Gaipan

Conversational is a huge range for me. It's understanding and being understood but with lots of thinking pauses and grammatical mistakes.

But could you not think a lot and make mistakes and also fall into the category of fluent? If not, we are talking native, aren’t we?

I'd still say native is someone who sounds like they grew up speaking that language.

Awesome! Thank you! I struggle because many Canadians ask me if I am fluent in Japanese, which I would argue can mean a lot of things.

But most people want to know if you’re functional, so often that’s what I assume Canadians mean by fluent. Not what I consider fluent!

I'd say functional is conversational. Being able to carry on philosophical conversations would be more like fluent.

The middle ground here is that many people can speak at length and philosophically within their “expert” subject areas, but otherwise cannot

I'd say I'm low conversational in Japanese cos I can exchange with people but not easily and well. I'd say someone like my husband is...

... fluent level in English cos he can understand even technical topics and concepts in English.

To match this to terminology, would you consider this a difference between BICS and CALP? https://sites.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/Best%20of%20Bilash/bics%20calp.html …

Hmm I'd say proficiency/low conversational could have BICS aspects but conversational and fluency would require being able to do CALP.

Wouldn't necessarily say if someone can handle CALP then they're fluent

(Is this the stuff you study? Super interesting stuff.)

(IT IS! Which is why I’m so curious! My personal definitions are a bit different, and the term fluent has many levels for me )

I guess I just have such a high idea of fluent/native vs everything else! I grew up with a native English father and a fluent (accented)...