aspect. That's interesting! I realized today I was able to understand a whole French sentence I read. It was very elementary. But I am just at that point of it starting to feel comfortable. But I still have a long road ahead of me haha
Kimberly Bowman hello I am a french who lives in France, from what I understood from your comment you want to learn French and I for my part I want to learn English which is a beautiful language. do you want us to talk together (on insta for example) so that everyone improves in their language 😘❤️❤️
That happens to me all the time! Half the time I end up sending a text or something in Slovene forgetting that my friends don't understand a word of what I'm trying to say, and then I have to explain what I meant to say in English ;D
Omg! I am french learning english and I've had all of those signs appart of the dream one. I relate sooooo bad to the last one because watching a show or reading, I often don't realise when they are switching languages. And sometimes when I would share youtube videos with friend I would realise that it's an english video and that they would probably not understand it. An other sign I have on the path to fluency is that I often mix French and English when I'm talking French. I will just be really confused cause I don't even remember how to traduce that word in French. I people would look at me like I'm crazing because I would go like " oh my gaaad , I don't remember how to say that in French! How do I say that in French?! " In the end it's kinda fun but a bit annoying when I'm in an interview.
After watching this video I realized I’m fluent in english! I think in english like 40% of the day. There are certain words and expressions I only know in english. I thought my knowledge was intermediate but I guess I was taking myself for granted 😊
I love hearing your thoughts on this. You bring up some ideas and examples that I've never heard before. This is a really pertinent topic for me because I decided that my goal in retirement was to become fluent in French. As you did originally I'm studying hard and putting in about 15 hours a week (sometimes more). I have a tutor and I did a 2 week course in Montpellier in April. According to my evaluation at the end of my course, I'm at B1+ and very close to B2. Yet, I am definitely NOT fluent. I have to concentrate hard, I rarely think in French. I have only dreamed in French once. I can converse and express myself but it's still a ton of work. At this point I'm trying to be patient but feel like fluency is still a long way off. I can't move to France, so I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
My German and French teachers both say they knew they were fluent in the language, when they dreamt and had fluent dreams (like you mentioned before) and nightmares in that language. I’m sorry but imagining a nightmare in as a non German speaker sounds so funny to me. She said a person was screaming at her in German. 😂
I am still a super beginner at french. I am getting to the point where I am trying to greet people in french (when I know they speak french that is) but I can't keep a conversation going. Thankfully I work in a bilingual office. :D Something I remember Simone Giertz saying once is that even when you are completely fluent you still tend to count in your native language.
I remember my boyfriend's parents telling me I would start dreaming in French when I knew it well enough. I had a hard time picturing it until French conversations started popping up in my dreams a few months after I moved to Paris. :)
That's true. When You do start dreaming in a language, talk in this language when You are asleep or drunk for example- so in situations when You are not fully conscious and in control of Yourself it means that this language feels "natural" and "easily accessible" to Your brain.
Once I went to see amovie and didn't realise it wasn't in French but rather in English before about 10 or 15 minutes after it started. I think you're considered fluent when you can pop into a conversation without noticing that you're listening to another language. Also, as anyone noticed that when you're speaking your second language with people that don't speak it, your accent becomes really bad, and you make basic mistakes, or is it just me ? When I talk to English-speaking people, I have little to no accent in english, but when I talk to my family or friends who are French, I can barely understand myself. It's so weird.
Alex Graffigne Saaame, when i speak english with french people my accent gets really bad but it‘s pretty good when i speak with native speakers.. don‘t know why (i grew up in France)
That happens to me all the time when I'm talking with my Slovene side of my family (I'm a native English speaker, and am kinda fluent in Slovene since birth), where I'll talk for a while before realizing that for the past five minutes I've been sliding into a Slovene-ish accent lol :)
I am French and I can listen to your video while I'm doing another thing at home and I completely understand and don't need to focus (also your voice and accent are easy to understand, I need to focus with some English native speakers) so do you think I am fluent?
Andrea speaks faster than average, so if you understand her without concentrating, your level of comprehension is excellent. Many people speak less clearly than she, so it is not surprising that you don't understand them as well. However, most people define fluency as requiring both understanding and speaking. Can you speak English clearly and without a lot of reflection and without frequent mistakes? Some people understand everything but don't speak well so they are not considered fluent. If you understand well, that is a critical and difficult first step to fluency.
That's amazing! And it definitely means you have a great level of English! As David mentioned, fluency is also defined by your ability to produce the language (writing and speaking), so I would evaluate those as well when you're trying to decide if you're fluent 🙂
Personnellement je comprends aussi parfaitement Andrea sans effort, alors que par ailleurs je suis loin d'être" fluent", surtout oralement... Je crois que le critère ultime c'est l'aptitude à s'exprimer oralement
Andrea Heckler thanks for your comment. I can easily have a conversation in English with English speakers and I think they understand me correctly. I know I make mistakes sometimes but i am able to identify my mistakes. I hope my writing is good also and I do not make so much mistakes because I really like to listen and speak in English. 😊
I'm indian and I can do stuff, listen to her and then read your comment and write a reply. Et j'apprend francais, je suis mauvais en francais, mais je parlerai francais bientot. With anglais, we indians are good. Definitely bilingual 👍
I'm learning French and everytime the professor asks me something, I just answer in English. She actually thought I was English myself, but no: I'm Italian. It's hilarious cause sometimes I just forgot my native language and keep talking in english!
when it comes to the dreams, I can definitely relate. I've been learning German for 8 months- so I'm nowhere near fluent, but about a month in I had a couple of dreams that were in German, I got really excited, but outside of those few times the remainder of my dreams have been in English.
This was a really fun video! :D I definitely think you can also be fluent without experiencing the first few signs though-particularly if you're not in a French environment (like living in a French country or in a French-language home situation). You may well be fluent without thinking or making auto-reactions in French simply because your inputs are overwhelmingly not French so it's not the first language your brain grabs at. And I've even dreamt in Chinese before even though I know nothing about that language other than how to say "hello" and "thank you". ((Although, for me at least, I don't think I dream in any language, but my brain just recognises what people in my dreams are communicating and my brain is then telling me it's another language..)) BUT the last one of not really consciously realising what language you've just heard or read (but understood!) is very relatable for me. A lot of my social media feeds are bilingual and there are *loads* of times when I'm reading news clips in different languages in my feed that I understand everything I'm reading but then, if asked, would have to consciously think what language each one was in because it's just all understood. I wonder if it's harder to tell how fluent you are if you're outside of an environment which surrounds you with the language. For the past year or so I've chatted in depth for about n hour at a time with native French speakers pretty regularly on Skype about all sorts of things from politics to literature to women's issues to science to pop culture and I haven't started to consider myself (possibly) fluent until very recently as I've started reading and listening to French novels and podcasts made for adult native francophones. But I sometimes wonder if considering oneself fluent in a second language isn't also about just being confident enough to claim it. ;)
It took me a while before I was confident enough to claim it, so I definitely think that's an important factor too 😁 I love having multilingual social media feeds! It's also a great way to practice switching casually between languages without really having to think too hard about the transitions.
I'd add one thing to the list, I think: being able to crack a joke in the foreign language that makes laugh native speakers (meaning you got the sense of humour, and the phrasing). I believe there's also a cultural aspect to fluency, which actually goes with those expressions and reactions you mention. Speaking of the latter, I sometimes switch from one language to the other without noticing it. Sometimes, it's just a reaction, as you mentioned (I sometimes speak in French (my native language) but swear in English, and vice versa). But other times, it's just weird things. My friends won't let me live down the fact I replied to "What's the pointy one over there?" by "Le pointy one c'est l'église". I had absolutely no reason to speak French in that context, but we were in France and I was speaking about some French architectural aspect, so for some reason, my brain switched back to French. At least it's a funny anecdote, I guess! It's annoying when I don't realise it right away, though.
After almost of 5 years of studying linguistics, I can honestly say the label of bilingual/multilingual is surrounded by myths! If you’re interested in this topic read François Grosjean - Bilingual, its an academic book on my reading list, but it is so easy for anyone to read. I think you would enjoy it! ☺️
I totally see what you mean when you say you don't fully notice you're in a foreign language it's happened to me more than once that I was watching a show in english and then like an hour later I just realize I had forgotten the subtitles, which I always put on when I watch english stuff (helps me learning), because I didn't notice the show was actually in english lmao
I am so so happy for you. It's my dream to work as a bi lingual secretary for a while. Not sure what other skills i will need besides fluency. I would be prepared to do it for free even.
Hey. this video is amazing. i'm french, i think 'im kind of fluent in english and i'm trying pretty hard to learn turkish so thank you so much for this video ♡ et bon courage pour le français :)
A big bummer about languages is that if you don't practice them you lose them, and more quickly that you may think... I consider myself almost fluent english when it comes to understanding, reading or writing but I don't have many occasions to speak it so I see my level going down and down...
The one where you don't register what language your hearing is the trippiest. Was watching a dutch tv show (am learning dutch) where in a scene, english, dutch, and cantonese were all being spoken (fluent since birth in the latter two) and my brain was going absolutely crazy
I start to feel fluent in another language when I feel like I can say anything I want to without searching for words or having to go around things to describe them. I was there once in French many years ago in high school but after not using French for years I have completely lost that again - even though I've now spend 3.5 years living in French speaking countries.
