In the USA most of us have never mastered anything but English. You may be taught other languages in school but if you are never immersed in them for any period of time you never feel comfortable reading, writing, or speaking a foreign language. My unscientific observation is that most Germans are fluent in both German and English. In Germany is English taught in all schools? How do people become fluent in both German and English? If you are truly bi lingual, what language do you “think” in?
First of all, not everyone thinks in language. A lot of people think in abstract concepts they only materialize into language when they need to output them. For them, the question is moot.
Second, it’s highly context dependent. In situations where you speak language A, you’ll tend toward language A, and vice versa for language B.
That said, I can assure you that 99% of Germans are NOT bilingual with English, despite being fluent. Think of it as C1 in the Oxford scale, with very few on C2.
C1 is fluent, but it doesn’t matter. Fluency is a myth. Language is a tool, if you have a need for the language and you accomplished it using the language, then you’re bilingual. It doesn’t matter if in the process you made 3 grammatical errors and conjugated 2 verbs wrong, and skipped a pronoun. If you achieved your goal then you’re fluent and bilingual, anything else are style points assigned arbitrarily.
Language is a two or more person activity, the other person can always bridge the gap as a listener or speaker, and that is actually a good thing. Those who ditch the fluency myth and dare to use the language in spite of errors learn faster.
Also, it is the Common European Framework of Reference, Oxford does not own it, they just make one of the many tests that exist for somewhat qualifying a person’s proficiency at using a language, and it is broken down into 4 activities and 3 competencies, and many more dimensions. A person can absolutely ignore the written component of a language while speaking naturally with others, or vice versa, understand and write grammatically perfect while being less able to listen or speak. Language competencies are complex and dynamic, changing over time. Fluency is not a concept in the CEFR, but it is used as an adjective to describe some competencies as early as the B1 level, it never uses nor does it try to qualify multilingualism either. If you use another language, you’re multilingual, period. Linguists actually think most of the world’s population is at least bilingual.
That’s literally what I said.
Sure.
If you read past the first line, you’d notice that is not the main point of my comment. The point is that fluency doesn’t define bilingualism. You don’t need to be C2 to be considered bilingual.
Which, again, I never said.
Who are you arguing against here?
I’m not arguing against anyone, just made a point. Don’t get mad about it. I’m not attacking you.
Don’t get mad about it, but you’re an insufferable person to have a conversation with and I’m going to block you now.
I understand, I can see how an insecure individual would perceive my replies as such. Thank you for pointing out your feelings and bringing this learning opportunity to my attention. I apologize for unintentionally making you uncomfortable.