Obviously learning a couple of words in another language doesn’t really make you bilingual, or being able to say a few phrases. But there’s also clearly some point before full fluency where you can be considered bilingual, but how is it determined (formally or informally)? Is it purely vibes based, you’ll know when you see it kind of thing?
I’m vaguely familiar with the CEFR levels measuring how much of a language you speak, but if there’s a cutoff point for counting as bilingual in there somewhere I don’t know where.
As someone who never quite reached this level myself, I feel like it’s when you start being able to think in the second language inside your head.
I only got to the point where I had flashes of this happen for specific topics that didn’t translate well. For everything else I kept thinking in English, even if I then needed to convert it back mentally after.
In the same vein as your response, I’ve heard people say that they start dreaming in the other language, too, and understanding it. Being a monolinguist myself, I can’t speak with any authority, but my understanding is when you stop thinking about what you say and you’re just saying it, combined with the dreaming in it, is a good identifier.
People who say that they speak whatever random number of languages but it’s only memorized sayings…? Yeah, that’s not* the same thing, you guys.
Edit: I’m married to a Puerto Rican who works in interpretation and translation, just for my credentials here. In one of our last minor tiffs she did mention something about me not learning Spanish and how she felt some kind of way about it… but, hey. Languages are difficult, and there are plenty of relationships where a partner didn’t learn the language and it’s not a big deal. I’m busy and stressed out with work.
I’m married to a Mexican but I enjoyed learning Spanish in school (in the Midwest); later in life after moving to Los Angeles I started using Spanish quite a bit.
If I can nudge you to try learning it, you might end up enjoying it. I’m crazy busy with work too but I’ve started learning Mandarin online with a tutor and after a bit of a learning curve, it’s deeply satisfying when things start to click.
Idk, I’m bilingual and I only ever think in English. It doesn’t really seem to make a difference though, saying things out loud vs in my head.
I’m learning a third language now and can just barely communicate with others (worked with a taxi driver!). That said, I wouldn’t consider myself truly trilingual yet. I could think in that language but it doesn’t really feel like it changes anything - I still only know the same words in my head
My thoughts aren’t in a language, so this always confused me as a benchmark.
I’d say: When you can communicate with other speakers of that language. Then, since you can communicate in two languages you’d be bi-lingual.
When you can speak and think in the new language without translating to your native language in your head, maybe? That can actually happen pretty fast. You don’t have to become anywhere near fluent.
At what point when accumulating grains of sand do they become a heap?
I think I am basically 95% bilingual, my native language is not English, but it was thought in school from first grade (age 5 or 6) all the way to high school (17 years old), and then in post-highschool education, I also had 2 mandatory English courses. The thing is having learned so early is I was too young to realize when I could start entertaining a conversation in English without thinking because it was almost always like that for me.
I do think though that when you can think in your 2nd language without having to mentally translate in your head to your native language is when you’ve reached a level of fluency that is good enough to be called bilingual. I would probably say, if you can understand jokes and plays on words in your second language, that’s probably a good indicator that you are fluent
I felt I was bilingual when I started thinking in spanish. I’m not completely fluent but I speak well and can understand most things with context if I don’t know the words.
One practical way to informally assess your bilingual level:
You are bilingual when you have a friend who can only speak your second language.
When you can dream in the language
Well, then I’m nolingual, I guess.
I like to say that English is my second language. I have no first language.
In high school while studying Katakana one of the coolest things was having a dream of walking around Tokyo and reading the Katakana everywhere.
This is not a word that has a strict definition nor is certified by any agency or standard. As you can see by this thread, there may be a variety of personal opinions about what should count. But it’s like asking at what point in learning to ride a bike do you become a bicyclist? Is it enough to just know how to ride? It’s a semantic question, which, if you’re not familiar with that term, just means that it all depends on what you want to call something and is not a question of any objective criteria.