Love this take on learning a language.. Feels similar to how my process of learning Spanish is going. Feels like I'm in that transition of understanding the language really well, but need MUCH more conversational practice!
Aaah You make me excited to *one day* reach this level of fluency. But I have to say that, I don’t know if it’s because I am trilingual anyway, if I adopt the “natural reactions” like sounds/swear words in the language I am learning FIRST. Now my reaction isn’t “oh sh@t “ it’s put***....😂😂 Awesome video girl!! I’m inspired!
That's so interesting! I'm sure your way of learning languages changes significantly once you know so many already, so I would be really curious to find out how different our experiences in learning French end up being 😃
You mentioned dreaming in other languages and speaking to people in your dream in their native language. That always happens to me and even when I remember something that happened, I remember it in the language it happened in. For example, if I was taking about a certain subject in French with a native speaker, my memory of the details are in French and it's weird to think about it in English. The same goes for the other languages I speak fluently. If I spend long periods of time speaking a foreign language I often have dreams where everyone is speaking that language, even friends and family who don't actually speak it. I think it's based on the amount of exposure and the mind goes on autopilot. I'm also an interpreter so I am used to just speaking languages without consciously being aware of what language I am speaking.
I totally agree with you. Even if we still make mistakes, thinking in a foreign language is a good sign of becoming fluent. It happened to me after a few months living in London or in Houston. We also start being fluent when we use the local expressions, and not just translate our way of speaking in our own language into the foreign one.
The phrase I use a lot is “oh my god” and once I mixed an English “oh my god” and Russian “oh my god”. I can not remember what it sounded like, but that was so weird
My mother tongue is Portuguese, but i also speak Spanish and English. however, i make so many grammar mistakes in English and understanding jokes for me is still a struggle, but I'm really pleased with my level, even though i don't feel comfortable enough to have a conversation about subjects I'm not familiar with, as you mentioned' learning a new language is not easy', so you have to be proud of yourself.
Jokes are one of the hardest aspects of learning a non-native language -- I still struggle with them too 😅 But that makes it all the more rewarding when you do understand one of them!
I've been learning German for about five years now, and I would consider myself pretty close to fluent! I've found that even if I don't understand a specific word, I can usually figure out what it means in the context of the rest of the sentence. Also, I sometimes watch things in German with English subtitles, and notice when the subtitles don't translate exactly from German, if that makes sense!
I would add 2 other things 1- when you get bored by your mother language, Sometimes when I'm speaking alone, with myself. I just hate doing that in Portuguese, it doesn't seem right, as I do not live in a foreign country English is part of my inner world and portuguese the outside world. So everytime I'm thinking, speaking or reflecting I do it in English, and I've been doing that for the past 2 years so I'm used to it that it seems wrong when I do it in Portuguese. 2 - Brain malfunction, sometimes when someone suddenly speak in another language I've some trouble going back to the previous language, my brain simply can't decide which one I should use it so for some seconds I simply can't think in anything or I start to stutter.
I'm bilingual(or should i say Multilingual?). German is my native Language and i'm learning English, French and Japanese at the same time (I'n not enjoying learning French) And i have this habit of changing from German to english to Japanese in mid-sentence. Also i started Dreaming and thinking in Japanese and i'm learning it 3 months i think ? I haven't learned quite much but I don't translate words in my Head as i do it in French. English is like a second native to me. but i always mess up between 4 languages. So yeah something about me here you go
I would add to your last point, unintentionaly switching from one language to the other when you talk with someone who can speak both. I dated an American girl for 2 years and a half, and while she wasn't really fluent in French when we met, she definitely made huge progress within a year, and we would often have conversations in both languages at the same time (she'd speak English and I'd speak French usually, but sometimes the other way round) or just switch once in a while, sometimes because something was easier and more explicit in one language than in the other but sometimes with no obvious reason whatsoever. And another thing is being able to multitask in a language (or in both at the same time), if you can talk and text, or read something while keeping track of a conversation, or follow 2 conversations at the same time. One of the first big tests for me leaving abroad was being with a group in a pub, sitting in the middle and trying to follow what's happening when different people were talking to each other across the table (made even worse by the ambiant noise of pubs and the fact the accent was not the one I was used to) and while I often dream, talk, think or react in English, group conversations can still be a struggle at time (usually fine with Americans, mostly OK with Aussies, terrifying with people from UK or Ireland). And bonus ones, for annoying people like myself, cringing at some grammatical mistakes or verbal mannerisms... I had a dinner completely spoiled by a group of American girls saying "like" every 4 words.
I'm fully bilingual in English and Spanish (Spanish being my native), and this is so damn true, all of this, but one of the things that is kind of bizarre, is when you are speaking in your native language and want so say a word or a concept, and you don't remember it in your OWN native language, seriously, this has happend to me a tons of times, I remember the word or concept in English but NOT in Spanish lmao.
The strangest thing for me was the first dream I had that was in German. I wasn’t even translating in my mind, I just knew German and could speak it and understand it in a dream. Also, being unable to switch your brain back to your native language, like being stuck.
The best one I noticed myself is when you can fight with other people in the language. That’s how I realized I’m fluent in french already. XD It was on the metro and I had a fight with someone and we were both shouting in french. LOL. Idk
I am a native arabic speaker and I am fluent in french because I am lebanese and we have to be either french educated or english educated so we are exposed to foreign languages that's why we tend to mix languages in our daily conversations so the most common lebanese greeting is "Hi kifak ça va ?" Which include 3 languages ! (Btw kifak= how are you) Anyway, English is my 3rd language and I wasn't sure whether I am fluent in english or not.. That video helped a lot !! I subscribed to your channel Andrea ❤
Love this topic, thanks for sharing your experiences! I love that these are all ways of 'measuring' your progress without actually measuring in terms of numbers of ticked boxes in a test. :D
I’m from France but currently live in the states. My favorite thing is to read something and not register what language it is. Like it happened to me to read something in English and then explain what I just read to my french friend not realizing I read it in English. Or reading something in french and showing it to my boyfriend who doesn’t speak french at all. And he would be like “I cannot read that it’s in french” . But I don’t really pay attention to what language it is anymore, I just read and understand it.
A sign that I am getting more fluent in French was when I was talking French / English, English / French with my French Lady Love, then I spoke to the check out person at the local supermarket in French, rather than in English. (In Australia). I also notice sometimes I read French on the Internet without thinking about the language, just read the written words...This shows signs to me that I am progressing towards a better level of fluency in the French language. (I still have a way to go to be fully fluent in French).
That last comment about not registering that you were reading/listening to french had me going YEEEEES! I lived in Paris for a year and I have this clear memory where I was scrolling through fb and I read something in french and kept scrolling then was like HOLD ON, went back up and it was in french and i hadn't done the 'brain gear switch' as I like to say into French. It happened a lot after that! Unfortunately 5 years on and being back in Australia my french is really disappearing :(
I was born and raised in Croatia. So my mother language is Croatian. I speak almost perfect English. And since two years ago I live in Germany so I had to learn German. I would say I am fluent in German but I do have alot more work to do to be as near to my English level. But I am very proud of myself 😊
one intersting step for me but it's quite an early one. so I am french at the begining of really learning english, i was watching movies in english. And at a certain point i realsied my brain was able to do vocal translation of the complete movie in my native language, it found a voice i i was remembering the movie as if everything was in french even if i only saw it once in english. I never tried it backwards tho. it is something i would call subcouncious fluency.
6 ปีที่แล้ว
Very nice video :) It's funny, while I was listening to you I was thinking "I don't have to translate in my head I just hear you and understand" (I'm French). I think I already told you that but I was an au pair in England 1 year ago and it's how my English got better. I still understand quite well but I'm losing the speaking part ! As I'm no longer surrounded by this language, I don't think or dream in it anymore... I need to find a way to keep practicing, because teaching English to students is not enough to maintain my level. As you can see on my English video I'm not really fluent anymore, I pause a lot and speak slowly ^^ I send you a lot of love ♥
I am learning French and I am no where near fluent. But as someone who plays football I would say that language isn’t or doesn’t have to be a barrier. Lots of the communication is innate and unspoken. My point being that even though it is very impressive to be bi lingual lots of the communication we do as people is innate and as a product of knowing what we are meant to do in certain situations. Admittedly my experience of football is only at park level but I think that that validates my point because no one else would be particularly amazing at football but even with a basic level of understanding that was able to make up for the lack of communication between us because we intuitively knew what to do and how each other would react. In a nut shell language isn’t necessarily a barrier depending on what you are doing.
As I am mostly in my native laguage environnement, I need a bit of time to "become fluent" in another language. But the more fluent, the less time it takes to change the mind into the language. For English, I can change in less than 10 minutes if I'm focused, but for Spanish, I'd need a couple of days to get somewhat fluent.
I learn Spanish and french, speak English as a second language, and my native language is Malayalam, which I'm pretty fluent in terms of speaking but not in terms of grammar
Cool video. Great topic and interesting insights. I sent something funny to my husband and instead of making him laugh he was confused because it turned out it was in French and I didn’t realize it.
