When you learn a language, at what point would you say you’ve made it, that you “know” the language? Is it when you’re at a C Level, is it when you can interact with people in it? Is it when you can talk about philosophical concepts in it? Do you have different goals for different languages?
I know 3 languages. In order of fluency: English, Cebuano/Bisaya, and Tagalog. So I am multilingual.
I am learning Classical Latin, and everytime I feel exhausted I would read through some posts in language learning communities.
I read one post about how it actually takes years of consistent study to be able to be considered “fluent”, not to mention the expectation of being college-level in a language in the span of 3 years or less being common is absurd, when native speakers are immersed day and night for probably 18 years to reach that point.
I saw then a controversial comment, that being no one is truly fluent at 3 languages or more. That made me wonder.
I can spell in Tagalog and I have an instinctive sense for proper agglutination, and I can understand anything on TV (which is in Tagalog), but when I write essays for school subjects in Tagalog I am often at a loss for the precise or deeper words I specifically want so I would use a thesaurus or google translate and find the equivalent of a word I know in english. I can write without them but it takes me a while to find the specific words. And I can’t speak in it at a fast pace.
I can talk to others in Bisaya, but I probably suck at spelling in it because we don’t have a subject for it at school, though it is the primary language of where I live. Not to mention I have never actually encountered any complex compositions in it of any sort until I was in university, where we had a yearly Art & Literary school journal. However, I usually don’t see anyone else care about spelling in this language on texts or in facebook.
For English I was tested and got a score of C2. I read old literature, classic literature, novels, journals, fanfiction, poetry, and I can understand multiple registers and english dialects.
I would say I’m fluent in English and Bisaya, but my Bisaya is far behind from my English. As for Tagalog, I wouldn’t say I’m at a native level but I could use it and write in it. As for my current Target Language, I hope to be able to write about my life and thoughts in Latin on my journal as well as I could in English.
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I was in Spain, talking to a bartender, and he ended up buying me a beer. I know i was still making mistakes, i had to ask him to repeat himself a time or two, but it was the first time I’d had a full on conversation in Spanish with person that didn’t speak even a little English, and neither of us came out frustrated or impatient or confused. I know I’m not fluent, but it gave me the confidence to say I’m conversational.
A friend of mine (who is fluent in 5 languages) told me that he knew he became fluent when he could understand humor in a new language. He did not meant just a few jokes, but rather e.g. understand a whole stand up comedy performance. Of course this idea has a lot of problems, but I’d say it’s a decent rule of thumb :)
When I’m consistently secure and happy. Everything else is just general merchandise.
You’re asking us for our goals, yet you never mention yours… maybe that would be helpful to think about.
I hope to be able to write about my life and thoughts in Latin on my journal as well as I could in English.
The idea of writing in Latin is the primary appeal to me. I like the case and tense system over using particles. Though I first got into Latin because of its prominence in Catholicism and Western Occultism, then the fact that it was a language the educated people learned back in the day. In fact, learning Latin made me understand Why Old Books Were Written That Way™, the style is so similar to how one may construct something in Latin.
Ah, yes, my apologies. I think I kind of was more interested in the Tagalog and the other one.
If you read old copies of translations, sometimes the sex parts are written in Latin to frustrate (or motivate?) children. Epic of Gilgamesh is a classic example.
I think Mark Twain rebeled against latin in all its forms as much as he could–kept advocating for AngloSaxon-based vocabulary like saddle-wheel instead of bicycle.
What works of Western Mysticism do you like to read in Latin?
Are you journaling in Latin at all these days?
Oh yeah, back then anything considered controversial wouldn’t be translated. I believe there was one letter(?) so indecent it hadn’t been for a long time.
I haven’t tried reading a full occult work in Latin yet (it seems daunting). The works on Hermeticism and I guess Neoplatonism is what I find interesting.
I would try journalling in Latin based on what I learned from the drills I would impose upon myself. But it’s mostly in Indicative…
(Edit 2026-10-30 So that letter I had called indecent and had not been translated for a long time was actually a poem, Catullus 16)
Well, in the case of Gilgamesh, it was translated, just into Latin instead of English.
I started getting into alchemy a bit. Seems a bit esoteric. I find it intersesting that the social collapse of the 2nd century is finding so much spiritual resonance with the collapse of Enlightenment society in the 21st.
Just keep writing in Latin. It’ll get better and you’ll learn more. It’s also not a language you have any grammatical connection to (?), so it’ll take time to gain fluency.
I would say B2, but it really depends, because fluency is not linear. My tested level (as in, I have a DELF certificate) is B2 in French, but because I use the language every day and am fully immersed, my actual level is easily C1, and I can read advanced texts without much trouble, only occasionally needing to refer to a dictionary for vocab I’m not familiar with. However, I still do not find the grammar intuitive at times; it just feels foreign even though I know how it works. In comparison, I’ve been studying German, and although the grammar is much more complex, and my level is nowhere near my level in French, the grammar “feels” right. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s because it’s in the same language family as my mother tongue, I don’t know.
All this to say that, yeah, it depends.
