Before we get into the truth about why you don’t need to know everything to be fluent in a foreign language, I’d like to clarify what this article is not about. It’s definitely NOT about teaching you how to get by in life and pride yourself on being clueless.
Nobody in their right mind should aim for that.
Besides, isn’t the beauty of life precisely about constantly empowering your mind with knowledge? Not only will you change yourself for the better, but learning about new concepts will also facilitate your language learning journey.
The more you know about culture or new topics that arise when studying your target language, the faster you’ll acquire the language, and that’s a fact. However, not knowing everything does not stop you from being fluent in a foreign language. What’s more, you should be all the more confident and proud of yourself because you’ve achieved something so amazing as speaking a language you could not speak 5/10/15/etc. years ago.
As I’ve already mentioned in my language learning myths article, it is a myth that being fluent means knowing everything.
Why’s that?
You can always paraphrase when you can’t think of the word for something.
My students often think that if they can’t think of the perfect word for a certain type of thing, they should absolutely stop and not say anything until they find the most precise word. Well, bad news, the Earth won’t stop turning while you’re trying to think of the best thing to say. Even worse, the person you’re speaking to will be bored in the best case, if not annoyed.
Stop trying to look for the perfect word! Just say it – describe it or use a synonym.
Let’s say you don’t know how to say ”bad”, well you can always say ”not good”. Right? Will anyone know you couldn’t think of the ”right” word to say – NO! Nobody really cares and nobody’s judging you, what they want to understand is the message you’re trying to convey.
I’ll give you another example that’s simple, but it should give you a very clear idea of how you can paraphrase.
There’s so much language material and you don’t need to understand all of it to express yourself.
So, you think my US friends are able to comprehend 100% of what an Australian native speaker is saying? Absolutely not! Nor are the French from France able to fully understand a rap song in Canadian French, for that matter.
Of course, there’s a lot of slang that you’ll learn just by being in contact with other speakers, but you can’t possibly keep up with everything all the time.
Also, language changes over time. The English we speak today is completely different from what Shakespeare spoke (and wrote). To give you an idea – ”wherefore art thou Romeo?” used to mean ”why are you Romeo?”
Still, all these differences shouldn’t stop you from expressing your thoughts. The British may call cookies ”biscuits” but English is still English, so the rest of the phrase may give you a clue and you may be able to guess from the context.
You can’t expect yourself to be fluent if you know nothing about the topic anyway.
Jack of all trades, master of none.
Well, this one is more about not setting such high expectations and judging yourself for not being able to talk about everything and contribute towards a conversation.
Actually, I feel a little silly writing this because it should be common sense. But to be honest, I’ve struggled with thinking I should absolutely be an expert on every topic, however silly and unrealistic that may sound!!!!!! 😱
That’s why I’d like to tell you that sometimes you should just SHUT UP AND LISTEN. As simple as that. It doesn’t mean you’re not fluent, it simply means you know nothing about the topic.
Let’s take a sport I know nothing about as an example – hockey. I can honestly tell you that I know next to nothing about this sport. In fact, I know more about Wonderland croquet than I do about hockey. You must be thinking like, what the hell is Wonderland croquet?! It’s a kind of croquet played with hedgehogs and flamingos as balls and mallets, respectively. I bet you didn’t know this!
The bottom line is – if you know nothing about something, it will be hard to discuss it and use the expressions associated with it. At the same time, you can always learn and do better next time!
I know what you’re thinking:
”Ooookay, you’re being way too kind to me, what does it mean to be fluent then if I don’t need to know everything?”
A million dollar question! Well, there’s a debate about this, but everyone generally agrees that it means being able to express yourself easily and accurately. Which in no way suggests that you should know everything said in the target language.