Salut 👋. I would say we are very close to the same level en français! This is amazing because you are the first I’ve seen that describes your level of competency almost the same as mine. You can talk to your friends and family well? French movies still go over your head a bit because of the subtle details of accent and liaison «not just the Z sound liaison either »😂 ? In other words you probably loved « Le dîner de cons » if you watched it, but a lot of the side dialogues were difficult? Your reading is 1st? , speaking is second and hearing/ listening is third ? If that sounds like your level I’m right there with you haha my girlfriend lives in Èpernay, France so I’m getting better everyday. But as you know, your loved ones in France are an amazing way to maintaining and to practice what you learnt, BUT are not always maybe even not usually a amazing way to learn new grammar or really much technical things as you usually are more focused on communication with your loved ones because they are conditioned to understand you. You should do a video on how having a French girlfriend or boyfriend helps, but it should just be the «icing on the cake» and how you can actually plateau because of just communicating with your partner and not trying anything new in your target language. I think a lot of learners fall into that trap. I would love to talk to you one day when we both have some time about all the stuff that relates to our level and how we can keep improving and pushing through to even higher levels. If you want to talk about these things let me know what app you want to use through message or whatever! All of Us anglophones learning French to real proficiency are all in this together hahah. Stay motivated 💪 Merci pour les vidéos, j’ai hâte regarder tous les prochaines!
Interesting video. Yet I started to express thoughts in english (I'm french) at the very beginning of my learning. They were very simple sentences of course, but I don't think it's necessarily a sign that you're fluent. Another funny thing related to the last example you gave is when you remember having heared or read something somewhere, but don't remember in what language. You just remember the meaning of the sentence, but you're not able to remember the original sentence in the original language.
I feel that the dream you had, was probably more of an indication, of the amount of information related to French that you had absorbed and not so much about how fluent you were at the time, also emphasising the potential for fluency. Considering the brain stores so much information but we do not necessarily have full access to it in our conscious state.
I do agree with you. I did exactly the same than Andrea 1 year and a half ago but in order to learn English and I experienced that kind of dreams as well. :)
Dreams can be part of "new information consolidation" process, the process of moving new information from short term memory into long term memory and I suppose this is the kind of dream she had. People who judge bilingualism on the basis of dreaming in a nother language speak of different dreams, which occur when one does not learn this language during the day. This is "retrival type of dream " not "memory/new info consolidation type of dream" which she had (what is "storage type of dream"- the opposite of retrival). A bilingual person might spend all day long speaking one language yet dream in another one and this means that this person is truely bilingual.
The only time I struggle with understanding English is when I watch British movies. American English is as easy to understand as my native language. I don't consider myself fluent. Listening is one thing but when expressing myself in another language I easily run out of words. It depends what the topic is. I read books in French but don't speak or write it well.
All the dreams I have in my target language (Spanish) everyone in the dream who is speaking it is speaking it really slowly and brokenly, basically how I talk. It's hilarious, like even my friends who speak fluent spanish in reality speak like me in my dreams...
I still have most of these things to look forward to. However, when speaking in my native English, sometimes I find myself using the French/Latin derived synonym of a word (like "respond" instead of "answer"), even if it doesn't quite have the the right meaning.
I did part of my bachelor university education in English and I approached fully to that language when I was a teenager (I was surrounded by American friends) even though I am an Italian native speaker. In any case I did not learned English during my childhood, however sometimes takes control over my brain and I use English expressions in Italian. I still haven't reach the mother tongue level in English but my Italian is starting to get replaced by English, Even though I live in Italy. I don't know how should I call myself and if that would be normal
I pretty sure I am fluent in English (even though I still struggle to actually "talk" in english. my grammar is a little off and i can't say some word properly, especially if it begin with an "h") but I do understanding it and often watch english content without subtitles. I do text some friend exclusively in english and I often think in english (almost more than french) probably because I watch so much english content. Sadly, I don't remember my dreams so I'm not sure which language is in them. But 99% of the time I only write in english and don't talk out loud. I did leave a year abroad and had to talk to my classmate there in english but it was sweden so english wasn't the native language for most people. And even then they had some issue understanding my french accent.
Ruchunteur interesting point: what happens when people using English / French as L2 or L3 talk to each other? Frenchman speaking English + Swede speaking English is a bit unfair, though ;-) Joking here, of course, congratulations on your level of English! ( ⚽ ock heja Sverige! om du unnar dem en chans ;-)
No idea how to speak sweden ahah. I whent in an international univercity for a year so every cours were in english. What I notices is that native english speaker had trouble understanding me. Some austrian struggled a little bit but they understand me easier. I had trouble understanding Pakistan accent though. Swedish people didn't seem to struggle to much to understand me but because it was an international university, they weren't a lot of them. an italian girl didn't seem to struggle to understand me though (maybe because french and itialian have the same root ? who knows). But when a french person talk to another french person in english, we usually understand each other completely (in the pronunciation anyway). Because we tend to use french rules of pronunciation without noticing it. like in french, the letter 'h' is silent. so a word like "hungry" sound exactly like "angry" to us so when a french guy say he is hungry we understand what he is talking about instantly because of context. Another person that actually know how to pronunciation the "h" letter might thing we are "angry" because our pronunciation is bad and since they clearly hear "angry" they don't understand that we though of "hungry" in our head. that it's not a vocabulary issue but a pronunciation one. Also, I don't know if homonym are widely use in english but there is a loooooooooooot of them in french so it's not unusual for us to use the same pronunciation for the different things. like "verre", "vert", "ver", "vers", "vair" which mean "glass", "green", "worm", "toward" and "vair" in english but have the same pronunciation in french but nobody mistaken those words in a normal conversation.
Ruchunteur thanks for your kind reply and the interesting insight! I once made intercambio (conversation exchange) with a Spaniard. At first I thought his English was really bad, until I realized he just pronounced it the way he would (Andalusian) Spanish: using just 5 vowels, and skipping a fair share of the consonants. When I realized this, I finally managed to understand him fairly well ... And when I studied at a French university, I was more than happy meeting other German students speaking simple, slow and perhaps badly (or for that matter German) pronounced French with me until I eventually adapted French spoken at a pace the French speak it ...
I have a friend who is trilingual in French, German and English from birth (slightly jealous). It's funny watching her try and shift her brain out of French gear and back into German or English so that we can start talking again. She gets a bit flustered when I start talking about German in a theoretical way (Do you think these words share a root? I don't know, you're making my brain hurt!) or I ask her to translate something too. She also starts chatting to me in French without realising it because her mind wanders. On a trip to Berlin, a German teacher turned from her conversation with me to a monolingual (English) teacher and relayed what we had been talking about, but forgot to switch back to English. We both sat and looked at her until she realised she was speaking in the wrong language.
I am jealous now too with my stupid monolingual brain (no English is not my native language but I can't say I am bilingual because I am nowhere near fluent)
Ma langue maternelle c'est le portugais, et je t'entends parfaitement en anglais. Actu, j'appprends l'allemand et c'est génial pour moi de savoir toutes ces langues. Par contre, j'ai parfois eu l'impression d'avoir tout oublié de ce que j'ai appris en français pendant 6 ans d'études de la langue. Mais bon, ça marche encore. C'est intéressant ton expérience avec le français, et J'espère qu'on puisse se parler un jour en français, ça serait super.
Oh, I remember dreaming in English twice: First time was when I started to study Japanese, I remember catching a bus and seeing a Japanese woman, she didn't know Portuguese and I couldn't understand her coz she was speaking Japanese so I started to speak in English. Second time it was a bit weider, it was me a man a woman a rat and a chicken, the man was sorta interviewing the woman In English and then he asked, what did you do yesterday?, she answered "I bought a book and I read" and then I said "omg her English is amazing and the chicken agreed with me, but the rat pointed out that she didn't say "read it". It was so weird
Nice video! Going by your yardsticks, I daresay I'm pretty fluent as well. But, I may be going easy on myself seeing as I don't live in a French speaking environment. I'm Nigerian, resident in the same country, and I grew up speaking English and Yoruba, both of which I'm very fluent in (English more than Yoruba, because I had my education entirely in English). I started learning French (seriously) about a year ago, and I'd say I've come a pretty long way. Note, Nigeria isn't a French speaking country, so I learn mostly via the internet, and I was at an Alliance Francais for the most part of last year. I can think in French now without necessarily having to translate into English, I actually react to situations in French too (imagine how weird this sounds to people around) and I read really well in French and I'd say I write more-than-decent French. However, actually speaking it is unarguably the most convincing evidence, and I don't get to do that a lot here (already explained the language situation in Nigeria). I guess my claim to fluency will actually be validated when I'm actually in a French speaking country and I have to speak the language out loud and extempore. Do you agree?
Speaking is definitely an important aspect of fluency, possibly the most important -- but if you have all the other skills up to a high level, then you're probably going to excel quite quickly once you start getting more speaking practice! :)
Great video, thank you! Have you ever had the experience where you’ve explained something or told a story or otherwise had a conversation and then later been clueless as to whether it was in English or French? And, regarding later stage fluency, can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide in French easily?
