Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

What Fluency Isn’t
The question of what fluency means is one of great controversy, depending
on whom you ask. I want to provide a much more precise understanding of
fluency once and for all.
First, some definitions can be way too loose. A monolingual novice
with next to no language learning experience may ask me which languages I
speak fluently, but before I quantify my answer I will ask for her
understanding of the idea of fluency, because her definition may be more
what I’d consider that of a functional tourist—a level easily achievable by
anyone within a few hours or days—and not fluency at all.
Second, there is sometimes a too elitist way of looking at being fluent
(or saying that you “speak” a language) as being equivalent to a native
speaker in all ways. People who look at fluency this way sometimes go
overboard and demand that you should be able to
participate in a debate on a complex or philosophical topic,
speak with no hesitations,
use complex vocabulary and advanced expressions,
never have any serious miscommunications, and
be able to participate in a discussion that any typical native might have.
The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for
fluency, then I have to confess I am not fluent even in English, my native
language!
I can’t participate in a debate on many complex topics (including
philosophical ones; it’s just not my forte). I hesitate all the time in English
(watch any unscripted video of me speaking English online, and you’ll hear
plenty of ums and uhs). I am not the kind of person to use pompous
vocabulary in everyday conversations, or even in formal ones. And because
I’m Irish, I have had to learn to adjust the way I speak and the words I use
whenever I’m with Americans or other foreign native-English speakers.

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Finally, I can’t participate in any conversation a typical native might
have. If you start talking soccer (or any sport, for that matter), which I don’t
follow, you’ll lose me quickly. Many guys can talk sports for hours, but I’m
just not that interested, so I can’t join in. If you start talking about nice
fashionable clothes, which many native English-speaking women can do
fine, I’m a dunce and can’t contribute. I almost never watch TV in English
anymore, so if you start talking about the latest show everyone is crazy for,
I’m going to be able to offer nothing more than defeated shrugs.
These aren’t necessarily complex conversations, and they are
conversations many typical natives with no specialization or advanced
studies can participate in, but I can’t because I’m not either interested in or
familiar with the topics.
So if you had these criteria for fluency in the past, discard them
immediately, because this is effectively saying that you have to be able to
do in your target language what you can’t even do in your native language,
which is a totally unfair and unrealistic standard to set for yourself.