Some Idiots Think, You Can Only Be Fluent in Your Native Language

Yesterday on Quora, or the day before, someone asked about the neurological process that goes on when "translating" sounds of words* into shapes of letters in the brain.

I answered "I don't know, but I do know that the exact same process is there in any language that you are fluent in, not just your first language."

Someone STILL doesn't get it.

Anonymous**
What is the term for writing in one language and speaking in another? Is it called "translation" or something else?

No, you usually speak in both and write in both. Like I do in all four of Swedish, German, English and French.

Unless, obviously, they are closely related registers of one and the same language, like Cockney*** and Standard English, like Scanian and Standard Swedish, like Viennese Dialect and Standard German, like a Dhimotiki closer to pure Dhimotiki and a Dhimotiki with more Katharevousa.

In that case, it's called shifting register. And if you can write, you are usually fluent in the written register as well.

Only in languages where I'm not fluent, like Italian, Spanish, Latin, Dutch, do I have to regularly stop and think about how to say sth, and in that case, I shift between moments of fluent writing and moments of, yes, actual translation. These are also vital when starting to learn a foreign language, but shouldn't remain regular guests once you are fluent in it.

I would have loved to take this in French, but the questions were in English, so I respond in English, which is also not my native language.°

Some evildoers have blocked my musical compositions over these being theoretical, I cannot read music at sight, so I'll know I have, for instance, gone a fifth up and a third down, but I will not know how it sounds unless someone plays them. However, when the same evildoers, no doubt some of them Freemasons, have taken the same approach over what I write in French, where I actually am fluent, this is beyond absurd.

Even if I actually were translating, no, this would not mean that I didn't understand what I was saying. And no, syntactical style, as opposed to syntactical features, is not a part of fluency in one language, it is a thing very likely to cross over between all of someone's languages. If I join two main clauses with five subordinates each in one language, I'll not be sticking to main clauses only with no subordinates in another. I'm sorry if your idea of French, or for that matter English, is some kind of Pirahã, which according to some descriptions lacks recursivity. And therefore, if true, would lack subordinate clauses.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Miracle of St. John
6.V.2025

Romae sancti Joannis, Apostoli et Evangelistae, ante Portam Latinam; qui, ab Epheso, jussu Domitiani, vinctus Romam est perductus, et, judicante Senatu, ante eamdem portam in olei ferventis dolium missus, exivit inde purior et vegetior quam intravit.

* In your native language.
** How socially cautious!
*** That's a bit the UK version of Ozark English.
° Quelqu'un me mettra à l'épreuve en français ?