Hi Andrea, did you feel at ease with French when talking to people or watching a youtube video in French but find it hard with movie and songs? It's quite common I think but have no clue about why this happens.
I think almost everybody experiences this difference. In TH-cam videos there is usually only one person speaking at a time and most people speak clearly. In movies, like in real life, they mumble, they speak quickly, they use a lot of slang, multiple people are talking at once, there is background noise, etc. I find movies and TV shows far harder to understand than TH-cam videos. The one exception is documentaries. Those typically have a narrator speaking clearly.
Yes, I often find movies and music harder to understand than more "natural", everyday situations! Music is usually because the ways of speech, expression, and tone are completely altered (that even applies to music in your native language! haha). For movies, I think it's simply because the speech has been written to be meaningful, clever, impactful. Every line usually conveys something important, and often they're filled with jokes and cultural references, or references to background or plot that you need to understand the movie. It's the only way to develop a good story in such a short amount of time, but it can make it challenging to follow as a non-native speaker!
I'm French West-Indian so I speak French and Creole. I grew up learning not to mix both languages in one sentence but I've been diving back into Spanish lately, and experiencing a few mix-ups lol! Like when I wanted for my mom to throw me the tv remote over an armchair a few days ago. I wanted to say "envoie-la" in French, but blurted out a Creole-Spanish impropable hybid : "voyalo"! Creole : "voyé-y" Spanish : "envialo" (I guess! Not quite fluent yet lol)
This happens sometimes. More often to boys than to girls due to how human brain works. Female brain does multitasking easier, so this issue is not so serious among girls. In my own family happened once, to a boy. It's common among native speakers living in multulingual communities, since natural born multilingual child has brain which initially mixes all forms of grammatical and lexical structures into one structure. And struggles to make it coherent. But over time kids notice the difference, based on phonetics mainly and separate two languages, but their brain still stores this information in one lingustic megastructure. This is main difference visible during brain research between people who are bilingual since childhood and people who became bilingual or multilingual in adulthood. Scientists can see it on computer screen. ;-) I was doing the same as a kid mixing Polish with Russian. My cousin's son was doing this with his Polish and French and it was so bad that they had to stick to French only. He didn't speak any Polish until the age of 16 after this, despite spending all holidays with us, his Polish speaking relatives from other countries (my family lives all over the Europe, and even outside of it). So yes, it's natural. And hey, "voyalo" sounds quite nice actually.
i'm totally fluent in english but i don't think i dream in english ? like it probably happened when i was trying to get fluent so i would immerge myself with the language but now it never happen, i think? (je suis française)
Another sign is making up jokes or puns in your new language. Once I was out camping with a church group and everyone spoke Spanish, which I grew up as a receptive speaker of. Someone went out to gather wood to put on the fire, and I asked "¿Qué más quemas?" I've also made up tongue twisters in German, my fourth, and first non-native, language, as well as my first three. Once a guy at church, who works as a translator, asked me if "lullaby" means "canción de cuna". I answered yes, even though I had never heard the phrase "canción de cuna" (literally "song of crib"). Which brings up a question: Spanish has "cuna", which is directly from Latin; French has "berceau", which appears to be from Gaulish. Does any language have both words and distinguish cribs from cradles?
Pierre Abbat I would guess most languages do; at least German does. Generally speaking English has a vaste and precise vocabulary, whereas French has less words and tends to be more abstract. berceau vs. cradle / crib is a good example. Remember that Racine just uses 2000 words in all of his plays, so they say. I have not counted, but I guess Shakespeare uses some more ;-)
je parle assez bien anglais et le comprend assez bien mais dans certaines situations les gens parlent trop vite ou dans des vidéos j'ai besoin des sous-titres en anglais . En tout cas bravo pour le parcours que tu as déjà effectué en français, c'est une langue pas facile même pour nous.
Ok So right now I currently working on Spanish. I speak English as my native language and sometimes honestly I don't know if I were to consider myself fluent in the language yet. I think because Spanish speakers speak fast and I am able to pick up some words and can understand some of the conversations. I also find myself accidentally speaking in that language in non-Spanish environments. I do still think about how to put some sentences sometimes. I would like to know what level of fluency would you consider this?
I realized that I was fluent in English when I was walking and I hit my little toe at my bed's leg and I screamed "What the..... ahhhh... that's..,hunnmm" it was painful but I immediately laughed coz my reaction was in English
Hello Andrea, I've known you like writing, so where I can read your articles or your blog or something like that? I really want to read them. Thank you!
I have a question, though. How else do you improve your French if you’re not in France or if no one in your home speaks French? I’m actually doing Duolingo now and I’m still a beginner, but how do I improve further? I’m also watching French Tedx talks with the French subtitles on, but to be honest, I’m not sure how far I can improve. Have you got any tips for me?
![[TH] 2024 PMSL SEA Finals D2 | Fall | ต้องรักษาฟอร์ม อย่ายอมให้ใครแซง](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/x38QsGn7A3M/mqdefault.jpg)
![Megan Thee Stallion - Neva Play (feat. RM) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TpYTyAaTRts/mqdefault.jpg)
I realised I am fluent in English when after watching a movie for 15 minutes I noticed the Dutch subtitles are turned off.
One thing that happened to me when I spend too many hours surrounded by my second language is that when I heard people talking in my native language I don't understand a single word because my brain hasn't make the transition yet ^^
Yes, it may happen. There is some delay during switching the languages. It's both different for different people because time of reaction is very individual, but also depends on how often one does practice switching languages. People who switch often over time do it faster and easier.
It's happened with me too I thought that I was crazy or something like it hahaha
Reading this comment makes me scared because I don't want to forget my native language
I consider myself 100% fluent in english and spanish and I'm quite okay at italian (apart from portuguese, which is my native language) and I think you missed an important milestone in this video - when you cannot remember how to say a word in your NATIVE language. This often happens to me with words I used much more often in my second languages - for example the word 'melanzana' (eggplant) in italian always pops up in the head before 'beringela', which is the portuguese word, because I ate A LOT more eggplant in Italy than I do in Portugal.
Yes, that happens to me too! It's SUCH a strange feeling the first few times. You start wondering if something might be wrong with you 🤣 What's even more awkward is when that happens during a conversation with someone monolingual, because they often don't understand that it is actually quite normal lol
I concur, it can be pretty frustrating. It doesn't happen much for common words indeed, but can pretty easily happen for some words that, for one reason or another, is more common in your 2nd language. I am sometimes stuck when I want to say something but there is pretty much no equivalent in French, either because the word has a slightly different meaning (awkward might be a good example actually, though I guess gênant can make the cut) or for colloquialisms (I don't know a simple way to say "shit hit the fan" for example).
It is sometimes related to the fact that language make concepts exist : sometimes when you know a word in a language and not in another, it's because it doesn't exist in the other. It's not always the reason why we forget them/don't know them, but a good portion of it is because of this. It can also influence our perception of the world. Russian apparently has a lot of words that designate different blues ; if that's the case, it means that Russian people do have more blues, and are better at differentiating blues.
I only have an intermediate level in German (I can hold a casual conversation, but I often make mistakes and ask bilingual friends for help) and that still happens to me when I have been using a word a lot in German and then have to dredge it up in English. I think it can start happening as soon as you stop translating all the time. This can also cause grammar mistakes if you try and shift back to your native language after spending a while speaking in the second one.
I also forget words in portuguese, even i am been a brazilian. I frequently mistake writting words in my own language because i study a lot of romanes languages.
I think I would add to that list the fact that when you become fluent you stop worrying about mistakes. Let me give an example of what I mean by that. When I was still in school, we went on a school trip in the UK and we were in families and I didn't really learn much vocab during that trip, but I think that's when I really became fluent. Because during that trip I overcame my "block" that was preventing me from really speaking English well. I have the same thing in German. My level is quite good and I can understand a lot and speak quite well, but I still don't speak even when I could because I've got this block that just stops me from trying to speak it. The day I manage to overcome it, I'll be fluent in German like I am in English (well I'm bilingual, but you know).
tiadeets agreed. Confidence is a clear indicator. Just by the way, what's your native language?
Yes, great point! 🙌
Ella Speed I didn't see your question. I'm French. 😉
That last one, I completely relate. I found myself watching shows without subtitles and didn't even notice. I would forget if something I read was in spanish or english. And to this day, I curse and get angry in english for some reason.
Veri Yes! All of the time. If a show has the two languages that I speak in I don't even realise when they are switching languages
I can relate to that too. These days whatever information I come across I can never tell afterwards in which language I read or heard it, it's sometimes frustrating when you're trying to share it !
YES. Exactly.
Yes, that happens to me too!!
Yesss! The part about forgetting which language you read/heard something in gets really annoying though, because I can never find the information again hahaha.
Native spanish speaker here. I loooove watching your videos to practice my English. you speak fast and very clear.
I don't consider myself bilingual, but fluent. The last point is something very usual to me, it happens when I read an article and then try to remember where I read it... I just can't remember in which language the page was.
Greets from South America!!
