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[Axon]

I may have expressed myself wrong. The amount of effort or time is not a measured parameter in the CEFR indeed, but using CEFR in some contexts leads to wrong assumptions about these two variables. And they are important in some contexts, for example the internet platforms and their users may judge learners just by CEFR, not by experience.

And the CEFR-HSK problem, or rather my perception of it, comes from reading about the changes of the system and learners generally judging that the highest level of the new HSK is about B2, while the testing authorities claim it to be higher. It is just an impression of an outside though. Plus having seen that online course of good reputation offering beginner A1-C2 and intermediate A1-C2 courses is also a weird sign. The CEFR doesn't seem to be well rooted in Mandarin teaching, please correct me if I am wrong.

I think we're on the same page about the CEFR and assumptions from it. As a European and someone who's taken several CEFR exams, used CEFR books, etc, you're far more knowledgeable about what CEFR really means culturally and in terms of competence than I am.

I feel almost ashamed to say that there are B1 Mandarin things I have trouble with because my mental representation of B1 is someone who is not as comfortable in the language as I am, plus I've been studying and using it for almost four years, nearly two in a Mandarin speaking environment. I would certainly snap-judge someone who claims B2 Mandarin and think "that's not very high" even though they may be better at communicating and understanding than I am.

I have only played around with HSK and CEFR sample tests. The German C1 test seemed to measure real-world knowledge of and use of the language better than the HSK 5 did. Both were challenging for me but for different reasons. A monolingual speaker of something with few cognates in either would certainly find the German reading to be at a higher level than the HSK5 reading.

What does basic mean for me?

I actually compared my Vietnamese ability to the A2 criteria recently and would definitely not self-assess at A2. It's still relatively difficult for me to match up vocabulary in the dual subtitles of Easy Vietnamese, for instance. I also have almost no writing ability and quite a few phrasebook situations (giving directions, telling time and date) are still hard.

Two and a half years ago (the last time I interacted in Vietnamese) I could introduce myself, ask about prices, read menus, ask what things were called, and say what I liked and disliked. I recall saying such things as "I already moved" (playing chess), "there's no electricity" (at the hotel), and "No helmet, no ride" (to a motorcycle taxi driver). I haven't put it to the test but in these last years of studying I've internalized the tense markers much more, improved my listening for more textbook dialogue situations, and expanded my vocabulary by about 100 more words.

So that's what I mean when I say basic:
Able to ask prices and be understood. Likely unable to compare two objects outside of size, price, and color.
Able to say what is and isn't present in a place. Likely unable to explain why.
Able to give name, age, and nationality. Likely unable to describe specifics of a country.
Able to express preference for something. Likely unable to make a specific request for something that would fit needs or wants.
Able to understand and respond to direct questions about the above as well as questions about immediate intended plans. Likely unable to understand more than snatches of native conversation on any topic.
Able to recognize and read aloud written names of places and food. Likely unable to read more than a few isolated words in advertisements or warning labels (assuming a language with an unfamiliar script and few cognates).

That's enough to be a pretty good tourist (which is what I learn languages for). To be an outstanding tourist I would expect all those "Likely unable"s to turn into "Able"s at minimum.

[tarvos]

It's true, my French is notoriously rusty.

[SGP]

It's true, my French is notoriously rusty.

Now it's me once again, the Irony Micro-Analysator . You stated that you are an expert of French, Russian, Swedish, German, Romanian, Esperanto, Spanish. Does your Big Grin Smiley mean that once again you are joking (about rusty French skills)? If not, how exactly do you combine Expert Level with Language Rustiness? Maybe I'll be learning something new.

(BTW, I hope that this short question is on-topic enough to be asked here. It isn't about one person's particular language level only, but also about how to combine this and that.)

[aaleks]

Judging by my lowest skill in English - speaking, I'm an A1, or an A2 at best, in that language
I'm just saying that basing one's judgment on the weakest skill isn't always the best way out, it might be misleading as well.

p.s. No, I don't think that my writing is great but I hope it's not so bad either

[Iversen]

(...)weird things like "passively fluent"

I'm not sure whether I have ever used that expression, but to me it is not weird at all.

An example: I can understand just about anything I have ever heard from the dialect speakers on Norwegian television, and I can probably read New Norwegian as well as most Norwegians (apart from cultural references or references to particular places and instituations or persons who only are famous in Norway). OK, I don't know the vocabulary used by peasants and artisans of the olden days about their tools, but I also doubt that a typical modern Norwegian from central Oslo would know the names of those tools - and I have even holes in my Danish vocabulary in that respect. Nevertheless I do see myself as essentially passively fluent in Norwegian. So why don't I claim to speak Norwegian? Well, mostly because I prefer writing in New Norwegian and the Norwegians don't - and I don't have a Bokmål->Nynorsk dictionary so every time I try to write something in New Norwegian I get stuck again and again because I'm in doubt as to whether the words and spellings I have in my head come from one or the other variant of the language. And I have not really tried to learn to speak Norwegian because I can't choose which dialect to emulate. So I would sound like I made fun of the Norwegians if I tried...

Another case: I have been reading about the Arthurean legends today, and just for fun I also took a peek into one of my old books in Ancient French, "Le Mort le Roi Artu". And I can still read it like I was reading the latest issue of Le Monde. But I can't speak Ancient French, and if I try to write in it I run into the same kind of problems as I do with New Norwegian. The main reason is that I don't have a Modern French->Ancient French Dictionary to clear up dubious cases, so instead I have to do intricate Google searches to see whether a certain word occurs in the old texts or not. And it is just not worth the effort.

