First up, I want to highlight that this isn’t a rant – far from it in fact. I’ve had a series of very interesting experiences in the past 18 months, and as an intermediate learner, *I want to broach the question to you all about whether ideas of fluency vs. 1:1 equivalent fluency are holding us back and making us judge our skills levels more harshly than we should? Likewise, is this obsession with a constantly shifting and sometimes subjective bar making us downplay what we CAN do?*
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The short end of this is, while I haven’t reached advanced/上級 Japanese and I’m all too conscious of the gaps in my understanding in terms of breath of vocabulary and Kanji, I think as an intermediate learner the question is now shifting to how articulate and literate I am (or can work towards being), versus purely ‘fluent’. Let me elaborate.
I got a chance to return to Japan for a few weeks last year, and the experience was… astonishing. I’d lost a lot of confidence during the pandemic, and the question of reaching ‘fluency’ grew increasingly heavy on my shoulders. However, in the span of 3 weeks and after warming up (and a few small stumbles with it), the following things happened entirely in Japanese for me:
\- I handled the entry and exit processes for customs.
\- I sent multiple packages home, which included having to ask about the process for printing Yu-puri labels in a post office.
\- I ordered food, asked about dishes, and even requested customisations.
\- I had ongoing small talk with a lot of smaller shop keepers, asked questions, found things I wanted, and inquired about things I was looking for.
\- I scheduled and rescheduled train tickets when some issues popped up.
\- I sat through a history lecture in Kyoto and got about 40-50% of it.
\- I got asked on a number of occasions how long I’d lived in the area, and got puzzled looks when I indicated I was a tourist.
\- I cracked jokes, I socialised, and had a few extended conversations with strangers about a wide range of topics.
While I have been reading general shounen/shoujo manga and getting most of it for about a year and half, and I’ve been able to tune out and half-pay attention to subtitles easily, it’s always been a sticking point that I’ve struggled to really read proper books in Japanese. I’ve had good runs, but I’ve lacked consistency, and exposition has always been a sticking point.
However, something happened at work today that changed my thinking a bit. We had two temporary Japanese workers at my job and we were trying to get them set up on the IT systems. I had popped in to check in about something, and I ended up walking the pair through installing English typing and how to install the security certificates for devices to work properly with our network. The IT department was in a bit of a bind, and before I knew it… I was quite literally explaining it properly in Japanese, even if I lacked the specialist vocabulary at times.
I am all too aware of the gaps in my vocabulary/Kanji and the lack of consistent opportunities in my country to use Japanese has hit my fluidity a little (without warming up), but isn’t all of this effectively being fluent? Isn’t it a statement that for a wide variety of everyday circumstances this is a pretty functional level? I’ve gotten hung up on the idea of that ‘fluent’ label implying a huge and broad skill set that I haven’t really taken time to consider what it might really mean.
What I’m trying to articulate here (and poorly I feel), is that we get all too trapped in the idea of ‘fluent’ being this monumental, monolithic standard that keeps shifting every time we think we had the idea of it down. Likewise, I think at a certain point, it’s now a question of breadth and depth of knowledge, versus general fluency. You become fluent and functional, and then it’s time to branch out and specialise. It’s an exciting position to be in as well.
Anyway, if you take anything from this, don’t doubt the progress you’re making, and while the idea of being ‘fluent’ may be mired in ideas of perfection and being able to handle ANY situation (which is difficult in our first language to begin with), we may be doing better than we give ourselves credit for.
by StringsTautAbove