I feel like dreams are your brains way of working language deeper into its neural networks.
I'm not fluent in German or in Spanish, but I'm intermediate in both and when i study heavily i tend to have dreams in the language i studied more that day/week.
C'est incroyable tes progrès en français !
Un pouce en l'air ! ;)
Mais le français n'est pas la langue la plus facile, malheureusement ;)
I feel so proud of myself I understood this completely
Eventually I'll be able to respond in French 😂
I wish I had paid better attention in French lessons (I realised I liked languages after I dropped the class), but it clearly wasn't a complete waste of time because I can understand most of that.
I noticed when speaking with my husband (who is French) we often go back and forth between speaking in English and speaking in French. I realized I was becoming fluent when I would think back on something that was said and not be able to determine whether it had been said in French or English; in other words I just understood. I guess that's the same as your last point? Anyway, thanks - Great video!
Just today someone told me 'thank you' in a text, and I almost replied to them with a courteous DE RIEN before I realized they don't speak French LOL And I'm only a beginner in the language. That isn't the first time that has happened. Wow...I never even thought about the dream aspect. That's interesting! I realized today I was able to understand a whole French sentence I read. It was very elementary. But I am just at that point of it starting to feel comfortable. But I still have a long road ahead of me haha
Kimberly Bowman hello I am a french who lives in France, from what I understood from your comment you want to learn French and I for my part I want to learn English which is a beautiful language. do you want us to talk together (on insta for example) so that everyone improves in their language 😘❤️❤️
That happens to me all the time! Half the time I end up sending a text or something in Slovene forgetting that my friends don't understand a word of what I'm trying to say, and then I have to explain what I meant to say in English ;D
Omg! I am french learning english and I've had all of those signs appart of the dream one.
I relate sooooo bad to the last one because watching a show or reading, I often don't realise when they are switching languages. And sometimes when I would share youtube videos with friend I would realise that it's an english video and that they would probably not understand it.
An other sign I have on the path to fluency is that I often mix French and English when I'm talking French. I will just be really confused cause I don't even remember how to traduce that word in French. I people would look at me like I'm crazing because I would go like " oh my gaaad , I don't remember how to say that in French! How do I say that in French?! "
In the end it's kinda fun but a bit annoying when I'm in an interview.
After watching this video I realized I’m fluent in english! I think in english like 40% of the day. There are certain words and expressions I only know in english. I thought my knowledge was intermediate but I guess I was taking myself for granted 😊
I love hearing your thoughts on this. You bring up some ideas and examples that I've never heard before. This is a really pertinent topic for me because I decided that my goal in retirement was to become fluent in French. As you did originally I'm studying hard and putting in about 15 hours a week (sometimes more). I have a tutor and I did a 2 week course in Montpellier in April. According to my evaluation at the end of my course, I'm at B1+ and very close to B2. Yet, I am definitely NOT fluent. I have to concentrate hard, I rarely think in French. I have only dreamed in French once. I can converse and express myself but it's still a ton of work. At this point I'm trying to be patient but feel like fluency is still a long way off. I can't move to France, so I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
Bon courage cher ami.
My German and French teachers both say they knew they were fluent in the language, when they dreamt and had fluent dreams (like you mentioned before) and nightmares in that language. I’m sorry but imagining a nightmare in as a non German speaker sounds so funny to me. She said a person was screaming at her in German. 😂
I am still a super beginner at french. I am getting to the point where I am trying to greet people in french (when I know they speak french that is) but I can't keep a conversation going. Thankfully I work in a bilingual office. :D
Something I remember Simone Giertz saying once is that even when you are completely fluent you still tend to count in your native language.
As a native french, the numbers are still a tough part in English while the rest is pretty qqqok. So I guess it's the same for any language.
Yeah, I still struggle with numbers in French... 😅
Andrea Heckler I guess the 70, 80, 90s must be quite challenging 😉
How’s your french now?
I remember my boyfriend's parents telling me I would start dreaming in French when I knew it well enough. I had a hard time picturing it until French conversations started popping up in my dreams a few months after I moved to Paris. :)
That's true. When You do start dreaming in a language, talk in this language when You are asleep or drunk for example- so in situations when You are not fully conscious and in control of Yourself it means that this language feels "natural" and "easily accessible" to Your brain.
Once I went to see amovie and didn't realise it wasn't in French but rather in English before about 10 or 15 minutes after it started. I think you're considered fluent when you can pop into a conversation without noticing that you're listening to another language. Also, as anyone noticed that when you're speaking your second language with people that don't speak it, your accent becomes really bad, and you make basic mistakes, or is it just me ? When I talk to English-speaking people, I have little to no accent in english, but when I talk to my family or friends who are French, I can barely understand myself. It's so weird.
Alex Graffigne Saaame, when i speak english with french people my accent gets really bad but it‘s pretty good when i speak with native speakers.. don‘t know why (i grew up in France)
Nina exactement !! Je sais pas pourquoi ça me fait ça c'est trop bizarre
That happens to me all the time when I'm talking with my Slovene side of my family (I'm a native English speaker, and am kinda fluent in Slovene since birth), where I'll talk for a while before realizing that for the past five minutes I've been sliding into a Slovene-ish accent lol :)
I am French and I can listen to your video while I'm doing another thing at home and I completely understand and don't need to focus (also your voice and accent are easy to understand, I need to focus with some English native speakers) so do you think I am fluent?
Andrea speaks faster than average, so if you understand her without concentrating, your level of comprehension is excellent. Many people speak less clearly than she, so it is not surprising that you don't understand them as well. However, most people define fluency as requiring both understanding and speaking. Can you speak English clearly and without a lot of reflection and without frequent mistakes? Some people understand everything but don't speak well so they are not considered fluent. If you understand well, that is a critical and difficult first step to fluency.
That's amazing! And it definitely means you have a great level of English! As David mentioned, fluency is also defined by your ability to produce the language (writing and speaking), so I would evaluate those as well when you're trying to decide if you're fluent 🙂
Personnellement je comprends aussi parfaitement Andrea sans effort, alors que par ailleurs je suis loin d'être" fluent", surtout oralement...
Je crois que le critère ultime c'est l'aptitude à s'exprimer oralement
Andrea Heckler thanks for your comment. I can easily have a conversation in English with English speakers and I think they understand me correctly. I know I make mistakes sometimes but i am able to identify my mistakes. I hope my writing is good also and I do not make so much mistakes because I really like to listen and speak in English. 😊
I'm indian and I can do stuff, listen to her and then read your comment and write a reply. Et j'apprend francais, je suis mauvais en francais, mais je parlerai francais bientot. With anglais, we indians are good. Definitely bilingual 👍
Often when learning a new word or new language rule, I’ll get the word stuck in my head just like a song
For me fluency is when you can count and calculate in that 2nd language and when you’re tired your 2nd language pops up instead of your native one.
I'm learning French and everytime the professor asks me something, I just answer in English. She actually thought I was English myself, but no: I'm Italian. It's hilarious cause sometimes I just forgot my native language and keep talking in english!
when it comes to the dreams, I can definitely relate. I've been learning German for 8 months- so I'm nowhere near fluent, but about a month in I had a couple of dreams that were in German, I got really excited, but outside of those few times the remainder of my dreams have been in English.
This was a really fun video! :D I definitely think you can also be fluent without experiencing the first few signs though-particularly if you're not in a French environment (like living in a French country or in a French-language home situation). You may well be fluent without thinking or making auto-reactions in French simply because your inputs are overwhelmingly not French so it's not the first language your brain grabs at. And I've even dreamt in Chinese before even though I know nothing about that language other than how to say "hello" and "thank you". ((Although, for me at least, I don't think I dream in any language, but my brain just recognises what people in my dreams are communicating and my brain is then telling me it's another language..)) BUT the last one of not really consciously realising what language you've just heard or read (but understood!) is very relatable for me. A lot of my social media feeds are bilingual and there are *loads* of times when I'm reading news clips in different languages in my feed that I understand everything I'm reading but then, if asked, would have to consciously think what language each one was in because it's just all understood.
I wonder if it's harder to tell how fluent you are if you're outside of an environment which surrounds you with the language. For the past year or so I've chatted in depth for about n hour at a time with native French speakers pretty regularly on Skype about all sorts of things from politics to literature to women's issues to science to pop culture and I haven't started to consider myself (possibly) fluent until very recently as I've started reading and listening to French novels and podcasts made for adult native francophones. But I sometimes wonder if considering oneself fluent in a second language isn't also about just being confident enough to claim it. ;)
It took me a while before I was confident enough to claim it, so I definitely think that's an important factor too 😁 I love having multilingual social media feeds! It's also a great way to practice switching casually between languages without really having to think too hard about the transitions.
I'd add one thing to the list, I think: being able to crack a joke in the foreign language that makes laugh native speakers (meaning you got the sense of humour, and the phrasing). I believe there's also a cultural aspect to fluency, which actually goes with those expressions and reactions you mention.