I sat in a panel at one of the polyglot gatherings in Berlin where we had to tell what we wanted to have in order to start learn a language. I said that I wouldn't take on a language where I couldn't get good dictionaries and grammars - and some comments to the Youtube video with that panel discussion found that totally ridiculuous. But to me it is common sense that you want the proper tools to take on a task - otherwise leave it alone.

In short: I sometimes do refer to the A1 - C2 scale, but I find it meaningless to do so if you don't also specify whether you speak about speech or writing, or - for the passive skills - listening or reading. As somebody else wrote, there can be easily three levels of difference between the two - maybe more.

[tarvos]

It's true, my French is notoriously rusty.

Now it's me once again, the Irony Micro-Analysator . You stated that you are an expert of French, Russian, Swedish, German, Romanian, Esperanto, Spanish. Does your Big Grin Smiley mean that once again you are joking (about rusty French skills)? If not, how exactly do you combine Expert Level with Language Rustiness? Maybe I'll be learning something new.

(BTW, I hope that this short question is on-topic enough to be asked here. It isn't about one person's particular language level only, but also about how to combine this and that.)

My French is a little rusty since I don't use the language that frequently. But since I have studied loads of other materials through French, lived in Belgium and spoken French a LOT in the past, I know I am very good at it and in context (for example at the polyglot gathering) people will not hesitate to address me in French without issue. I have gone to loads of French classes, been to France, Belgium and Quebec and even the French-speaking part of Switzerland. But as with everything, if you don't use it, you lose it. But it will come back quickly since it's a language that is ingrained in my very being..

[Serpent]

Basic fluency is a concept many of us learned on the old forum. It's very liberating to realize that there are different levels of fluency.

The scale was:
Intermediate is below 'Basic Fluency' and above 'Beginner'.
Basic Fluency - you understand at least 80% of a regular newspaper in your target language and can hold regular conversations about any topic, understanding what people say and getting your point across.
Advanced Fluency means that you can read a popular novel and not miss more than 2 words per page on average, and hold advanced conversations with minimal mistakes.

I also remember Prof. Argüelles describing his "airplane test" - being able to read an entire thick book (about 400 pages?) during an intercontinental flight.

Nope, the opportunity to self-correct doesn't matter at all in my case. Actually, not thinking too much while speaking helps a lot and is one of the main reasons of the disparity. My trained "instinct" simply works better than spending a lot of time on each sentence and paragraph. It is partially a psychological issue, just like speaking being the biggest problem for many others..

OMG yessss! That's definitely something I experience. My mind gets it right but then I start to second-guess myself. For me it's worst in German and in Slavic languages. In German due to the painful experiences of classroom learning, and in the Slavic ones because sometimes what I'm saying/writing feels too similar to Russian
And I agree that you definitely shouldn't assume everyone is self-correcting when writing.
Oh and I also think garyb is C1 at least in some skills

[SGP]

But as with everything, if you don't use it, you lose it. But it will come back quickly since it's a language that is ingrained in my very being..

So at least this time, we possibly agree on something . That's because I wrote that unless the underlying level changes, I would neither remove any language from the list, nor downgrade it. Maybe one could call it latent language knowledge or anything. So of course, re-activating would be much easier than learning it from scratch.

It's very liberating to realize that there are different levels of fluency.

Reminds me of what happened when I changed my approach to "on demand learning", and also removed that specific number (14) from my log's title. Since then, I really feel more relaxed. Maybe someone else can incorporate (?) this information to come up with an additional Language Levels Answer.

[aaleks]

Nope, the opportunity to self-correct doesn't matter at all in my case. Actually, not thinking too much while speaking helps a lot and is one of the main reasons of the disparity. My trained "instinct" simply works better than spending a lot of time on each sentence and paragraph. It is partially a psychological issue, just like speaking being the biggest problem for many others..

OMG yessss! That's definitely something I experience. My mind gets it right but then I start to second-guess myself. For me it's worst in German and in Slavic languages. In German due to the painful experiences of classroom learning, and in the Slavic ones because sometimes what I'm saying/writing feels too similar to Russian

This is my problem too . I keep butchering my English writing because I second-guess myself - is this sounds natural because it is a natural way to say this in English or in Russian? And then I rephrase that part of the text making it sounds awkward but "non-Russian". Some time later I read the same phrase, or a very similar one, written by a native speaker .

[Querneus]

Regarding those French speakers holding a C2 certificate who make mistakes, I don't know, but I've definitely had the experience here in Canada of meeting people whose oral skills were far better than their written skills. This includes a Korean classmate in high school who spoke largely impeccably, including in terms of her accent, but when I had a look at what she wrote, she showed a strange influence from Korean that I just couldn't detect in her speech. I think she really doubted herself whenever she tried to put something on paper, and unfortunately would often make the poorer choice.

It does seem strange to face the idea some people might make less mistakes when speaking as they think less about the language, than when they try to write something down and think about it, as aaleks and Serpent report, especially for a bookish guy like me. However, I've been witness to it...

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This thread made me think about my profile again, and I changed it a bit. I figured I probably shouldn't put my Latin next to my French. There's a wide gap between my English and my French, and then another gap between that and my skills in Latin/Mandarin/Cantonese. I've never taken a CEFR exam, so I feel a bit uncomfortable using the codes, hence the vague terms.

Assuming we define knowing a language at any CEFR level as passing the exam for that level with flying colours, and assuming we define "A1" the proper way (i.e. not the way the language industry likes to do), I estimate my "very good" English is C2+, my "mediocre" French is B1, and my "bad" Latin/Mandarin/Cantonese are A1 (maybe A2 for Latin if oral skills are omitted, and they probably should).