How credible is the fluent in 3 months guy - Benny Lewis

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It's where you know just enough to get your arse kicked for saying the wrong thing.

I agree, but I'm trying to learn Czech without being dropped in Prague. It's really hard to find material.

Took me 3 years in undergrad and another 3 living in Taiwan to become fluent in Mandarin.

So I call bullshite on 3 months.

From his website,

LINK

"When I have truly reached fluency in other languages I can say that I speak without hesitating too much (very few ums and uhs; this is the actually closer to the core meaning of the word “fluent” as in flowing), making very few mistakes (maybe a couple every minute of consistent talking), being very easy to understand for others (still with an accent, but not a strong one) and understanding the majority of what is said to me in normal and casual contexts."



What another language considers fluent,


Five signs that you speak a foreign language fluently.

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1. You’re able to speak the language without making mistakes – even when you’re multitasking

2. You’re able to eavesdrop

3. You have dreams in the language

4. You find it hard to “tune out” background conversations

5. Native speakers stop complimenting your language skills

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My sister speaks great French and no one really bats an eye over there when she orders at a restaurant or gets into a conversation.

I thought I was actually pretty damn good at Italian until I went to Rome and some of the natives just responded to me in English.

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France is notoriously xenophobic.

You probably are good at Italian, but your accent tips them off to your national origin. Even very minor mistakes are enough to distinguish a regional dialect from a nonnative speaker.

I used to work in ecommerce, and we had a lot of buyers in Puerto Rico. I quickly learned to tell who was looking up how to say something in English, and I would write back to those customers in Spanish. Also had a lady who ordered over the phone by credit card. I worked out a system with her where she gave me her credit card information in English and I read it back in Spanish. Even if you're fluent your brain is going to default to your first language for digits.

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The Army taught my buddy to get along fairly well in German in three weeks, so I'd say it's possible.

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LDS missionaries usually take a 6 week course if I remember correctly, although I would assume they start with some background in the language they're using.

He considers conversationlly fluent, fluent. There is a scale to test your knowledge for language fluency. It starts from A1 and goes to C2 I believe, which is native fluency.