Speaking of the latter, I sometimes switch from one language to the other without noticing it. Sometimes, it's just a reaction, as you mentioned (I sometimes speak in French (my native language) but swear in English, and vice versa). But other times, it's just weird things. My friends won't let me live down the fact I replied to "What's the pointy one over there?" by "Le pointy one c'est l'église". I had absolutely no reason to speak French in that context, but we were in France and I was speaking about some French architectural aspect, so for some reason, my brain switched back to French. At least it's a funny anecdote, I guess! It's annoying when I don't realise it right away, though.
Hello :) I'm Brazilian. I watch your videos to practice my English .. thank you so much
After almost of 5 years of studying linguistics, I can honestly say the label of bilingual/multilingual is surrounded by myths! If you’re interested in this topic read François Grosjean - Bilingual, its an academic book on my reading list, but it is so easy for anyone to read. I think you would enjoy it! ☺️
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check it out :D
I totally see what you mean when you say you don't fully notice you're in a foreign language
it's happened to me more than once that I was watching a show in english and then like an hour later I just realize I had forgotten the subtitles, which I always put on when I watch english stuff (helps me learning), because I didn't notice the show was actually in english lmao
That's great! I guess you don't really need the subtitles anymore then :D
I am so so happy for you. It's my dream to work as a bi lingual secretary for a while. Not sure what other skills i will need besides fluency. I would be prepared to do it for free even.
Hey. this video is amazing. i'm french, i think 'im kind of fluent in english and i'm trying pretty hard to learn turkish so thank you so much for this video ♡ et bon courage pour le français :)
A big bummer about languages is that if you don't practice them you lose them, and more quickly that you may think... I consider myself almost fluent english when it comes to understanding, reading or writing but I don't have many occasions to speak it so I see my level going down and down...
That's exactly what's happened to my Spanish. It's so incredibly frustrating 😩
The one where you don't register what language your hearing is the trippiest. Was watching a dutch tv show (am learning dutch) where in a scene, english, dutch, and cantonese were all being spoken (fluent since birth in the latter two) and my brain was going absolutely crazy
I start to feel fluent in another language when I feel like I can say anything I want to without searching for words or having to go around things to describe them. I was there once in French many years ago in high school but after not using French for years I have completely lost that again - even though I've now spend 3.5 years living in French speaking countries.
Love this take on learning a language.. Feels similar to how my process of learning Spanish is going. Feels like I'm in that transition of understanding the language really well, but need MUCH more conversational practice!
Aaah You make me excited to *one day* reach this level of fluency. But I have to say that, I don’t know if it’s because I am trilingual anyway, if I adopt the “natural reactions” like sounds/swear words in the language I am learning FIRST. Now my reaction isn’t “oh sh@t “ it’s put***....😂😂 Awesome video girl!! I’m inspired!
That's so interesting! I'm sure your way of learning languages changes significantly once you know so many already, so I would be really curious to find out how different our experiences in learning French end up being 😃
Andrea Heckler hahaha I will keep you posted. Maybe future vid idea collab idea ;) but I have a long way to go !
You mentioned dreaming in other languages and speaking to people in your dream in their native language. That always happens to me and even when I remember something that happened, I remember it in the language it happened in. For example, if I was taking about a certain subject in French with a native speaker, my memory of the details are in French and it's weird to think about it in English. The same goes for the other languages I speak fluently. If I spend long periods of time speaking a foreign language I often have dreams where everyone is speaking that language, even friends and family who don't actually speak it. I think it's based on the amount of exposure and the mind goes on autopilot. I'm also an interpreter so I am used to just speaking languages without consciously being aware of what language I am speaking.
I totally agree with you. Even if we still make mistakes, thinking in a foreign language is a good sign of becoming fluent. It happened to me after a few months living in London or in Houston. We also start being fluent when we use the local expressions, and not just translate our way of speaking in our own language into the foreign one.
I don’t always dream in the same language that I would have used irl... For me it’s mostly about what language I’m thinking in before I go to bed!
Wonderful Video, Enjoyed!💯 👍👍👏😄
The phrase I use a lot is “oh my god” and once I mixed an English “oh my god” and Russian “oh my god”. I can not remember what it sounded like, but that was so weird
Wow! The first comment 😍❤️ I really wait for your videos ❤️❤️ and I am really happy you have achieved fluency in French
My mother tongue is Portuguese, but i also speak Spanish and English. however, i make so many grammar mistakes in English and understanding jokes for me is still a struggle, but I'm really pleased with my level, even though i don't feel comfortable enough to have a conversation about subjects I'm not familiar with, as you mentioned' learning a new language is not easy', so you have to be proud of yourself.
Jokes are one of the hardest aspects of learning a non-native language -- I still struggle with them too 😅 But that makes it all the more rewarding when you do understand one of them!
I am from the Philippines and I don't consider myself as a bilingual but, I am currently watching this 1.5x and i understand it
I've been learning German for about five years now, and I would consider myself pretty close to fluent! I've found that even if I don't understand a specific word, I can usually figure out what it means in the context of the rest of the sentence. Also, I sometimes watch things in German with English subtitles, and notice when the subtitles don't translate exactly from German, if that makes sense!
You became fluent in just a couple years?? That's really impressive, admire that commitment to immersion.
I would add 2 other things
1- when you get bored by your mother language, Sometimes when I'm speaking alone, with myself. I just hate doing that in Portuguese, it doesn't seem right, as I do not live in a foreign country English is part of my inner world and portuguese the outside world. So everytime I'm thinking, speaking or reflecting I do it in English, and I've been doing that for the past 2 years so I'm used to it that it seems wrong when I do it in Portuguese.
2 - Brain malfunction, sometimes when someone suddenly speak in another language I've some trouble going back to the previous language, my brain simply can't decide which one I should use it so for some seconds I simply can't think in anything or I start to stutter.
For me, no matter what, dreaming always happens SUPER early
I'm bilingual(or should i say Multilingual?). German is my native Language and i'm learning English, French and Japanese at the same time (I'n not enjoying learning French) And i have this habit of changing from German to english to Japanese in mid-sentence. Also i started Dreaming and thinking in Japanese and i'm learning it 3 months i think ? I haven't learned quite much but I don't translate words in my Head as i do it in French. English is like a second native to me. but i always mess up between 4 languages. So yeah something about me here you go
I am not enjoying learning German on the other side lol
@@menopriezvisko94 feel that, German is the hardest language to learn even for Germans lmao
I’m fluent in Welsh and English but I use English more and I’m more comfortable using English. But I’m proud I can speak Welsh.
I would add to your last point, unintentionaly switching from one language to the other when you talk with someone who can speak both. I dated an American girl for 2 years and a half, and while she wasn't really fluent in French when we met, she definitely made huge progress within a year, and we would often have conversations in both languages at the same time (she'd speak English and I'd speak French usually, but sometimes the other way round) or just switch once in a while, sometimes because something was easier and more explicit in one language than in the other but sometimes with no obvious reason whatsoever.
And another thing is being able to multitask in a language (or in both at the same time), if you can talk and text, or read something while keeping track of a conversation, or follow 2 conversations at the same time. One of the first big tests for me leaving abroad was being with a group in a pub, sitting in the middle and trying to follow what's happening when different people were talking to each other across the table (made even worse by the ambiant noise of pubs and the fact the accent was not the one I was used to) and while I often dream, talk, think or react in English, group conversations can still be a struggle at time (usually fine with Americans, mostly OK with Aussies, terrifying with people from UK or Ireland).
And bonus ones, for annoying people like myself, cringing at some grammatical mistakes or verbal mannerisms... I had a dinner completely spoiled by a group of American girls saying "like" every 4 words.
Really great insights Andrea, thank you!
I'm fully bilingual in English and Spanish (Spanish being my native), and this is so damn true, all of this, but one of the things that is kind of bizarre, is when you are speaking in your native language and want so say a word or a concept, and you don't remember it in your OWN native language, seriously, this has happend to me a tons of times, I remember the word or concept in English but NOT in Spanish lmao.
The strangest thing for me was the first dream I had that was in German. I wasn’t even translating in my mind, I just knew German and could speak it and understand it in a dream.
Also, being unable to switch your brain back to your native language, like being stuck.
The best one I noticed myself is when you can fight with other people in the language. That’s how I realized I’m fluent in french already. XD It was on the metro and I had a fight with someone and we were both shouting in french. LOL. Idk
I have been learning English a years ago but I don't know if I'm fluent or not I just know that I understand the whole video.
I am a native arabic speaker and I am fluent in french because I am lebanese and we have to be either french educated or english educated so we are exposed to foreign languages that's why we tend to mix languages in our daily conversations so the most common lebanese greeting is "Hi kifak ça va ?" Which include 3 languages ! (Btw kifak= how are you)
Anyway, English is my 3rd language and I wasn't sure whether I am fluent in english or not.. That video helped a lot !! I subscribed to your channel Andrea ❤
I love that greeting :D I'm glad this video helped you! Thanks for subscribing!
Love this topic, thanks for sharing your experiences! I love that these are all ways of 'measuring' your progress without actually measuring in terms of numbers of ticked boxes in a test. :D
I’m from France but currently live in the states. My favorite thing is to read something and not register what language it is. Like it happened to me to read something in English and then explain what I just read to my french friend not realizing I read it in English. Or reading something in french and showing it to my boyfriend who doesn’t speak french at all. And he would be like “I cannot read that it’s in french” . But I don’t really pay attention to what language it is anymore, I just read and understand it.
