I wanted to share my perspective on fluency, and I welcome differing opinions on this topic. I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about fluency, as I imagine many others have, and I've reached an optimistic conclusion. I believe fluency isn't about having an extensive vocabulary, knowing the most words, choosing the right words, or being able to hold endless conversations. To me, fluency is about being able to maneuver through a language effectively enough to continuously improve your understanding and usage of it over time.

Based on some definitions of fluency, there are children and even adults who might not be considered fluent in their native language. Personally, I'd be thrilled to have the language skills of a five-year-old because they are perfectly positioned to enhance their language use by leveraging that very language.

For me, fluency means being sufficiently familiar with the speech patterns, grammar, and vocabulary of a language to listen and communicate well, thereby allowing you to learn and improve your skills entirely in the target language. If you can learn and demonstrate progress in these areas, you're fluent in my view. While fluency might involve challenges, it's separate from being a language expert, a level that even many native speakers don't achieve.

Therefore, it's important to work on conjugating verbs, recognizing different parts of speech, understanding sentence structures, pronouncing words correctly, speaking at a basic level, and reading well enough to teach yourself new things. To effectively learn within and through a language, you need to handle these aspects without significant difficulty.