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barrell | 16 days ago
Source: native English speaker in Europe. I have to explain/reword several words/expressions per day to people who would be by all means considered fluent.
(all numbers in this comment were estimated based on experience)
Throaway1982|16 days ago
Im also a native English speaker and have to explain English words daily to other native English speakers. Dont really think that matters. Some words are more common than others.
barrell|16 days ago
And to each their own. Fluency is a bad metric because it means something different to everyone. If you live in a language, work in a language, and have friends in a language, most people would consider that fluent. I've met many, many people who qualify with a much lower comprehension level than 90%.
Also, speaking from experience, I'll often "comprehend a sentence 100% in another language". Then I'll really listen to it again and realize I'm not really sure about half of the words. I have a vague idea of most of them and in context my brain get's it and self-reports full comprehension.
I think "full comprehension" is a substantially higher bar than "fluency".