A sign that I am getting more fluent in French was when I was talking French / English, English / French with my French Lady Love, then I spoke to the check out person at the local supermarket in French, rather than in English. (In Australia). I also notice sometimes I read French on the Internet without thinking about the language, just read the written words...This shows signs to me that I am progressing towards a better level of fluency in the French language. (I still have a way to go to be fully fluent in French).
That last comment about not registering that you were reading/listening to french had me going YEEEEES! I lived in Paris for a year and I have this clear memory where I was scrolling through fb and I read something in french and kept scrolling then was like HOLD ON, went back up and it was in french and i hadn't done the 'brain gear switch' as I like to say into French. It happened a lot after that! Unfortunately 5 years on and being back in Australia my french is really disappearing :(
Congrats!! Bravo
I was born and raised in Croatia. So my mother language is Croatian. I speak almost perfect English. And since two years ago I live in Germany so I had to learn German. I would say I am fluent in German but I do have alot more work to do to be as near to my English level. But I am very proud of myself 😊
one intersting step for me but it's quite an early one. so I am french at the begining of really learning english, i was watching movies in english. And at a certain point i realsied my brain was able to do vocal translation of the complete movie in my native language, it found a voice i i was remembering the movie as if everything was in french even if i only saw it once in english. I never tried it backwards tho. it is something i would call subcouncious fluency.
Very nice video :) It's funny, while I was listening to you I was thinking "I don't have to translate in my head I just hear you and understand" (I'm French). I think I already told you that but I was an au pair in England 1 year ago and it's how my English got better. I still understand quite well but I'm losing the speaking part ! As I'm no longer surrounded by this language, I don't think or dream in it anymore... I need to find a way to keep practicing, because teaching English to students is not enough to maintain my level. As you can see on my English video I'm not really fluent anymore, I pause a lot and speak slowly ^^ I send you a lot of love ♥
I am learning French and I am no where near fluent. But as someone who plays football I would say that language isn’t or doesn’t have to be a barrier. Lots of the communication is innate and unspoken. My point being that even though it is very impressive to be bi lingual lots of the communication we do as people is innate and as a product of knowing what we are meant to do in certain situations. Admittedly my experience of football is only at park level but I think that that validates my point because no one else would be particularly amazing at football but even with a basic level of understanding that was able to make up for the lack of communication between us because we intuitively knew what to do and how each other would react. In a nut shell language isn’t necessarily a barrier depending on what you are doing.
As I am mostly in my native laguage environnement, I need a bit of time to "become fluent" in another language.
But the more fluent, the less time it takes to change the mind into the language.
For English, I can change in less than 10 minutes if I'm focused, but for Spanish, I'd need a couple of days to get somewhat fluent.
That's a very good point! Sometimes, especially when you're out of practice, it takes a bit of time to "remember" how to be fluent again 😅
I learn Spanish and french, speak English as a second language, and my native language is Malayalam, which I'm pretty fluent in terms of speaking but not in terms of grammar
Hello Andrea may i say you are an Awesome TH-camr, you make Excellent Content for your Channel, Absolutely Entertaining, Appreciate it! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cool video. Great topic and interesting insights. I sent something funny to my husband and instead of making him laugh he was confused because it turned out it was in French and I didn’t realize it.
Salut 👋. I would say we are very close to the same level en français! This is amazing because you are the first I’ve seen that describes your level of competency almost the same as mine. You can talk to your friends and family well? French movies still go over your head a bit because of the subtle details of accent and liaison «not just the Z sound liaison either »😂 ? In other words you probably loved « Le dîner de cons » if you watched it, but a lot of the side dialogues were difficult? Your reading is 1st? , speaking is second and hearing/ listening is third ? If that sounds like your level I’m right there with you haha my girlfriend lives in Èpernay, France so I’m getting better everyday. But as you know, your loved ones in France are an amazing way to maintaining and to practice what you learnt, BUT are not always maybe even not usually a amazing way to learn new grammar or really much technical things as you usually are more focused on communication with your loved ones because they are conditioned to understand you. You should do a video on how having a French girlfriend or boyfriend helps, but it should just be the «icing on the cake» and how you can actually plateau because of just communicating with your partner and not trying anything new in your target language. I think a lot of learners fall into that trap. I would love to talk to you one day when we both have some time about all the stuff that relates to our level and how we can keep improving and pushing through to even higher levels. If you want to talk about these things let me know what app you want to use through message or whatever! All of Us anglophones learning French to real proficiency are all in this together hahah. Stay motivated 💪 Merci pour les vidéos, j’ai hâte regarder tous les prochaines!
Interesting video.
Yet I started to express thoughts in english (I'm french) at the very beginning of my learning. They were very simple sentences of course, but I don't think it's necessarily a sign that you're fluent.
Another funny thing related to the last example you gave is when you remember having heared or read something somewhere, but don't remember in what language. You just remember the meaning of the sentence, but you're not able to remember the original sentence in the original language.
I speak Swedish and English, am trying to get fluent in Spanish now !😇
I feel that the dream you had, was probably more of an indication, of the amount of information related to French that you had absorbed and not so much about how fluent you were at the time, also emphasising the potential for fluency. Considering the brain stores so much information but we do not necessarily have full access to it in our conscious state.
I do agree with you. I did exactly the same than Andrea 1 year and a half ago but in order to learn English and I experienced that kind of dreams as well. :)
Dreams can be part of "new information consolidation" process, the process of moving new information from short term memory into long term memory and I suppose this is the kind of dream she had. People who judge bilingualism on the basis of dreaming in a nother language speak of different dreams, which occur when one does not learn this language during the day. This is "retrival type of dream " not "memory/new info consolidation type of dream" which she had (what is "storage type of dream"- the opposite of retrival). A bilingual person might spend all day long speaking one language yet dream in another one and this means that this person is truely bilingual.
The only time I struggle with understanding English is when I watch British movies. American English is as easy to understand as my native language. I don't consider myself fluent. Listening is one thing but when expressing myself in another language I easily run out of words. It depends what the topic is. I read books in French but don't speak or write it well.
Great video, and congratulations on your level of French - observations tout à fait pertinentes ;-)
All the dreams I have in my target language (Spanish) everyone in the dream who is speaking it is speaking it really slowly and brokenly, basically how I talk. It's hilarious, like even my friends who speak fluent spanish in reality speak like me in my dreams...
I still have most of these things to look forward to. However, when speaking in my native English, sometimes I find myself using the French/Latin derived synonym of a word (like "respond" instead of "answer"), even if it doesn't quite have the the right meaning.
I did part of my bachelor university education in English and I approached fully to that language when I was a teenager (I was surrounded by American friends) even though I am an Italian native speaker. In any case I did not learned English during my childhood, however sometimes takes control over my brain and I use English expressions in Italian. I still haven't reach the mother tongue level in English but my Italian is starting to get replaced by English, Even though I live in Italy. I don't know how should I call myself and if that would be normal
I pretty sure I am fluent in English (even though I still struggle to actually "talk" in english. my grammar is a little off and i can't say some word properly, especially if it begin with an "h") but I do understanding it and often watch english content without subtitles. I do text some friend exclusively in english and I often think in english (almost more than french) probably because I watch so much english content. Sadly, I don't remember my dreams so I'm not sure which language is in them. But 99% of the time I only write in english and don't talk out loud. I did leave a year abroad and had to talk to my classmate there in english but it was sweden so english wasn't the native language for most people. And even then they had some issue understanding my french accent.
Ruchunteur interesting point: what happens when people using English / French as L2 or L3 talk to each other? Frenchman speaking English + Swede speaking English is a bit unfair, though ;-) Joking here, of course, congratulations on your level of English! ( ⚽ ock heja Sverige! om du unnar dem en chans ;-)
No idea how to speak sweden ahah. I whent in an international univercity for a year so every cours were in english. What I notices is that native english speaker had trouble understanding me. Some austrian struggled a little bit but they understand me easier. I had trouble understanding Pakistan accent though. Swedish people didn't seem to struggle to much to understand me but because it was an international university, they weren't a lot of them. an italian girl didn't seem to struggle to understand me though (maybe because french and itialian have the same root ? who knows).
But when a french person talk to another french person in english, we usually understand each other completely (in the pronunciation anyway). Because we tend to use french rules of pronunciation without noticing it. like in french, the letter 'h' is silent. so a word like "hungry" sound exactly like "angry" to us so when a french guy say he is hungry we understand what he is talking about instantly because of context. Another person that actually know how to pronunciation the "h" letter might thing we are "angry" because our pronunciation is bad and since they clearly hear "angry" they don't understand that we though of "hungry" in our head. that it's not a vocabulary issue but a pronunciation one.
Also, I don't know if homonym are widely use in english but there is a loooooooooooot of them in french so it's not unusual for us to use the same pronunciation for the different things. like "verre", "vert", "ver", "vers", "vair" which mean "glass", "green", "worm", "toward" and "vair" in english but have the same pronunciation in french but nobody mistaken those words in a normal conversation.
