I find myself reflecting on this very question more and more as my time here in France comes to a close. Now that I have LESS than TWO MONTHS left, I am reminded by others and myself of my main goal in coming here. I guess I was never sure exactly where my level of French would be by the end of May, after nine months of total immersion or a "year" abroad, but I figured I would definitely be able to achieve some level of fluency. There are plenty of signs that make me stop and realize just how much progress I've made since the beginning of September, but still I hesitate, when people ask me, to declare myself "fluent" in French. What does that really even mean? Does it mean I have a basic level of understanding and can get by in everyday situations? Or does it refer to a higher level of achievement, a label reserved for those who speak the language almost as fluently as if it were their own? The more vocabulary I acquire, and the more expressions I learn, the more I seem to stumble across aspects of the language that are out of my reach, like knowing the gender of every single noun. This particular area of the language never ceases to frustrate me. No matter how well I master the language, there will always be new words that will give me away as a non-native speaker because I didn't grow up learning what is "masculine" and what is "feminine." There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to this concept that is nonexistent in English. Anglophones avoid the whole hassle of worrying about whether "train" is masculine or if "toilet" is only referred to in a plural sense, and just refer to everything as "it"! Alain told me about his English friend who has lived in France for 20 years--20 years!--and still incorrectly conjugates a verb or assigns the wrong article to an object. This knowledge is a little disheartening, but at the same time I realize that it would be unrealistic to expect to master the language just as well as I speak my native English--I can get close, but there will always be an obscure word or phrase that I just don't know.
On a more positive note, what exactly are these "signs" that tell me I'm getting closer and closer to being bilingual? For one thing, I notice more and more that I'm thinking in French. There will be entire days that go by where I don't speak English at all, and I get into this "French mode." I'll just be going about my day, and in those moments I have to myself, between classes, or taking the tram somewhere, where I will be thinking about something I have to do or what happened yesterday, and these thoughts will be in FRENCH. While this makes perfect sense, given that my day-to-day life is about 99% in French (except when I watch American TV shows online and talk to people at home), it's still startling to realize that I'm not longer thinking (or dreaming) in English!
Another weird but interesting observation I've had is that, in learning a second language, I'm starting to lose my first one! More and more, I find myself struggling to come up with a word in English to properly express what I want to convey. I will be able to think of the exact word to express something in French, but suddenly won't have the slightest recollection of its equivalent in English. It's embarrassing. Instead of knowing two languages, I feel like I don't fully know either one anymore! Words I'm almost positive I used to know how to spell are starting to stump me and I find myself writing the French spelling without even realizing it. I'm sure mixing up the two languages is perfectly normal, but the other day I referred to "France" as "the France"! Mon dieu...
Seeing these changes, and even mixing up English and French, is definitely both exciting and encouraging because it means I'm getting there, but I still don't know if I would consider myself "fluent," whatever that might mean. Time isn't up yet though!
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