brw1:

InsaneInter:

mschmitt:

sudanglo:Anything less than this and you are kidding yourself about your competence.

I've been learning/speaking english since 30 years now and still I'm kidding myself about my competence because under terrorist attack I might potentially lose control of my foreign language skills.

Feel free to look down on me, just because you are a native english speaker. I do know for sure that I never look down on my non-native colleagues who speak fluent german with frequent errors.

I won't look down on you . Bis bald!

Fluent speakers make mistakes to but, we can usually catch them our selves and self correct.

Yes, true. I make mistakes on a weekly basis LOL( though that's nothing to laugh about).

Do you sudanglo speak Esperanto according to your definition?

To be honest I would have to say no. But then there would be very few Esperantists, perhaps none, who could say that they speak Esperanto by my definition.

I fancy it doesn't actually make sense to apply my definition to Esperanto.

Whilst for the national languages comparison can be made between the foreign learner's performance and that of the native speaker, that comparison isn't well-based for Esperanto.

sudanglo:What does this mean? What should it mean?

To me it means the ability to handle the situations in which you are likely/going to use a language.

I speak Punjabi in my family. I can't write and read in Punjabi - English is reserves that prestige (language of high culture) in India. I talk to friends in Hindi/Urdu because it is considered softer, more refiened than Punjabi. So I'm trilingual.

Now, I can never speak to my parents in English, or read books in Punjabi, or talk to friends in English. In other words, I will find it tough to use these languages outside the domains I have grown used to. So I'm fluent in none of the above languages.

Turning to Sudanglo's definition, I will say something like: "Hey! There is an emergency! Ambulance lai ke aao!" (mixture of English-Punjabi) in an emergency.

Do you call it a language? I think more of us are bilinguals (or multilinguals) than monolinguals. That's is just a hunch.

sudanglo:From time to time you might hear someone say I speak X (where X is not his mother tongue but a language learnt in adulthood).

What does this mean? What should it mean?

To my mind it ought to mean - faced with a stressful situation, some emergency or panic-inducing situation, you can express yourself using the right expressions without hesitation.

Well, what is an emergency or panic-inducing situation?

I had this situation in France. I came from FESTO in Gresillion to Angers in a borrowed car. It was the morning of a bank holiday in France, therfore there where no busses from Gresillion to Angers so I borrowed the car from another Esperantist to drive to Angers to catch an early train to Paris. I would leave the key in it and the other guy would come to get it with a second key. On the motorway into Angers the engine of the car died. I just made it off the motorway. So the situation: bank holiday morning in a borrowed not working car on an exit of the motorway and you need to catch the train in 40 minutes.

Is this emergency or panic-inducing enough in order to test language skills? If so, I can say that I speak English, French and Esperanto.

The essence of my criterion is performance in a situation where you have to communicate quickly and are under stress.

I cannot tell from your description of the episode in France, Johmue, whether that was such a situation. It is not obvious whether you were under time pressure to compose your thoughts, or indeed that there was anybody else in the car.

Describing the situation to someone after the car had come to rest, would be a relatively relaxed affair.

To flesh out the meaning of my test, watch any action movie and in the tense situations that arise in the film (and where speed of communication is the essence), try to imagine yourself in the heat of the action and ask yourself whether in such a situation you could have responded/communicated appropriately in language X.

Personal note: by the time I had worked out the best way in Esperanto to say Duck! (get your head down) the other party would have been shot/spotted/captured/hit his head.

sudanglo:To flesh out the meaning of my test, watch any action movie and in the tense situations that arise in the film (and where speed of communication is the essence), try to imagine yourself in the heat of the action and ask yourself whether in such a situation you could have responded/communicated appropriately in language X.

Personal note: by the time I had worked out the best way in Esperanto to say Duck! (get your head down) the other party would have been shot/spotted/captured/hit his head.

Well, then your definition is rather useless. I wouldn't know, if I could express myself in my native language in such situations.