Ruchunteur thanks for your kind reply and the interesting insight!
I once made intercambio (conversation exchange) with a Spaniard. At first I thought his English was really bad, until I realized he just pronounced it the way he would (Andalusian) Spanish: using just 5 vowels, and skipping a fair share of the consonants. When I realized this, I finally managed to understand him fairly well ...
And when I studied at a French university, I was more than happy meeting other German students speaking simple, slow and perhaps badly (or for that matter German) pronounced French with me until I eventually adapted French spoken at a pace the French speak it ...
I have a friend who is trilingual in French, German and English from birth (slightly jealous). It's funny watching her try and shift her brain out of French gear and back into German or English so that we can start talking again. She gets a bit flustered when I start talking about German in a theoretical way (Do you think these words share a root? I don't know, you're making my brain hurt!) or I ask her to translate something too. She also starts chatting to me in French without realising it because her mind wanders. On a trip to Berlin, a German teacher turned from her conversation with me to a monolingual (English) teacher and relayed what we had been talking about, but forgot to switch back to English. We both sat and looked at her until she realised she was speaking in the wrong language.
I am jealous now too with my stupid monolingual brain (no English is not my native language but I can't say I am bilingual because I am nowhere near fluent)
Ma langue maternelle c'est le portugais, et je t'entends parfaitement en anglais. Actu, j'appprends l'allemand et c'est génial pour moi de savoir toutes ces langues.
Par contre, j'ai parfois eu l'impression d'avoir tout oublié de ce que j'ai appris en français pendant 6 ans d'études de la langue. Mais bon, ça marche encore.
C'est intéressant ton expérience avec le français, et J'espère qu'on puisse se parler un jour en français, ça serait super.
I’ve had a dream of my friends who don’t know of my second language which is Japanese speaking it to me so what does that mean? Hahaha
con tu video practiqué mi listening jejeje. buen video. gracias!
Bravo Andrea
Definitely not fluent but omg the spontaneous reactions in Russian are real
Oh, I remember dreaming in English twice:
First time was when I started to study Japanese, I remember catching a bus and seeing a Japanese woman, she didn't know Portuguese and I couldn't understand her coz she was speaking Japanese so I started to speak in English.
Second time it was a bit weider, it was me a man a woman a rat and a chicken, the man was sorta interviewing the woman In English and then he asked, what did you do yesterday?, she answered "I bought a book and I read" and then I said "omg her English is amazing and the chicken agreed with me, but the rat pointed out that she didn't say "read it". It was so weird
Nice video! Going by your yardsticks, I daresay I'm pretty fluent as well. But, I may be going easy on myself seeing as I don't live in a French speaking environment. I'm Nigerian, resident in the same country, and I grew up speaking English and Yoruba, both of which I'm very fluent in (English more than Yoruba, because I had my education entirely in English). I started learning French (seriously) about a year ago, and I'd say I've come a pretty long way. Note, Nigeria isn't a French speaking country, so I learn mostly via the internet, and I was at an Alliance Francais for the most part of last year. I can think in French now without necessarily having to translate into English, I actually react to situations in French too (imagine how weird this sounds to people around) and I read really well in French and I'd say I write more-than-decent French. However, actually speaking it is unarguably the most convincing evidence, and I don't get to do that a lot here (already explained the language situation in Nigeria). I guess my claim to fluency will actually be validated when I'm actually in a French speaking country and I have to speak the language out loud and extempore. Do you agree?
Speaking is definitely an important aspect of fluency, possibly the most important -- but if you have all the other skills up to a high level, then you're probably going to excel quite quickly once you start getting more speaking practice! :)
Andrea Heckler yeah I guess you're right. Thanks! Looking forward to more of your videos 😊
I'm french and I feel exactly what you're talking about with english :D
Great video, thank you! Have you ever had the experience where you’ve explained something or told a story or otherwise had a conversation and then later been clueless as to whether it was in English or French? And, regarding later stage fluency, can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide in French easily?
Hi Andrea, did you feel at ease with French when talking to people or watching a youtube video in French but find it hard with movie and songs? It's quite common I think but have no clue about why this happens.
I think almost everybody experiences this difference. In TH-cam videos there is usually only one person speaking at a time and most people speak clearly. In movies, like in real life, they mumble, they speak quickly, they use a lot of slang, multiple people are talking at once, there is background noise, etc. I find movies and TV shows far harder to understand than TH-cam videos. The one exception is documentaries. Those typically have a narrator speaking clearly.
Yes, I often find movies and music harder to understand than more "natural", everyday situations! Music is usually because the ways of speech, expression, and tone are completely altered (that even applies to music in your native language! haha). For movies, I think it's simply because the speech has been written to be meaningful, clever, impactful. Every line usually conveys something important, and often they're filled with jokes and cultural references, or references to background or plot that you need to understand the movie. It's the only way to develop a good story in such a short amount of time, but it can make it challenging to follow as a non-native speaker!
I'm French West-Indian so I speak French and Creole. I grew up learning not to mix both languages in one sentence but I've been diving back into Spanish lately, and experiencing a few mix-ups lol!
Like when I wanted for my mom to throw me the tv remote over an armchair a few days ago. I wanted to say "envoie-la" in French, but blurted out a Creole-Spanish impropable hybid : "voyalo"!
Creole : "voyé-y"
Spanish : "envialo" (I guess! Not quite fluent yet lol)
Audrey 404 not found That’s so funny! I‘ve experienced some weird mixups with French and Spanish too, especially because they’re often so similar 😅
This happens sometimes. More often to boys than to girls due to how human brain works. Female brain does multitasking easier, so this issue is not so serious among girls. In my own family happened once, to a boy. It's common among native speakers living in multulingual communities, since natural born multilingual child has brain which initially mixes all forms of grammatical and lexical structures into one structure. And struggles to make it coherent. But over time kids notice the difference, based on phonetics mainly and separate two languages, but their brain still stores this information in one lingustic megastructure. This is main difference visible during brain research between people who are bilingual since childhood and people who became bilingual or multilingual in adulthood. Scientists can see it on computer screen. ;-) I was doing the same as a kid mixing Polish with Russian. My cousin's son was doing this with his Polish and French and it was so bad that they had to stick to French only. He didn't speak any Polish until the age of 16 after this, despite spending all holidays with us, his Polish speaking relatives from other countries (my family lives all over the Europe, and even outside of it). So yes, it's natural. And hey, "voyalo" sounds quite nice actually.
well I don’t think I can say I’m bilingual but I’m able to speak English , especially while writing
i'm totally fluent in english but i don't think i dream in english ? like it probably happened when i was trying to get fluent so i would immerge myself with the language but now it never happen, i think? (je suis française)
Another sign is making up jokes or puns in your new language. Once I was out camping with a church group and everyone spoke Spanish, which I grew up as a receptive speaker of. Someone went out to gather wood to put on the fire, and I asked "¿Qué más quemas?" I've also made up tongue twisters in German, my fourth, and first non-native, language, as well as my first three.
Once a guy at church, who works as a translator, asked me if "lullaby" means "canción de cuna". I answered yes, even though I had never heard the phrase "canción de cuna" (literally "song of crib").
Which brings up a question: Spanish has "cuna", which is directly from Latin; French has "berceau", which appears to be from Gaulish. Does any language have both words and distinguish cribs from cradles?
Pierre Abbat I would guess most languages do; at least German does. Generally speaking English has a vaste and precise vocabulary, whereas French has less words and tends to be more abstract. berceau vs. cradle / crib is a good example. Remember that Racine just uses 2000 words in all of his plays, so they say. I have not counted, but I guess Shakespeare uses some more ;-)
Although , Im not 100% fluent but the thing is I can communicate using english.
yes that dream I remember I was speaking in english and talking with my dad then the ammuse thing in my dream was he speaking in english too .
je parle assez bien anglais et le comprend assez bien mais dans certaines situations les gens parlent trop vite ou dans des vidéos j'ai besoin des sous-titres en anglais . En tout cas bravo pour le parcours que tu as déjà effectué en français, c'est une langue pas facile même pour nous.
Ok So right now I currently working on Spanish. I speak English as my native language and sometimes honestly I don't know if I were to consider myself fluent in the language yet. I think because Spanish speakers speak fast and I am able to pick up some words and can understand some of the conversations. I also find myself accidentally speaking in that language in non-Spanish environments. I do still think about how to put some sentences sometimes. I would like to know what level of fluency would you consider this?
I realized that I was fluent in English when I was walking and I hit my little toe at my bed's leg and I screamed "What the..... ahhhh... that's..,hunnmm" it was painful but I immediately laughed coz my reaction was in English
Hello Andrea, I've known you like writing, so where I can read your articles or your blog or something like that? I really want to read them. Thank you!
Hi! I recently started a website, where I will be publishing occasional blog posts and that sort of thing: www.andreaheckler.org 😊
I have a question, though. How else do you improve your French if you’re not in France or if no one in your home speaks French? I’m actually doing Duolingo now and I’m still a beginner, but how do I improve further? I’m also watching French Tedx talks with the French subtitles on, but to be honest, I’m not sure how far I can improve. Have you got any tips for me?