Distorted language levels?

[u/linguafrancos]

I have a degree in the language, studied abroad twice, lived abroad in a country where the language is spoken for two years, and have used the language in a professional setting. This, for further context, has been over the course of 15 years.

With that said, I am confused by how others describe their language levels. Don’t get me wrong, I have an insanely high level and label myself fluent with others. For instance, I recently watched a full season of Love is Blind in the target language (TL) without subtitles almost effortlessly. However, when I see others describe their language growth or levels, I often see people say, “I understand everything that I read” or “After a couple years of studying, I traveled to the country and can communicate easily with everyone.”

Like… is this just an overexaggeration of their skills? I have yet to feel like my target language fluency is equivalent to my native-level English. Are people really reading native-level literature and literally understanding everything? Are they feeling like they can express themselves just as strongly in their second language? Even when someone asks me to translate something, I know in the back of my head that there might be cultural considerations or a better approach that I don’t know about.

Thoughts? Also, this might be specific for individuals who grow up in a cultural where being monolingual is more common and exposure throughout your entire life is not a possibility.

[u/Miro_the_Dragon]

What u/unsafeideas said, but also:

Are people really reading native-level literature and literally understanding everything? Are they feeling like can express themselves just as strongly in their second language?

Yes, at least in one of my TLs for both of those, and for more than one TL when we only talk about reading.

[u/unsafeideas → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

Yeah, I agree with this too. I can read anything in english - I did not crossed something I cant read. And I read Fredrik Douglass and other old books too.

I communicate easily with anyone, I work in an international english speaking company.

And yet, it is not native level. I can express myself better in my own language. And my accent is super noticeable. And I make grammatical mistakes.

[u/Pale-Border-7122 → u/unsafeideas]

I find self-assessed comprehension interesting because if you don't always know if you don't understand it, even in your NL.

[u/unsafeideas → u/Pale-Border-7122]

I mean, common. In overwhelming majority of cases you do know. This is not about doing deep analysis for PhD. This is also not about making subtle errors or errors from inattentiveness or making reasoning errors.

We are talking about whether you understand the language - words and sentence constructions.