Different people have different standard of what it means to be fluent in a language. I would say that if you can comfortably have a casual conversation you’re fluent. If you’re fluent in 2 languages I would call that bilingual. You don’t have to be as good as a native speaker in both languages.

English is your second language and you typed a pretty long post in perfect grammar so I would say you’re bilingual.

I would say if you are both fluent and sometimes think in both languages (not translating when you talk) you are bilingual. So yes you are bilingual not ‘just fluent’, though in my opinion being fluent without visiting an English speaking country is quite an accomplishment.

For me personally, when you reach a level where you can think, and communicate in the non-native language (without doing mental translations back and forth) with enough ease and speed, no mater the topic at hand (meaning that even if you don’t know a technical or specific word you can make yourself understood), and even if you make grammatical mistakes or have an accent, the point of the conversation is not lost between participants, then you can consider yourself fluent enough on said language.

My native tongue is Spanish (could you tell if I didn’t mention it?), but I have consumed so much content throughout (and yes I did check how to spell throughout) my life only in English and practiced enough doing conversations both writing and speaking (even with an accent) on the internet that I can communicate with ease and be understood.

I have visited the United States a handful of times for around a month for vacations with family, so I can say that I had to communicate with native people outside the internet now, but I haven’t had any formal education except a few very basic English courses in high school.

Judging by the text of your post alone, you’re bilingual.

Had you not said that English wasn’t your first language, I, a native English speaker, would never have know.

I’d say somewhere between 2 and 3.

The first option would also result in the weird situation that most South Africans (11 official languages), who use English in everyday life, would not count as bilingual because there’s still a bit of a difference to fully native speakers. My wife grew up with Sesotho, but started learning English from 1st grade on and all her classes in school and university have been in English. Her English is better than mine (5th grade, and all but English-classes in German), but worse than that of my USA or British friends.

born in a bilingual country / completely indifferent to native, educated speakers of the language

While we are on the topic, you wouldn’t normally use “indifferent” like that. A better word would be “indistinguishable”.

“Bilingual” is really hard to define.

I live in Taiwan (English is my native language), and have studied Chinese to be passably fluent. I can trick people into thinking I can follow advanced conversations, interjecting comments here or there (even though I’m mostly lost – just picking out the tidbits I do understand and commenting on them).

But am I bilingual? At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. What matters the most is whether your level is “good enough” to do what you want! In my case, I just want to be able to go to the store, buy things, and hang out with friends. I can read the newspaper, but I’ll never be able to read/write business contracts – but that’s not a goal of mine.

There are so many different shades of bilingual. Don’t worry about it… and just be as good as you need to reach your goals!

It’s worth mentioning that the word bilingual has different meanings in US English and in British English.

For native British speakers, someone who is bilingual is someone who speaks two languages at a native level, while the accepted US meaning is someone who can speak two languages, especially with equal or nearly equal fluency.

With the British definition, it’s pretty clear whether someone is bilingual or not. Most people are not, and it’s almost impossible for an adult to become bilingual later in life. Generally it only happens when someone has two parents each with a different mother tongue.

The US meaning is much wider than the British one, and I guess it’s the meaning you’re intending with your question. It basically comes down to the definition of fluent. It’s completely possible to be fluent in a language while still having a foreign accent and still making the occasional grammar mistake. My personal definition of fluency is when you are able to talk to native speakers on pretty much any subject without serious misunderstandings. You don’t need to know every word you may encounter, as you can simply ask the other person what a word means just as native speakers do all the time.

Um the first part of 2 and the 2nd part of 2 are two very different things. I know lots of people who pass the language test to get into college but make a lot of grammatical errors. Also basically require spellcheck/chatgpt to write a basic email. Also even my roommate makes grammatical errors in conversation and she has to do her job in her second language. You seem bilingual to me, seems kind of silly you seem to think you need to spent a year in England or something to be considered bilingual.

If you can switch mid-sentence to another language and continue the conversation on native speaker level.

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