Bilingual means being able to use both languages with the ease of a native in all four skills (speaking, writing, listening and reading). Fluency on the other hand only covers speaking and writing, so one may be fluent but still have mediocre comprehension skills.

You learn something new every day.

So it is not so difficult to become fluent then.

Indeed. I'm half way to bilingual then, but the wrong half to be fluent.

I would class my self as bilingual, but my missus says that I am not, because I am no good at listening or understanding in either language.

"Fluent" is posting on this forum saying you are spanish but your English is soooo good you know all about everything British better than the Brits

to be fair, my kids growing up here could post on a spanish forum & everyone would think they were spanish - even spanish people on first meeting them are confused - they look 'foreign' & then open their mouths!

if you grow up in a country, what are you?

I don't mean legally - legally my kids are & will almost certainly continue to be british - they can make their own decisions about that as adults


but my younger dd has been here more than half her life already, and the older one almost has - they are already more spanish than english in a lot of their attitudes & mannerisms - by the time they are adults I think they will have lost what 'englishness' they still have

You may not have (or choose) to think first but you can hardly consider yourself fluent if you come out with a load of incomprehensible nonsense with appalling grammar!!

What a horrible thing to say. It reads fine to me, just a few typos, but who can be bothered to check for them

Indeed, but then I expect Rotor´s Spanish is much better than JLFS´s English.

I dont quite understand this quote, is it saying that some posters are pretending to be Spanish, but their English is so good that it is suspect????

That is what is called an English education . Surley kids that go to school in England should be able to read, write and speak English after going through the system, I thought that was the point of sending children to school.

I have com across lots of English in the costas who have lived here for ages and they do not speak Spanish.
They dont need to because everywhere you go (almost) folks speak English.

That did not happen in the UK 20 odd years ago, a Spanish kid just arriving had to learn, no choice.
Had to go to school and was quite often the only foreign kid in the school.

I presume that the posters on here who have children will one day find themselves in the same position, their children will be born in England, probably have a kind of a Spanish accent, know all there is to know about Spain and know more about the celebs here than in the UK.

They even may class their local Spanish footy team as their own, is that so hard to understand?? To me it seems logical.

I am sure that some posters on here know that I am Spainsh but I do know a lot about the UK because, I did live there for more years than I have been in Spain.
And as I did not live in a cultural vacuum, this is how I turned out.

It seems strange that is what most folks are striving for, for their own children but when they see the proof of it, all some can do is write snotty comments on this forum

I wont even go there........................

There are so many posters on here who claim to be spanish, have perfect English as they were brought up in the UK and have returned to spain. Too many to be credible. I should change my name to sceptic123, or should that be skeptic

Surely people can know about two countries or may be even more, after all they have had transport since the wheel was invented. lol

Yes, and they are all on this little forum. They seem to know bugger all about the real spain except comparing prices with the UK. Anyway put me down as a non-believer.